Right, that’s how I look at it. Most of the old testament was written down during the Babylonian Captivity and seems to be the attempt to preserve an oral history of a whole mixture of things.
Genesis is about their ideas on the early making of the world and the patriarchs of Israelite identity up to the entry into Egypt. Exodus is about the exit from Egypt after centuries of slavery. Then it looks like three different books branch off. Leviticus is mostly about the laws and rules for religious observance. Numbers is a kind of history of the conquest of Cannan. Deuteronomy is also about laws, but focuses a little more on human relations to each other in society.
Then there are a bunch of other books in the Christian Old Testament about the evolution of a confederation of tribes into a kingdom, in which God plays a supporting Deus Ex Machina role, but is primarily about political struggles of kings with a tinge of moralism that suggests that bad things happening are a consequence of God being angry (though these guys could be pretty awful by most modern standards and still get forgiven by a Grumpy God).
A lot of the old testament work is trying to understand why the Jews had gotten kicked out of Cannan by the Babylonians if God was so powerful and they were the chosen people, and the conclusion was generally that it was punishment for having been communally sinful in various ways, especially miscegination with locals (who would presumably tempt Jews to worship other Gods). The idea was set forth then that there would be a saviour that would bring the Jews back to Jerusalem. This was the core idea that led to the possibility for Christianity, though it is equally arguable that the savior turned out to be Cyrus the Great, the Persian who conquered Bablyon and told the Jews they were free to go and establish a buffer state for him between Persia and Egypt.
Anyway, I find the mixture of history and religion, with the idea that a lot of these things probably got altered along the way to suit the authors needs to be a fascinating source of study, independently of whether there is any truth to the supernatural stuff.
It is Isaiah 53:5 But he was wounded because of our transgressions, he was crushed because of our iniquities: the chastisement of our welfare was upon him, and with his stripes we were healed.
My understanding is that there are Roman records that show a man named Jesus of Nazareth was executed in Judea around 30 AD, when a man named Pontius Pilate was administering Judea, but they express no opinion on whether he was divine or not. My understanding is that it looks like regular administrative records keeping and quite matter-of-fact. I have not actually seen or evaluated the evidence, but find it interesting. However, I’ll freely admit that it’s possible that these were falsified by later believers in order to cover up a gap in evidence.
It’s said that when Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan, his wife went to Jerusalem shortly thereafter and located the Holy Sepulcher and the true cross and all sorts of other artifacts and established churches and/or brought artifacts back to Constantinople. It’s a bit like going back and discovering Ben Franklin’s home and furniture, assuming that Ben Franklin was thought of as a nobody or even a criminal for the first 100 years of his life (plus a few wars and city sackings in the area). I always thought that was a little far-fetched; and yet, presumably we know a fair amount about John Brown and Benedict Arnold, and someone dug up Richard III in an English Parking Lot, so stranger things have happened.
Woa dude, stop trying to make athiests believers of something. /sarcasm
It is the lack of belief that makes someone an athiest. I don’t pay attention to God just like I don’t pay attention to Zeus. But only the former makes me an athiest. Why don’t you spend time trying to disprove Zeus is made up? Because you couldn’t care less about some made up God. Well this is honestly how I think most non-crusading athiests are. We could care less about God and think about it just as much as I think about the tooth fairy. Just because the majority believes something without any evidence doesn’t mean I have gone out of my way to “believe god doesn’t exist”
Also did you know there is no evidence Jews were ever slaves in Egypt? I just was reading about this a few days ago and it blew my mind.
If you study the etymology of the word atheist, you’ll see that Greenie has it right: an atheist believes (positive, active position) that God doesn’t exist.
A mere lack of belief makes one an agnostic; again, study the etymology of the word.
The problem is that these days most people who claim to be atheists are either actually agnostics – they simply don’t believe in God (rather than believing that there is no God) – or they’re cowardly about their position: they really believe that there is no God, but are unable to provide proof for their claim, so they pretend that they merely don’t believe in God.
True atheism is as much a position of faith as is true belief in God.
Right, normal atheists have nonexistent beliefs, not the existence of non-beliefs. Which is why labeling people “atheists” is stupid, we are just normal sane people and have requested no such label. It is a label made up by people with beliefs.
If you’re an atheist, you have a positive, active position: God doesn’t exist. I’ll put this in language that you understand (as it’s yours): if you came into court with that claim, the burden of proving it would yours, and yours alone. It has nothing to do with religious zealots; it’s a corner into which atheists have painted themselves.
The burden of proof lies on religion, religion tells us there is a higher being, atheists simple don’t believe in what religion says because there is no proof that god exists.
Why would I be bothered, I don’t have to be bother about fairy tales like going to hell, or wasting my time talking to nobody five times a day, or can’t eat beef or pork and all other stupid religion restrictions.
Now you are just playing word games. Most of us normal people would be categorized as “soft atheists”, if it were necessary to categorize a lack of beliefs, which it is not.
"Writers disagree on how best to define and classify atheism, contesting what supernatural entities it applies to, whether it is an assertion in its own right or merely the absence of one , and whether it requires a conscious, explicit rejection. Atheism has been regarded as compatible with agnosticism, and has also been contrasted with it. A variety of categories have been used to distinguish the different forms of atheism…
Philosophers such as Antony Flew and Michael Martin have contrasted positive (strong/hard) atheism with negative (weak/soft) atheism. Positive atheism is the explicit affirmation that gods do not exist. Negative atheism includes all other forms of non-theism. According to this categorization, anyone who is not a theist is either a negative or a positive atheist."