Gender: Male Location: Drifting off around the bend
Actually God does not regularly make his presence known in the Bible. There is a large period of time between Adam and Noah where there is no evidence of God making himself known. There are also large periods of time throughout where God does not make himself known.
~1056 years between Adam and Noah
~300 years between the Tower of Babel and Abraham
~400 years between Joseph and Moses
300-400 years between the OT and the NT
Absence of God making himself known is a common occurrence throughout the Bible.
No, I wouldn't say they haven't got a clue. I think they give up too easily sometimes, which is understandable considering the choices for religions. Saying it absolutely isn't one way because it's absolutely another isn't very open minded.
__________________ "If I were you"
"If you were me, you'd know the safest place to hide...is in sanity!
So ... we can say that there were no miracles or divine manifestations during those periods because there's an absense of Biblical evidence for them?
__________________ "Men curse the Communist Party, but eventually it may release them. If hell were endless, then God would be worse than our Secret Police."--Pastor Valentin
Cheers. I can understand why you think I'm an atheist. But it isn't really religion I argue against, it's the followers. Religion can be a good thing. It's just like a gun. In the hands of the wrong person it can be dangerous. But in the hands of the right person it can save lives.
__________________ "If I were you"
"If you were me, you'd know the safest place to hide...is in sanity!
Gender: Male Location: Drifting off around the bend
I would state that there were no miracles or divine manifestations during those periods because the Bible is the record of such events, at least for the Biblical Abrahamic God. Absence of record is one of two things, evidence of the events or evidence of poor recording, the first is more probable.
The idea that the Bible is intended as the complete record of divine events is--and I mean absolutely no offense by this--silly. There's a huge amount of Jewish tradition and beliefs that never made it into the Bible. Lilith would be a famous example.
__________________ "Men curse the Communist Party, but eventually it may release them. If hell were endless, then God would be worse than our Secret Police."--Pastor Valentin
Gender: Male Location: Drifting off around the bend
Sorry for the typo:
"Absence of record is one of two things, evidence of the absence of events or evidence of poor recording, the first is more probable."
Tradition and beliefs are not necessarily God interacting with man. Also, these periods are nearly empty even with the inclusion of Jewish events not included. I don't believe such a belief to be silly, but you could be right, and if you are, it is also silly to believe that currently events similar have not occurred recently.
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Robbin' from the rich to give to themselves
Last edited by Regret on Oct 4th, 2006 at 12:06 AM
Okay, that makes a lot more sense. We're getting pretty far off topic, but I'm not sure I agree with your dichotomy. There are really three options: that nothing happened, that miracles happened and nobody bothered to record them (admittedly unlikely), or that miracles happened, they were recorded, and those records when the way that most records from that time period went. When every thing has to be copied by hand, it's real easy for things to get lost (if it wasn't for the Nag Hammody (sp?) library, for example, we'd have practically no Gnostic Christian documents).
Still, I'm willing to cede a point when it seems undefensible--there is indeed no way of saying what God should be doing if he exists, since even Christian holy works say he often just hangs around. In this case, absense of evidence can't be evidence of absense.
(I'm not willing to say that absense of evidence can't be evidence of absense, though)
__________________ "Men curse the Communist Party, but eventually it may release them. If hell were endless, then God would be worse than our Secret Police."--Pastor Valentin
Gender: Male Location: Drifting off around the bend
I agree, I do not believe proof as to the existence/nonexistence of God is possible. I disagree that there is any evidence to either side of the argument. And on the existence side, such evidence is not often replicable and is often subjective, and therefore not necessarily evidence to those not present at the time.
__________________
Robbin' from the rich to give to themselves
Last edited by Regret on Oct 4th, 2006 at 12:22 AM
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