Sorry, got you confused with a different poster.

As I understand it, these interpretations and translations are still constantly being debated.  Regardless, I hope you would agree that your interpretation is very different than the mainstream interpretation, and is not what most people mean when they say they believe in "The Bible", or what they mean when they talk about "God".  I still don't know if I understand what you believe in... do you think that everything in the Old Testament that specifically defies rationality (talking snakes, man out of clay, etc) is a metaphor/misinterpretation, and that everything that seemingly defies rationality (parting seas, the great flood) is a mistranslation of a non-miraculous event?  If so, where does God fit into in any of this?  It seems like if you distill the entire old testament into metaphors and misinterpretations to try to line it up with science and history, then that leaves no room for a god in any usual sense of the word.

My point is that "disappearing when you look at them" was never part of the stories of Greek gods.  If you add in something like turning invisible when you look at them, then you're not talking about the Greek gods, you're inventing a variation of them that goes against what the people actually believed.
 

No, I was trying to point out that greek gods and judeo-christian gods are equally ridiculous.

I get the feeling we're talking over each other :B .  I'm not saying I believe in them; far from it.  I agree that religion is nonsense.  I was debating your idea that religion and science don't have to conflict.  I think they do; if something is actually "nonsense" then it's not particularly scientific to believe in it, and scientific inquiry into the thing can only lead to disproving it.  You couldn't believe that there is a giant guy in a toga standing on the mountain in front of you while simultaneously being right there and observing that he's actually not and still claim that you're being scientific.

I don't think they'd specifically say something like that because that sort of thinking didn't really exist in philosophy until Logical Positivism, or at least Descartes (I think therefore I am).  Early Greek philosophers like Plato touched on the idea that everything might be an illusion, but the idea of marking certain supernatural things that you want to believe in as "outside existence" didn't really come about until the Church needed to update their teaching to deal with the dominating ideology of materialism and determinism that was taking over during the Scientific Revolution.  When Greek philosophers and theologists (they were generally one and the same) talked about things, they meant them literally; there was none of the wishy-washiness of today where theologists need to dance around the problem of pretending to know about something that they must define as unknowable.

oops, double post

Leauki,

I have never seen gods who throw lightning and mate with humans.

That's what makes it nonsense.

Huh. That's odd, I'm pretty sure there's storm gods all over the world, in multiple religions. And I'm also pretty sure there's gods in multiple religions who have mated with humans. So, these stories of gods affecting the natural world aren't exactly unique to Greek religion, although I suspect many of those stories weren't even meant to be taken literally - any more than you take the parting of the Red Sea as a literal parting of the Red Sea.

Just seems inconsistent - it's okay to have stories of a single guy wiping out an entire army with the jawbone of an ass, or G-d sending angels to annihilate everyone in two cities, or a flood to punish humans - but when the Greeks have stories of the gods getting involved in human affairs, it becomes nonsense? I'm not sure I follow the logic here. Folklore is folklore, whether Jewish, Greek, Norse, or Celtic, and it's frequently filled with stories of implausible, magical events.

Yes.

I find my interpretation is very common among Jews, including orthodox and observant Jews (I am neither).

Yes.

However, these things are complicated and while man is indeed (in a way) made of clay the process described in Genesis is a metaphor. Gan Eden does not exist as described but we don't know yet whether it did exist as a region that certain tribes moved out of (linguistically, it would have to have been in southern Iraq i.e. Sumeria) or whether it is a metaphor for a better world (or both).

I can't say it's a mistranslation if I simply read the Hebrew text and goes by what it says. Translating a possible swamp as a definite ocean is certainly an exageration, although I don't think it changes the story much. The impact of what happened certainly appeared to be at a scale that would make people describe it as a parting of the seas.

It's still a miraculous event. It just isn't supernatural. Miracles are positive lucky events. And, according to rabbi Maimonides (12th century Morocco) miracles will appear as natural phenomena to us.

I am not trying to line it up with science and history, I am saying that this isn't necessary. What the Hebrew Bible actually says is often more mundane than people think today and there is little reason to doubt its historical accuracy just because it's a holy book.

G-d is not necessarily Someone Who keeps changing the world as He wishes. He is someone to have faith in and follow. The important point in Exodus is not the parting of the seas (whether it is a swamp or an ocean) but the fact that Moses managed to convince hundreds of thousands of people to follow him into freedom and that he somehow managed to win that freedom for all of them.

Whether that is historically true or not (and I believe it is) doesn't matter. But it is certainly possible and still miraculous.

You misunderstand two things.

First, Judaism is different from all other religions (except those derived from it and Zoroastrianism) because it rejects the idea of "storm gods" or the idea of gods or a god who is or will ever be corporeal (Christianity weakened that principle).

And the parting of the "Red Sea" can be taken literally. It just so happens that _literally_ the text doesn't refer to the ocean we call the "Red Sea" now.

I don't know what really destroyed Sodom and 3amora but I am convinced that the story about there being one survivor is probably true. As for how the city was destroyed, I don't care for the details in the explanation. The details are meant to teach us something, not make us focus on the details rather than the main event in the long run.

And yes, gods getting involved in human affairs in the ways the Greek gods did is nonsense. I have never seen it happening.

time-travel

In the future we will build a machine that can take us back to the past. Trying to settle the endles debate of is god real we will mostly go and see. In the end probably find out that not only there is no God but it was a bunch of time travellers messing with people.

Imo religion is way more trouble than its worth and most of the time is used a scapegoat for violent and unlogical actions

That being said its more of an issue with religion than the actual existance of a God/Gods

I recommend to watch "the man from earth"
this movie, even though not directly focused on religion, it dose cover some intersting parts of it

In regards to the time travel "theory", I like the idea pitched by Star Trek better... that all the gods in Earth history aliens (and ST V seems to say that the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God is an alien too).

Really? So, because you've never seen it happen, it's not true?

So I could argue that because I've never seen God, he doesn't exist. The two processes use the exact same logical statement:

a. I have never seen something happening.

b. If I haven't seen it, it doesn't happen.

Which is, of course, ludicrous. I have never seen an atomic bomb outside of a movie/game/etc, so they don't exist... If you said something like this, using any historical event... The Holocaust? Genocides in Rwanda, Darfur, etc? World Wars I and II?

And further, you don't provide an actual example. You should provide one Greek myth that is implausible, one Jewish-Christian myth that is plausible, and show clear differences between what the gods/God had to do in each one.

But all you said is: "And yes, gods getting involved in human affairs in the ways the Greek gods did is nonsense." But the entirety of the Torah/Bible is God getting involved in human affairs. Perhaps they get involved in human affairs in different ways... but they both do get involved. And I've never seen neither happening, so if we return to your logic above...

It probably isn't, no.

But I am open-minded and willing to learn. Please point me to evidence for it if you think that I should accept it as real.

Yes, you can. And I wouldn't care.

However, the way the god of Judaism is described that particular god is not really observable. Hence for that particular god "seeing" the god is not the way to confirm the god's existence.

That is different from Greek gods who were prone to making personal apperances.

I have seen the atomic bomb on film. I have seen the effects of the Holocaust. My family's home in Germany was destroyed in World War II. Other people have seen the genocides in Darfur and Rwanda. In the case of Darfur a friend of mine was personally affected when he lost his entire family while he was a student in Egypt.

So I have seen all these things or heard from people who saw it.

I cannot say that the same is true for pink unicorns, hence I don't believe in them.

You may call it ludicrous, of course. Perhaps I shouldn't believe in things I have seen. Perhaps I shouldn't believe in things people I trust have seen. And perhaps I should believe in things I have never seen and nobody else I trust has ever seen.

But I found my method quite rational so far.

You don't think a story about a people walking through a swamp is plausible?

And why do I have to provide the examples (I did, you quoted it and ignored it). Why don'y you provide a few myths?

When did I say that you have to believe in Jewish myths?

I don't care nearly as much about you believing in the Hebrew Bible than you seem to care about my non-belief in the Greek pantheon. (And then I didn't even say that I don't believe in the Greek gods. I merely say that the legends are nonsense. Whether or not those gods exist is really of little concern to me.)

1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth...

Behold..the Ancient of Days has returned...after only 2 1/2 years.  Check those posting dates forefather1.

Now prove it.

In the beginning I created the heavens and the earth...  I saw it and it was meh.

This is God Who is omniscient, Truth Itself and free from all error, giving us an account of His Creation. 

Almighty God is both the principal Author of the Bible and Creator of the Heavens and the earth. God Himself proves it for He is a reliable eye-witness to Creation. 

When necro-threads are revived I immediately expect spam/spammer......

Behold the religious spammer as he WILL be smote from this place.