your God is a false God, and my God is true, your God is created by men, My God created men, what special powers does your God have?

http://cdn.twentytwowords.com/wp-con...lk-634x434.jpg

Probably not the best fit, but I really wanted to post this pic here.

I think it's great!

is that Arnold Schwarzenegger ?

Pothead: Your god was created by man, MY god created man.

can you prove my God was created by man ?

Can you prove that mine was?

Well, yeah. I can.

Monotheism was never a constant unchanging idea that was monolithic over history.

Your particular god came through Abraham who was a pagan. He believed in MANY gods and the term "elohim" means putting a particular god over other gods. There has been many elohims from many many different pagans. Think of it as kind of like a marriage.

Eventually in ancient Israel, there was the cult of Yawhey who were followers of Israel's war god. It was because their confirmation bias led them to think Yawhey was more effective a god than Baal and the other gods of Israel. Baal was their fertility god until those who had Yawhey as their elohim had the followers of Baal murdered.

The evidence? The Ten commandments. Also, there has been plenty of prophets of your particular god that said your god was a very jealous god.

Monotheism came from this. Your god is basically a slimmed down revision of Hebrew and Babylonian paganism.

Read the first chapter of A History of God. Shit's awesome.

yes but you won't listen, and you know your self that he is false

Pothead. Read my post.

Fuckers make me want to reach across a mother fuckin' table

your wrong the term elohim is a name for the God which is three in one, and abraham was not a pagan he worshiped the true God, a pagan is a term for anyone who doesn't worship the true God, Jesus is God The Holy spirit is God and then there is God the father which are all three the same God

Nitpick, Canaanite religion and Ancient Babylonian religion isn't interchangable. Elohim just means God and is comparable to us calling Yahweh "God." Plus, it was a term used more by the Northern Israelites (I think Armstrong mentions this as the Elohimist source?), in Judah texts they used "Yahweh".

The point of conflict with the Canaanite religions comes when the Hebrews re-enter Canaan from Egypt, they're punished for worshipping Baal right away when Moses is up on the mountain and any Hebrew subsequently even using Canaanite imagery, fighting back syncretism.

Also its not a bad start to getting how historic criticism of the Bible started but the JEPD sourcing is actually old as fuck and isn't very valid anymore.

Or I should say, not valid in that there are more than four basic sources and its not always clear what came from what, but we still use the model to simplify.

Also, that should be Elohist, not Elohimist, sorry.

hmmm i havnt really been feeling the pasta god but if he is also the god of ramen im in!

I appreciate the correction. However, what I've seen by her book is that monotheism wasn't a historical constant. Unless of course that's changed somehow. The point is that if her assertion is correct, the god that pothead is proselytizing for is not the same god that modern theists are asserting now unless they take a fundamentalist approach, which I understand to be anti-historical.

Actually Saya, I'm interested in this.

You said Elohim is just "god". I understand that Elohim was meant as a title; "the one most high". The one most high in comparison to what? The lesser gods?

That's my point. Has this understanding of the word Elohim changed?

Okay, going back and looking at other sources, it would appear that historically the Jews believed in a "LOCAL" god. At best, they were originally henotheistic(sp), which means they believed in one god but more specifically THEIR god. What this also means is that they didn't doubt inherently in the existence of other gods and it would make sense that they would assume their local god was the "one most high". Basically from what I understand of it, they had their god, and other people had their own gods.

This of course would make a lot of sense in regards to the commandments, particularly the ones demanding that you hold your local god as your favorite before all other gods.

I can't read Hebrew but from what I understand the "most high" thing is the explanation given for when the plural version is used in the Old Testament, but the singular is used often as well. We also don't really know if that's truly what the original authors meant by it, and generally I prefer to look at it anew than always take theologians at their word that this is what it always meant.

And yeah, there's nothing to say in the OT that no other gods exist, although there's things like God not naming the sun and the moon (which were worshipped by others) and I do believe somewhere in there is something about idols just being things.

What do you guys think about the Egyptians effecting Judaism/Christianity? I mean since the beginning it's been about sun worship, kinda still is. I tried to search for more information on the similarities, but came across a bunch of clown shoes sites from 1997 with pixelated pictures of king tut. Does anyone know of a credible source for info on this?

I'm starting to think that really depends, Haejin.

There is some oddly similar deities to the Christian idol of Jesus and his divinity story that predate the New Testament account of Jesus.

I'm not sure if it would be fair to find those similar deities and look back at the history of the Christian cult and perhaps find that at best, we may have a revolutionary people under Roman rule that created a Jesus story later based on deities of the Greek and Roman pantheon.

I really am not sure right now because I haven't gotten that far in Karen Armstrong's book.

But I don't think it's entirely unfair to look at older myths, find the similarities and then compare them to the story of Jesus. I think what you might find interesting is that.

http://jdstone.org/cr/files/mithraschristianity.html

Saya can confirm this I'm sure. She'd know better than me. I've just heard that these stories were incredibly similar.

Are you talking about the Zeitgeist shit? Its not accurate, at all.

The problem with Jesus as Horus theory is that essentially, it was made up by this guy with no credentials and no sources, but a lot of people have been using his book as a source, which then creates a lot of books for other people to source.

OMG KONTAN THAT ARTICLE IS EXACTLY WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT KILL IT WITH FIRE.

WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP BLOGGING THIS SHIT.

Now, what did happen starting with Paul was that Christianity was made to appeal to Romans to try and get them to convert, hence why we celebrate Christmas on Dec 25 even though he was born in the spring and why Christianity became heavily influenced by Neoplatonism. It was made particularly appealing to Romans who practiced mystery religions. Mystery religions were basically secret religious cults of gods that had secrets rites and were just, well, secretive and we don't know a whole lot about it. Mithras was kind of popular at the time as an example. If you joined a mystery religion you'd gain not salvation per se, but perhaps power and wealth or knowledge and wisdom. So Christianity was appealing in that anyone could join and there was no secrecy, but the holidays and rites were brought to Christianity by the converts.

lolz at mystery religion.

I'm really tired right now and can't really process anything, but this is all really interesting...so I'm going to the library tomorrow.

Ooooh see if they have The Passion Of The Western Mind by Richard Tarnas. Kinda dry and you'll end up skipping a few pages when he repeats himself over and over but lots of factz.