What makes something the words of a god ?

ImAMoron: Lets talk about this

People claim the Bible is " God's word ", we've all seen it

The usual responses are " Oh yeah ? Prove it "

So, starting with the fact that " proof " is done with mathematics, we can go ahead and ignore those requests for " proof ", unless of course, someone wants to step up with some math

In that case I'm all ears, maybe you could start by addressing that Hebrew and Greek use a numbering system borrowed directly from Egyptian Hieratic that was extensively used in mathematical and religious texts ( Good luck, I've studied these subjects for years, so don't try to blow any smoke up my ass, it won't end well )

Now, when it comes to pre-Biblical literary traditions, and specifically, anything part of the priestly corpuses ( Libraries ) that were maintained and accessed by Mesopotamian priest-kings and Pharaohs, there were many texts that were considered the " word of god / a god "

This is not just standard, it's common and basic literary history

So who wants to take a crack at explaining these traditions ?

ImAMoron: So, here's a paper you can read that might help get you started on these topics

Secrets in the Library: Protected Knowledge and Professional Identity in Late Babylonian Uruk

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2014, Kathryn Stevens

Obviously, since it's a journal you have to pay to access articles on, you'll need scihub to unlock it ( If you don't know what scihub is, you're a noob in my book )

https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/

If you have any questions about who Kathryn Stevens is, or the extent of her education, check her Oxford page, just in case you wanted to make some silly quip about the sources I use

https://www.classics.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-kathryn-stevens?filter_types-2362861[]=artefact,book,chapter,conference,internet-publication,journal-article

" I studied Classics with Oriental Studies (Akkadian) at Oxford as an undergraduate, and completed my graduate work at King’s College, Cambridge. I held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Copenhagen (2012–13) and Trinity College, Cambridge (2013–17), and lectured in Classics and Ancient History at Durham University for six years before moving to Oxford in 2020 "

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That should be enough to get you started, let me know if you have any serious questions

TheismIsUntenable: Cringe

ImAMoron: OK, that's what I thought, you're a puss when it comes to real debate

Thanks for playing

ImAMoron: Come back when you have a real argument, dolt

ImAMoron: Let's start with this screenshot:

isaacnd200's Picture

This was a comment of mine you responded to in chat

It's a comment I made specifically to troll up a response from someone just like you, actually, so I can make an example out of people like you

So, let's start with your name " Theism is untenable "

" Tenable " means " able to be maintained or defended against attack or objection "

So, going by the name you chose, I'd have to assume that you consider your statements to be tenable ?

And " cringe " is the fearsome defense you have ?

Color me shocked, but not really. I never thought you capable of making rational arguments, and that was just going by the pap that falls out of your flaphole in chat

Now, clearly, you made that response because you seem to think creationism and literalism are the only valid interpretations when it comes to the Bible

...because why ?

Lets see you try to defend why you seem to want to force a false dichotomy so you can ridicule creationism, because that seems like the maneuvering of a mental midget

TheismIsUntenable: You're way of your depth here but just to establish that I'll make one comment for you since you're obviously exceedingly desperate for my attention for some reason...

First, you're the person who made the claim, which you prove in that screenshot (what a weird thing to capture btw). The claim being "The Bible is a good science book". That means you carry the burden, no me. That's debate 101 so strike 1.

"Now, clearly, you made that response because you seem to think creationism and literalism are the only valid interpretations when it comes to the Bible"

This is a strawman fallacy by putting words in my mouth that I never stated, nor implied. That's strike 2.

"So, starting with the fact that " proof " is done with mathematics, we can go ahead and ignore those requests for " proof ", unless of course, someone wants to step up with some math"

I guess you've never heard of a deductive argument. That's strike 3...you're out!

ImAMoron: OK, I will easily shred whatever bullshit falls out of your hole

Let's start with this:

1. " First, you're the person who made the claim, which you prove in that screenshot (what a weird thing to capture btw). The claim being "The Bible is a good science book". That means you carry the burden, no me. That's debate 101 so strike 1. "

That's no " strike " at all, you never even asked me to explain what I meant, you just responded with your typical flaccid comments

So, no strike, just you being a typical coward attempting to sidestep the topic

You're scared to even attempt to breech the topic because you know for a fact you're uneducated, so the type of response from someone like you is rather transparent

For the record, I'm more than prepared to have a nice lengthy discussion on science and the Bible, and you, are not

So, just a friendly reminder, if you try to blow smoke up anyone's ass here, about your education in math or science history, you're going to get utterly wrecked

I will embarrass you in a way that make you reconsider your very existence, mr " theismisuntenable "

Did you pick that name because you think it makes you sound intelligent ?

lmao, let's move on to this

2. "Now, clearly, you made that response because you seem to think creationism and literalism are the only valid interpretations when it comes to the Bible"

This is a strawman fallacy by putting words in my mouth that I never stated, nor implied. That's strike 2.

That's incorrect actually, I never put words in your mouth, I just made that logical assumption based on your weaksauce style of chatting

I felt after watching you bloviate in chat, that you're all mouth and no real substance, so I felt pretty safe in assuming you're just another moron who's probably spent a great deal of time mocking creationists and creationism instead of looking to see if the sages and academics even peddled that nonsense

I'm always happy to concede this point to you, if you can demonstrate to me you have a history here of suggesting some other interpretation other than literalism and creationism

Please, I'm all ears, but I won't hold my breath

I see no strike here either, just me raising the flag on you again



Let's move on to this:

3. " I guess you've never heard of a deductive argument "

That would be incorrect, I've spent 11 years of full time study on ancient languages, math and science history, and have dabbled in many types of math and logic

Hopefully you don't think you're going to bullshit anyone that you grasp something like Egyptian geodesy or Sumerian metrology, that won't go well here at all

So, no strike there either, lumpy

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Now, let's get back to addressing the history and traditions of literature claimed to be " God's word " or " a god's word "

Focus, son, there's a topic, and you seem to be entirely uneducated in it

ImAMoron: Stick to the subject

I cited some material, address it, or take a hike kiddo

ImAMoron: Sorry man, a post full of nothing but emotes isn't going to cut it

I know you're used that style of engaging on the internet, but it's not happening here

You'll have to put on your big boy pants to get on this playground

If I'm getting under your skin now, you haven't seen anything yet

TheismIsUntenable:

You proved to me that not only are you retarded, but a dishonest weasel to boot.

Good luck with your empty thread bro! LMAO

ImAMoron: Dishonest ?

Like your concept of " personal proof " being sufficient to invalidate me merely by appealing to your own authority, that you never even demonstrated, before I've made my arguments ?

Okay, good, that will age well, I'll leave it up for some comedic relief



-------------------------

So get's get started, and I'll explain what I think about this topic and why, and then we'll sort it out

First some background - Me personally, I wasn't raised with religion as something I payed any attention to, and the concept of " god " was never something I even cared to think about, or read about, or argue about

It just simply wasn't a part of my life

Thankfully !

Zero indoctrination of religious dogma, never even opened a bible, and if anyone ever tried to approach the topic with me I cut them off and told them I simply didn't care

I didn't even have any interest in the topic or related topics until I turned 40, this was when I retired from the restaurant business and started working on my continuing education, from the comfortability of my own home

As far as " religious views ". I simply didn't have them, so that is where I started ( I'm sure we all have different stories there, when it comes to exposure to religion/s )

So, I began by observing all manner of " debate " online, starting by the typical Dawkins, Hitchens, videos online, I'm sure most of us have watched at least a few minutes of some of those, so-called academics debating creationists / Bible literalists and the like ( Lol )

I was pretty underwhelmed by this kind of material, personally, so I didn't waste a lot of time listening to what other people have to say on it, as far as those kinds of " debates ", because by my metric, a majority of the claims of the religious are specious and fallacious to begin with, so the proper way to handle them isn't to argue against them, since they are most often just false dichotomies

The way to deal with religious claims, imo, is to completely undermine them by exposing their completely dishonest nature when it comes to proper exegesis of literature from that time period

So my next step was to start surfing chats and forums, everything from the craziest new age whackadoo nonsense you can imagine, to the hardcore Christian, Jewish, Islamic sites, etc

I read all manner of things on these sites, quickly came to the conclusion that chats, specifically, are a very poor place to conduct a good battle, mainly since most mods of religious chats are d-bag creationist flakes, but also because there's not much substance when it comes to discussions of real history, especially anything prior to the Bible, and usually an attempt to do so will quickly get you booted / banned / muted

These religious people have very fragile views, and any attempt to undermine them is simply not tolerated, ( Rational people, imo, can concede ),but..

..what I also found, is that the people that argue with the creationist flakes, also seemed to have some problems with their arguments, to put it lightly

I mean, think about it here

There are endless attempts by Biblical literalists and creationists to get you to buy their claims about the accounts in Genesis, and that's just one chapter

There are lots of websites with names like " Answers in Genesis " that religious people use as an attempt to distort reality so they can support literalism

I'm fairly certain we're all familiar with this kind of material, claims of " local floods " to explain the narrative of Noah, etc

The " academic " authority for these religious people is more often not themselves, as they consider themselves to have the proper interpretation revealed to them either by the " holy spirit ", or by abusing modern scientific data and methodology to leap to bad conclusions and claim they have valid " evidence the flood happened "

This in turn is usually accompanied by the argument that " If the Bible says it, it must be true, and if you say it's not true, then you are saying God is a liar and God doesn't lie "

" Therefore your argument is invalid "

This naturally, is an argument that has more holes than a pair of pantyhose, so we'll discuss that too in the thread as we go on ( even though it's an amateurish argument at best )

Just those types of back and forth debates online between creationist literalists and their opponents seem to account for a large majority of online debates

Now, ...from that, the first thing I did acknowledge that a majority of what I was reading appeared to be " not even wrong ", to quote Wolfgang Pauli, because every time I spent any time fact-checking the claims people were making, they fell apart under closer scrutiny

Not one time did they have anything to do with real history or real historical traditions, nor did they ever use or address any of the volumes of material offered by universities online, Yale, Oxford, nor the sites and databases they maintain, nor the well-known and respected academics like Hilprecht, Neugebauer, Oppert, Friberg, etc

This is even between people who have degrees in mathematics, language studies, all sorts of academic gold stars, pastors, rabbis, you name it

We're talking about 5,000 years of history, ignored, when approaching a piece of literature ( The Bible ) that, logically, was influenced by earlier literature and traditions

So there goes any chance at rational context right out the window

Pretty convenient, I guess, but to approach the Bible like people do, seems way off base, especially when you start to learn a bit about earlier literature

All I ever saw with these online debates was merely sad bait and fish that could never actually be reeled in

I equate them to something like wasting time arguing with someone attempting to get me to buy that there's actually a real cat, in a hat, somewhere, eating green eggs and ham

Despite all the brilliant attempts people have made when debating creationists and literalists, and generally religious people, they certainly aren't brilliant if they're so far off base they don't even make sense

I've read my way through volumes of material over the years, since I can sit on my ass all day, so I've even read my way through all the debunking of various insane numerologies people come up with

Just from those, watching mathematicians shred their claims, using math and logic, I learned quite a bit

To this day, there are people all over the world posting all sorts of silly numerology stuff online, Rabbis in Israel with their ELS, end times doomers that decoded the Book of Revelation to show that Obama is going to put a microchip in my forehead

all that good stuff

I rejected the numerology as well, for the record

So,...this left me in the position of rejecting a majority of the arguments and debates I've seen online, as a waste of breath

This left me to start delving into the complexity of earlier languages and literature, ( Earlier than the Bible ) which turned out to be ridiculously complex and branched into a number of fascinating topics, so after doing this for a few years, I came to the conclusion that the typical claims of

" Bro, Genesis is just the best those primitive savages could really write when it came to our origins "

" It's either true or it's not, and God isn't a liar "

are not sufficient to answer why the " Bible is God's word "

Not for me at least, I want a better explanation of such a vague claim ( I'm sure you do too ? )

Now, I could have simply thrown in the towel at that point, and just said something like

" it's all just BS I guess... "


I bet you can guess what I did next....

ImAMoron: Well, rest assured, I didn't just take religious peoples' claims as true merely because they said they were

I could have asked some seemingly difficult-to-answer question like " How is it God's word when God is in some extradimensional invisible realm and the Bible is a heavily edited book compiled on earth, over many years, and filled with mistakes and contradictions ? ! "

That's a paraphrased quote of a question I've seen many people ask

But...is it specious in nature ?

If heaven and hell are not places, and rest assured, the syntax of Greek and Hebrew tells you they aren't ( Hellooooo, try learning some really basic things first before making arguments )

Here in this thread, you can clearly see religious people ( As well as those who argue with them ), apparently haven't bothered to learn some really basic stuff, like how words like " in " are used ( lol )


Topic: Religion

By this metric then, since heaven and hell aren't described as places, the question:

" How is it God's word when God is in some extradimensional invisible realm ... "

is shown to be poorly formed by people that are entirely unfamiliar with what they're attempting to debate about

Shocking ineptitude with basic Greek

So, when people here make comments about my " credibility " because of my hair, I usually ignore it, since people like that are usually attempting to argue with someone who is misinterpreting something as simple to grasp as the phrasing in " The Cat in the Hat "

You'd " appear more credible " if you could just manage to grasp simple words like " in "

That way you could actually undermine specious claims from the religious, instead of taking the bait like a fool

----------------------

Now, this still doesn't address what would make a piece of literature the words of a god

TheismIsUntenable: delete more comments!

ImAMoron: No, I'll leave up the ones that will highlight what an illiterate flake you are



We're just getting started

Btw, just a reminder, you already flailed and bailed from the thread once already cowboy

ImAMoron: And for anyone reading, the last comment I removed was some flaccid remark about how

" you'd look more credible with a shave and a haircut "

Gee wow,

You'd appear credible if you had a clue what the fck you were talking about

TheismIsUntenable: You deleted my comment exposing you as a complete moron. Nice empty thread though. Keep up the good work.

ImAMoron: Right, of course, professor

Maybe you should cry about it online. Try some of these chat rooms

ImAMoron: Let's next start with something that will really start to peel open this bullshit façade maintained by pseudointellectuals online, like " theism " here

Linguistics and etymologies, one of my favorite things to study

I'll let you get your waffling out of the way before I start

shadowline: I doubt that proof, or reason to believe, if you prefer, that a text is of Divine origin would have anything to do with numbers. People who think the Bible is the word of God usually take that view because of the kind of reading experience it is, because of the wisdom in it, because of the subjects it addresses, and because, having been seen as of Divine origin for many centuries, and therefore inviting question as to whether the claim seems good, they find that the claim is good. The Bible bears reading in times of trouble, and its message seems to reach the heart. At least, enough people have that experience of it that its special place is maintained, century after century.

None of that is proof of anything, of course, but, human beings think with other things than logic - sometimes to their own ill, sometimes to their good.

ImAMoron: I think that your skepticism is reasonable, but unfounded

Do you even know how divinity is written about / approached in the antiquities ?

shadowline: I guess so, if the Bible is any indication. Apart from that I'm only familiar with how Homer and Hesiod approach the subject, and they seem very like the Bible authors.

Are you talking about something like number values being assigned to the Greek or Hebrew alphabets? I've heard of that, but I don't know anything about it. It would be an arcanum, wouldn't it, and not the central tradition?

ImAMoron: Okay, thanks for the question

First, in response to your opening sentence in the other post:

" I doubt that proof, or reason to believe, if you prefer, that a text is of Divine origin would have anything to do with numbers "

Actually, the opposite is true, it's a rather basic and well known convention of literature in the antiquities ( By that I mean literature from the time of the Bible and before )

A great example is the common name of the head of the pantheon, the moon god, is usually referred to in text as the number " 30 " and it is indeed deified in writing, using a superscript dingir 𒀭 ( This is known as a " determinative ", they're not read out loud as part of a word, rather they are a signifier telling you about that person / place / thing )

There is actually a deified number in the New Testament ( See if you can guess )

Second, any time something or someone ( Like a priest-king ) is deified in writing in that time period, it is written using the dingir as a determinative for divinity. Determinatives are used in cuneiform languages, Egyptian writing, Greek ( Biblical ), in addition to others

------------------------------------

Now your next question, is about the polysemic nature of Hebrew and Greek used to write the Bible

This practice of assigning numerical values to letters is not an arbitrary practice someone just pulled out of thin air, which is what a lot of people seem to think

Hebrew and Greek both borrow this convention from Egyptian hieratic ( The script of the priests )

The only difference is that Biblical alphabets write out 1-9, 10-90 and 100 - 900, and Hieratic includes 1000 - 9000

Letters being used to write numbers is just a convention of ancient systems of writing ( Prior to the advent of " hindu-arabic " numerals )

technically, the entire Bible can be read as a long string of numbers OR words

And " gematria " , which is the practice of assigning some sort of " mystical " connection between words or phrases based on the fact they have the same numerical value, ( Like " serpent " and " messiah " having the same value ) well, that's different

In my opinion, 99% of what you see as people peddling as " gematria ", is nothing more than people taking liberties with things they have no understanding of, hence why it's often written off as " numerology " ( A bit of a stale generalization ) by anybody with a little training in mathematics

That said, if one were to look a little harder, starting by breaking down the etymology of the word " gematria " itself, they'd see it comes from " ge " ( earth ) and " metria " ( Measurement / measuring )

" earth measuring " is also known as " Geodesy " and geodetic calculations were done using Egyptian Hieratic bases : 1-9, 10-90,100 - 900 and 1000 - 9000 ( In conjunction with some other mathematical objects )

This is essentially what is at the heart of all the math used to build and align temples, structures, cities, towns, etc , plus all the calculations done under the umbrella of mathematical astronomy ( Eclipse cycles for example )


When you say " It would be an arcanum, wouldn't it, and not the central tradition ? ", what do you mean ?

As an " arcanum " it is most definitely something only known to initiated priest-kings, and therefore it IS the central tradition