The problem lies in the way our brains work. This video is not specifically about religion as a fallacy, but shows why we can accept superstition as a reality:
fulltimestudent
JoinedPosts by fulltimestudent
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Why we got fooled into accepting the JW/Christian Superstition.
by fulltimestudent inthe problem lies in the way our brains work.
this video is not specifically about religion as a fallacy, but shows why we can accept superstition as a reality:.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5xqtol5hpe.
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Jesus (if he exists) has a heart of stone - a saga about the hurt of children in his church.
by fulltimestudent injesus is supposed to care for little children.
mark 10 is often quoted to illustrate his concern.. mark 10:13-16niv.
the little children and jesus13 people were bringing little children to jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them.
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fulltimestudent
Jesus is supposed to care for little children. Mark 10 is often quoted to illustrate his concern.
Mark 10:13-16NIV
The Little Children and Jesus
13 People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.15 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.But, in the real world, where children can and do suffer, we observe that Jesus does not help. His heart is stone and he does not hear the cries of little children as they suffer.
Here's a specific case that illustrates his stony silence:
This is the story of little children in the care of the Roman Catholic church, whose lives turned into a nightmare, as told on SBS a government owned media network in Australia.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/feature/girls-paedophile-and-cardinal-pell?cid=trending
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Why the story of Noah's ark is scientifically impossible: Minimum Viable Population
by ILoveTTATT2 ini didn't know this but there is a way to calculate the minimum population required for a certain species to survive over the next 100 to 1000 years.
this is called the "minimum viable population".. genesis states that 2 (or 7) of each "kind" went into the ark.
supposing that each "kind" means each "species", and they all could fit in the ark, and they came out safely, most of the species would have died, because it is impossible to survive, long-term, with a starting population of 2.this is interesting:"an mvp of 500 to 1,000 has often been given as an average for terrestrial vertebrates when inbreeding or genetic variability is ignored.
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fulltimestudent
And then there are the Graeco-Roman flood myths, which should be of greater interest to Bible students, since the Palestinian area, where the Jewish people's lived was part of the Hellenic cultural zone, and naturally the Jews were greatly influenced by that culture.
Cutting and pasting from Wikipedia we see some interesting parallels between the mythical Greek version and the Jewish mythical version.
Quote: The fullest accounts are provided in Ovid's Metamorphoses (8 AD) and in the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus.[9]Deucalion, who reigned over the region of Phthia, had been forewarned of the flood by his father, Prometheus. Deucalion was to build a chest and provision it carefully (no animals are rescued in this version of the Flood myth), so that when the waters receded after nine days, he and his wife Pyrrha, daughter of Epimetheus, were the one surviving pair of humans. Their chest touched solid ground on Mount Parnassus,[10] or Mount Etna in Sicily,[11] orMount Athos in Chalkidiki,[12] or Mount Othrys in Thessaly.[13]
Hyginus mentions the opinion of a Hegesianax that Deucalion is to be identified with Aquarius, "because during his reign such quantities of water poured from the sky that the great Flood resulted."
Once the deluge was over and the couple had given thanks to Zeus, Deucalion (said in several of the sources to have been aged 82 at the time) consulted anoracle of Themis about how to repopulate the earth. He was told to cover your head and throw the bones of your mother behind your shoulder. Deucalion and Pyrrha understood that "mother" is Gaia, the mother of all living things, and the "bones" to be rocks. They threw the rocks behind their shoulders and the stones formed people. Pyrrha's became women; Deucalion's became men.
Deucalion and Pyrrha had at least two children, Hellen and Protogenea, and possibly a third, Amphictyon (who is Autochthonous in other traditions).
Their children as apparently named in one of the oldest texts, Catalogue of Women, include daughters Pandora and Thyia, and at least one son, Hellen.[14]Their descendants were said to have dwelt in Thessaly. One corrupt fragment might make Deucalion the son of Prometheus and Pronoea.[15]
On the other hand, Dionysius of Halicarnassus gives Deucalion's parentage as Prometheus and Clymene, daughter of Oceanus, and mentions nothing about a flood, but instead names him as commander of those from Parnassus who drove the "sixth generation" of Pelasgians from Thessaly.[16]
One of the earliest Greek historians, Hecataeus of Miletus, was said to have written a book about Deucalion, but it no longer survives. The only extant fragment of his to mention Deucalion does not mention the flood either, but names him as the father of Orestheus, king of Aetolia. The much later geographerPausanias, following on this tradition, names Deucalion as a king of Ozolian Locris and father of Orestheus. Plutarch mentions a legend that Deucalion and Pyrrha had settled in Dodona, Epirus; while Strabo asserts that they lived at Cynus, and that her grave is still to be found there, while his may be seen atAthens; he also mentions a pair of Aegean islands named after the couple.[citation needed]
The 2nd-century writer Lucian gave an account of the Greek Deucalion in De Dea Syria that seems to refer more to the Near Eastern flood legends: in his version, Deucalion (whom he also calls Sisythus)[17] took his children, their wives, and pairs of animals with him on the ark, and later built a great temple inManbij (northern Syria), on the site of the chasm that received all the waters; he further describes how pilgrims brought vessels of sea water to this place twice a year, from as far as Arabia and Mesopotamia, to commemorate this event.reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deucalion
There's more, of course. From India, where civilisation grew up around the great river systems of the Indus and the Ganges, we find similar mythical accounts.
And, in China similar myths exist, where Yu tames the Yellow River and becomes Emperor of the first Xia dynasty. Lots of excitement in academia lately as a researcher believes he's found the source of the great flood account that Yu tamed.
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Why the story of Noah's ark is scientifically impossible: Minimum Viable Population
by ILoveTTATT2 ini didn't know this but there is a way to calculate the minimum population required for a certain species to survive over the next 100 to 1000 years.
this is called the "minimum viable population".. genesis states that 2 (or 7) of each "kind" went into the ark.
supposing that each "kind" means each "species", and they all could fit in the ark, and they came out safely, most of the species would have died, because it is impossible to survive, long-term, with a starting population of 2.this is interesting:"an mvp of 500 to 1,000 has often been given as an average for terrestrial vertebrates when inbreeding or genetic variability is ignored.
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fulltimestudent
In a river valley system floods can be expected, right now Louisiana in the USA is experiencing serious flooding.
But in pre-history there may well have been catastrophic floods that affected our primitive ancestors. Melting ice as ice-age epochs (never mentioned in the Bible-ever wondered why?) came to their end and the ice melted must have killed whole areas of early humans.
Another theory, that accounts for the flood memories of West Asian peoples is now known as the Black Sea Deluge hypothesis. In brief (from the National Geographic web-site) states:
Quote:" Columbia University geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman wondered what could explain the preponderance of flood legends. Their theory: As the Ice Age ended and glaciers melted, a wall of seawater surged from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea.
• During the Ice Age, Ryan and Pitman argue, the Black Sea was an isolated freshwater lake surrounded by farmland.
• About 12,000 years ago, toward the end of the Ice Age, Earth began growing warmer. Vast sheets ofice that sprawled over the Northern Hemisphere began to melt. Oceans and seas grew deeper as a result.
• About 7,000 years ago the Mediterranean Sea swelled. Seawater pushed northward, slicing through what is now Turkey.
• Funneled through the narrow Bosporus, the water hit the Black Sea with 200 times the force of Niagara Falls. Each day the Black Sea rose about six inches (15 centimeters), and coastal farms were flooded.
• Seared into the memories of terrified survivors,the tale of the flood was passed down through the generations and eventually became the Noah story.Reference: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html - if this concept is of interest, there are more pages to explore.
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Why the story of Noah's ark is scientifically impossible: Minimum Viable Population
by ILoveTTATT2 ini didn't know this but there is a way to calculate the minimum population required for a certain species to survive over the next 100 to 1000 years.
this is called the "minimum viable population".. genesis states that 2 (or 7) of each "kind" went into the ark.
supposing that each "kind" means each "species", and they all could fit in the ark, and they came out safely, most of the species would have died, because it is impossible to survive, long-term, with a starting population of 2.this is interesting:"an mvp of 500 to 1,000 has often been given as an average for terrestrial vertebrates when inbreeding or genetic variability is ignored.
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fulltimestudent
TheOldHippie : ... I happen to believe in the flood story - but not that it was global. Huge and quite possibly having worldwide effects, but the flood itself local. There was not enough time for human or animal population to spread as fast as it must have in order to be as plentiful as it must have been during the days of Abraham etc.
Of course, floods are part of the real life and the mythical life of various situations. The flood myths invariably come from societies that live in river valleys, that's why the myth from which the biblical flood myth is most likely derived comes from the Tigris-Euphrates river system. If you've never heard of the Epic of Gilgamesh, you can find a reasonable discussion in the Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh.
Much of the mythical account has been preserved on clay tablets that archeaologists have discovered. This image shows what they look like.
The first half of the story discusses Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and Enkidu, a wild man created by the gods to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing the people of Uruk. After an initial fight, Gilgamesh and Enkidu become close friends (or lovers, according to some). Together, they journey to the Cedar Mountain and defeat Humbaba, its monstrous guardian. Later they kill the Bull of Heaven, which the goddess Ishtar sends to punish Gilgamesh for spurning her advances. As a punishment for these actions, the gods sentence Enkidu to death.
In the second half of the epic, distress about Enkidu's death causes Gilgamesh to undertake a long and perilous journey to discover the secret of eternal life. He eventually learns that "Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands".[1][2] However, because of his great building projects, his account of Siduri's advice, and what the immortal man Utnapishtim told him about the Great Flood, Gilgamesh's fame survived his death.
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Obedience At Its Blindest
by Nevuela injust a little something my "anointed" roommate posted on facebook a few months ago, along with replies from her fellow jws.
it was chilling to read, so i took a screenshot and saved it for future reference.
please feel free to share your own stories of blind obedience within the org.
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fulltimestudent
We were once, Data-dog - ALL idiots (here).
That text used to be one of my favourites, I used it so often, working it into talk after talk (being encouraging to the brotherhood, of course!)
I could just imagine YHWH/JESUS, hiding me somewhere, somehow, until the horrors of the big A were over, and coming out from my hidden-place to the .... Oh! bugger it, why wake up false hopes?
That poor deluded woman will in the not to distant future - die, as all the 'mature brothers' of my youth have died and I will also.
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My Last Study Unit - Sigh!!! - If only I'd studied it 65 years ago
by fulltimestudent insemester 2 commences next monday, and the study unit i'm taking will be my last as a undergraduate.
i've spent 8 years wandering around asian (west and east) history, and i should have graduated a year ago, but mu now has a rule that all ugs must take a two units of study outside their field of study.. so starting monday i will apply my mind to the question implicit in the unit's title: .
why people believe weird things: making rational decision's in an irrational world.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
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fulltimestudent
Thnx for all good wishes. And ...
Listener : If you get the chance, it would be great if you could post some of the highlights you come across or conclude.
That's hard to do sometimes, as many 'highlights' have complex backgrounds. But most of the stuff I've posted reflects (in someway) some areas of my studies. Asia, past and present, covers an amazing amount of information.
I post most days on a student societies FB page on Asian studies, in the last few days, topics I've selected range from using predictive modelling to look (in the north of the Indian sub-continent) for Ashoka's Buddhist inscriptions on rocks, to information concerning the Roman Emperor Hadrian's Temple in the Erdek district of Balıkesir in northwest Turkey. to the increase in the number of Australian students now selecting a Chinese University for their studies. to the use of cross-Asia rail by Chinese exporters to Europe, to the radicalisation of Chinese seamen (given refuge in Australia) by Australian left-wingers during WW2, and that is taking increasing amounts of my time.
I joined that group just after it was founded, but after I was given the role of editor, the group management effectually collapsed. I've built readership up from a handful to, for some posts, up to 200 views. Its been an interesting experience.
Listener: I imagine that after 8 years you will miss your studies. Some people continue to study their whole life and find ways of contributing to society.
I'm considering a couple of options. One is to do a Master of Research Post grad course here at Macquarie U. The other, is to undertake a Master's degree in Chinese History at the University of Zhejiang, located in Hangzhou, China. That University is in the top 10 of Chinese universities and I love Hangzhou as a city. The fee is only around Aust.$10,000 (covers fees and accomm, shared room), but I think I stand a chance of a scholarship (not sure how my age would affect that)
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My Last Study Unit - Sigh!!! - If only I'd studied it 65 years ago
by fulltimestudent insemester 2 commences next monday, and the study unit i'm taking will be my last as a undergraduate.
i've spent 8 years wandering around asian (west and east) history, and i should have graduated a year ago, but mu now has a rule that all ugs must take a two units of study outside their field of study.. so starting monday i will apply my mind to the question implicit in the unit's title: .
why people believe weird things: making rational decision's in an irrational world.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
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fulltimestudent
Semester 2 commences next monday, and the study unit I'm taking will be my last as a undergraduate. I've spent 8 years wandering around Asian (West and East) history, And I should have graduated a year ago, but MU now has a rule that all UGs must take a two units of study outside their field of study.
So starting monday I will apply my mind to the question implicit in the unit's title:
Why People Believe Weird Things: Making Rational Decision's in an Irrational World.
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I only wish that I had studied this topic when I was a kid of 17, and about to make decisions that would make me waste my life, thinking I was doing something wonderful (i.e. following the YHWH/JESUS combi god).
Sigh!!!! If only ???
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Another Egyptian relic discovered at Hazor, northern Israel
by fulltimestudent init doesn't look significant, but it is - the jerusalem post reports:.
the finding – coupled with a sphinx fragment of the egyptian king mycerinus (who ruled egypt in the 25th century bce), discovered at the site by the research team three years ago – are the only monumental egyptian statues found so far in second millennium contexts in the entire levant.the discovery of these two statues in the same building currently being excavated by the research team indicates the special importance of the building, which was likely the administrative palace of the ruler of the city, as well as that of the entire city of hazor.shlomit bechar, a doctoral student at the institute of archaeology, who has been excavating at hazor for a decade, is the dig’s co-director, and oversees the main excavation area.during the course of nearly 30 years of excavations, fragments of 18 different egyptian statues – both royal and private – dedicated to egyptian kings and officials, including two sphinxes, were discovered at hazor.“most of these statues were found in layers dated to the late bronze age (15th-13th centuries bce), corresponding to the new kingdom in egypt,” said ben-tor.“this is the largest number of egyptian statues found so far in any site in the land of israel, although there is no indication that hazor was one of the egyptian strongholds in southern canaan, nor of the presence of an egyptian official at hazor during the late bronze age.”ben-tor added that most egyptian statues found at hazor date to egypt’s “middle kingdom” (19th-18th centuries bce), a time when hazor did not yet exist.“it thus seems that the statues were sent by an egyptian king in the ‘new kingdom’ as official gifts to the king of hazor, or as dedications to a local temple, regardless of their already being ‘antiques,’” he said.“this is not surprising, considering the special status of the king of hazor, who was the most important king in southern canaan at the time.
the extraordinary importance of hazor in the 15th-13th centuries bce is indicated also by the biblical reference to hazor as ‘the head of all those kingdoms’ (joshua 11:10).”all the statues at the site were found broken into pieces and scattered over a large area, he noted.“clear signs of mutilation indicate that most of them were deliberately and violently smashed, most probably in the course of the city’s final conquest and destruction sometime in the 13th century b.c.e,” said ben-tor.“the deliberate mutilation of statues of kings and dignitaries accompanying the conquest of towns is a well-known practice in ancient times (i samuel 5:1-4; isaiah 11:9), as well as in our time.”the hazor excavations, which began in the mid-1950s under the direction of the late professor yigael yadin, are carried out on behalf of hu.
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fulltimestudent
Is There Historical Evidence for the Exodus?
Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman attempt an answer in their book, "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeologly’s
New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts", (The Free Press, 2001)
Chapter 2 (Did the Exodus happen?) is specific to this discussion. In the edition of the book accessible on google books (it starts on P.48). The authors first make an attempt to locate the claimed Exodus in chronological time.
There is in contemporary studies a fairly clear chronological picture of the history of ancient Egypt. Additionally, the Exodus narrative has ‘a wealth of detailed and specific geographical detail.’ Escaping from Egypt, the Israelite multitude (according to the Exodus document) carefully recorded their travels and the locations of their described interactions with YHWH.
This is not to argue that people from the region we call Palestine, did not have a relationship with Egypt. In the last 200 years modern scholarship learned of the “invasion” of Egypt by the Hyksos, usually thought of as ‘Shepherd Kings’ but the authors argue that the literal meaning of the original word used (by Egyptian historian Manetho) meant “rulers of foreign lands” and that these people were Canaanites, and that their “invasion” was a gradual process of immigration and growing influence, rather than a sudden military attack and invasion. (pp 54,55)
Finkelstein and Silberman discern a parallel between the Egyptian events (as described by Manetho) and the biblical story.
In Manetho’s history, the Hyksos conquest of Egypt was ended by a ‘virtuous’ Egyptian King, who (describes the scribe, Manetho) the defeated Hyksos founded Jerusalem and constructed a temple. Is Manetho's account believable? Another Egyptian source (on p.56) provides an account of Pharaoh Ahmose (18th dynasty) who (in this account) chases the remaining Hyksos to their main centre, Sharuhen (near Gaza) which he captured after a long siege.
Attempting to reduce these stories (including the biblical story) to a basic outline, what do they have in common? This, (say the authors - still on p.56), a story of Semitic inhabitants of the eastern Mediterranean coast lands and hinterlands, migrating to Egypt, their growing influence and eventual (violent) expulsion.
To review all the following arguments would take too long to recount, so I’ll save it for the next post.
Reference: Google Books has some readable sections of this book on its web-site. https://books.google.com.au/books?
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Another Egyptian relic discovered at Hazor, northern Israel
by fulltimestudent init doesn't look significant, but it is - the jerusalem post reports:.
the finding – coupled with a sphinx fragment of the egyptian king mycerinus (who ruled egypt in the 25th century bce), discovered at the site by the research team three years ago – are the only monumental egyptian statues found so far in second millennium contexts in the entire levant.the discovery of these two statues in the same building currently being excavated by the research team indicates the special importance of the building, which was likely the administrative palace of the ruler of the city, as well as that of the entire city of hazor.shlomit bechar, a doctoral student at the institute of archaeology, who has been excavating at hazor for a decade, is the dig’s co-director, and oversees the main excavation area.during the course of nearly 30 years of excavations, fragments of 18 different egyptian statues – both royal and private – dedicated to egyptian kings and officials, including two sphinxes, were discovered at hazor.“most of these statues were found in layers dated to the late bronze age (15th-13th centuries bce), corresponding to the new kingdom in egypt,” said ben-tor.“this is the largest number of egyptian statues found so far in any site in the land of israel, although there is no indication that hazor was one of the egyptian strongholds in southern canaan, nor of the presence of an egyptian official at hazor during the late bronze age.”ben-tor added that most egyptian statues found at hazor date to egypt’s “middle kingdom” (19th-18th centuries bce), a time when hazor did not yet exist.“it thus seems that the statues were sent by an egyptian king in the ‘new kingdom’ as official gifts to the king of hazor, or as dedications to a local temple, regardless of their already being ‘antiques,’” he said.“this is not surprising, considering the special status of the king of hazor, who was the most important king in southern canaan at the time.
the extraordinary importance of hazor in the 15th-13th centuries bce is indicated also by the biblical reference to hazor as ‘the head of all those kingdoms’ (joshua 11:10).”all the statues at the site were found broken into pieces and scattered over a large area, he noted.“clear signs of mutilation indicate that most of them were deliberately and violently smashed, most probably in the course of the city’s final conquest and destruction sometime in the 13th century b.c.e,” said ben-tor.“the deliberate mutilation of statues of kings and dignitaries accompanying the conquest of towns is a well-known practice in ancient times (i samuel 5:1-4; isaiah 11:9), as well as in our time.”the hazor excavations, which began in the mid-1950s under the direction of the late professor yigael yadin, are carried out on behalf of hu.
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fulltimestudent
Where does this discussion leas us? Or, at least those of us who want to know whether or not YHWH's (supposed) jottings are a reliable guide?
As half banana comments:
"I find it interesting to consider how completely skewed the Bible propaganda is. Israel hardly ever mentions the elephant in the room which was Egypt."
We already surely, can see that the YHWH's Bible is somewhat less than honest when it comes what was really happening between the Israelites and the Egyptians? Instead of finding lots of evidence of the Israelite's enslaved in Egypt, of the Israelite's fleeing the Egyptian armies, and a 40 year sojourn in the wilderness, together with the archaeological remains of those events, we are finding lots of evidence (both historical and archaeological) of EGYPTIANS in the promised land.
If this grand story of the beginning of the JEWS fails, can any trust be placed in the rest of the story? MY next post will attempt to relocate our view of these events.
