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On March 24 2011 02:38 JiYan wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2011 02:33 gongryong wrote:
You almost sound like my friend who's preparing for priesthood now. Thanks for the sound reply.
One thing im really curious is, why does God (or the authors) insist on the nonsexuality of God. As you say God being a father is only a function of convenience, but essentially, from a spiritual perspective, God has/needs no gender. Why is this? Is this to avoid the confusion with the carnal requirements of gender? Gender seems to be too primordial that I don't see the reason why God necessarily has to be genderless. a better question to ask is "why would God need a gender (or sex)?" humans need the distinction for procreation, but for a God Who was, and is, and is to come, aka everlasting/immortal, God has always been and will always be. God does not create other Gods. so, a question you might want to ask is "why should God even have a gender?" but anyways, most biblical scholars agree that God shows traits (and calls himself by these traits) like both a father and a mother.
I understand. But these seems more symptomatic than essential. A cursory review of religion across cultures point to gendered gods, why is the Catholic/Christian god any different? To me, I think something happened parallel to the evolution of religion, probably the shift to monotheism, and eventual omnipotence, which carried this "description" of God.
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I find some of the posts are misinformed and incorrect, so for the sake of furthering the discussion, let me attempt to clarify some matter.
Except for the part where God tell's Moses to make a Asherah pole to save the Israelites from poisonous snakes.
The pole here signifies the cross of Christ, while Asherah typifies flesh which is sinful. So the story from Numb 21 clearly foreshadows and reconfirm the redemption accomplished by Christ, who come in the likness of the flesh of sin and became the bearer of all sin on the cross.
The God of the bible has no need or desire to have a wife, if any sect or historical group has worshipped a wife of God, it does not describe the God of the bible, but something totally different.
God does desire a counterpart, this is why He made man in the image of Him so that eventually the His regenerated believers would become His bride corporately. This is a major theme throughout the Bible, old testament or new. For example, in the S.S Solomon wrote of Shulamite's love toward her shepherd. In New Testament it mentions of the Church as the God's Bridal Army several times.
All in all, it shows that God does desire a wife, but just not Asherah which God despises.
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On March 24 2011 02:39 gongryong wrote:Prove it!
Christians have the burden of proof, not atheists.
I want to point out that I love usage of HAD, not HAS :D
Just kidding...
I am interested in Vatican´s opinion on this, that will be interesting.
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On March 24 2011 02:27 JiYan wrote:why is everyone pulling evidence from the bible without directly sourcing it? 2 Kings 21 shows the king of Judah making an Asherah pole as one of the reasons that "he did evil in the eyes of the LORD" (v.2) Jeremiah 17 and Isaiah 17 are other clear passages where Asherah worship is frowned upon. Seriously it doesn't make sense to have a lazy argument regarding what the bible says when there is such easy access to look through scripture. find your sources.
Some examples of implicit assumption of polytheism. Note that "LORD" is usually translated from YHWH:
Exodus 15:11
Who among the gods is like you, LORD?
Who is like you—majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?
Joshua 24:15
But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”
Deut 10:17
For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes.
Exodus 20:3
You shall have no other gods before me.
Exodus 18:11
Now I know that the LORD is greater than all other gods, for he did this to those who had treated Israel arrogantly.
Some examples of monotheistic claims:
Deut 4:28
There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell.
Psalm 96:5
For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the LORD made the heavens.
Isaiah 42:17
But those who trust in idols, who say to images, ‘You are our gods,’ will be turned back in utter shame.
Modern Christians often explain the subtle references to polytheism away as mere semantics, but it's clear from the original language and context that they were referring to Yahweh as one special member of a larger pantheon. Note how polytheism is subtle and implied whereas the monotheistic assertions are bold and aggressive.
The Bible Unearthed by Finklestein and Silberman:
The existence of high places and other forms of ancestral and household god worship was not -- as the book of Kings imply -- apostasy from an earlier, purer faith. It was part of the timeless tradition of the hill country settlers of Judah, who worshiped YHWH along with a variety of gods and goddesses known or adapted from the cults of neighboring peoples. YHWH, in short, was worshiped in a wide variety of ways -- and sometimes pictured as having a heavenly entourage. From the indirect (and pointedly negative) evidence of the books of Kings, we learn that priests in the countryside also regularly burned incense on the high places to the sun, the moon, and the stars.
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On March 24 2011 02:46 Overpowered wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2011 02:39 gongryong wrote:On March 24 2011 02:37 Facedriller wrote:
God doesnt exist, deal with it. Prove it! Christians have the burden of proof, not atheists. I want to point out that I love usage of HAD, not HAS :D Just kidding... I am interested in Vatican´s opinion on this, that will be interesting.
WRONG. Fallacy of active negative. It's one thing to leave Christians alone to their beliefs, it's quite another to jump in and make a statement negating that belief.
Ratzinger is too clever for this, Im sure he'll come up with something radical.
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Christians have the burden of proof, not atheists.
I want to point out that I love usage of HAD, not HAS :D
Just kidding...
I am interested in Vatican´s opinion on this, that will be interesting.
Christians have proven the existence of God many times via many ways and methods. In fact, there's a whole major dedicated to this: Ontology. If you are interested in this matter, i suggest you see this.
Here
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On March 24 2011 02:31 JamesJohansen wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2011 00:35 Jameser wrote:On March 24 2011 00:30 JamesJohansen wrote:
I think people have to be careful about articles like this. Religeon is such a hotbutton issue that articles like this are quickly jumped on and supported or decried despite being somewhat sensationalist and lacking in firm evidence.
Personally, I think the female character unearthed is not a deity but is instead some sort of "lesser spiritual being" which most scholars know are very present in early abrahamic texts (there are many strange beliefs pertaining to demonology and the study of spirits).
Saying that "God had a wife" is this scientist being an attention whore And as we all know, attention whores are the worst kind of whores. also, clearly, your on-the-spot, completely fabricated from conjecture, scenario that explains the existance of an unaccounted for female character in the bible is worth AT LEAST as much as the investigation and publication of an actual scientist Calm the fuck down son. This "idea" just doesn't seem to have much backing. True, I'm no biblical scholar or anthropologist by any means but my parents forced me through 13 years of private religious schooling so Ive accumulated at least some biblical knowledge. All I'm saying is that I think this is sensationalist reporting at its finest. Its not a fucking crime to call that out.
I'm not going to assume any conclusions about your Biblical knowledge, but there is a significant difference between devotional Bible study and critical Bible study. Judging from my own experience of K through 12 (and an additional year of university) at a private conservative denominational school, virtually everything I learned about the Bible was of the devotional sort. Doctrines of our church were always assumed and opposing viewpoints, if they were ever even mentioned, were only brought up so that the teachers could demonstrate why they were wrong.
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Ancient Israelites worshiping different gods is not the same thing as them actually existing. The ancient Israelites worshiped tons of other gods than Yahweh, that's why he let them get taken over by invading people and thrown out of the holy land. He also claimed that Allah and Yahweh are the same god, one of the stupidest things anyone could say.
"Asherah was not entirely edited out of the Bible by its male editors," he added. "Traces of her remain, and based on those traces, archaeological evidence and references to her in texts from nations bordering Israel and Judah, we can reconstruct her role in the religions of the Southern Levant."
If he even read the bible it was told that the neighboring nations worshiped other gods and idols other than Yahweh, and he instructed the Jewish people to kill them less they begin to worship false gods too ( they didn't, they did, and he kicked them out).
This man did nothing of the sort to prove that god actually had a wife, instead of people worshiping Him and someone else. He quotes examples of people worshiping others than just Yahweh, and then deduces that there must actually be more than one, instead of what the bible already says about foreign gods. If you didn't know that the Israelites worshiped other gods than Yahweh, you really should just try reading some paragraphs of the bible. That this is a historic discovery is hilarious.
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On March 24 2011 03:06 SnK-Arcbound wrote:Ancient Israelites worshiping different gods is not the same thing as them actually existing. The ancient Israelites worshiped tons of other gods than Yahweh, that's why he let them get taken over by invading people and thrown out of the holy land. He also claimed that Allah and Yahweh are the same god, one of the stupidest things anyone could say. Show nested quote +"Asherah was not entirely edited out of the Bible by its male editors," he added. "Traces of her remain, and based on those traces, archaeological evidence and references to her in texts from nations bordering Israel and Judah, we can reconstruct her role in the religions of the Southern Levant." If he even read the bible it was told that the neighboring nations worshiped other gods and idols other than Yahweh, and he instructed the Jewish people to kill them less they begin to worship false gods too ( they didn't, they did, and he kicked them out). This man did nothing of the sort to prove that god actually had a wife, instead of people worshiping Him and someone else. He quotes examples of people worshiping others than just Yahweh, and then deduces that there must actually be more than one, instead of what the bible already says about foreign gods. If you didn't know that the Israelites worshiped other gods than Yahweh, you really should just try reading some paragraphs of the bible. That this is a historic discovery is hilarious.
Are you aware that Islam considers itself an Abrahamic religion? Why do you think there's so much animosity between Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Holy Land? What makes you think that the assertion that Yahweh and Allah are the same god one is one of the "stupidest things anyone could say?"
Christians have a different understanding of God than Jews do, does that mean they worship completely different gods too?
I think that part of our disagreement here comes from the fact that you're accepting the Bible at face value, ignoring a lot of the subtleties both in the text and from archaeological evidence that indicate you can understand the Bible better if you do a little bit of reading between the lines.
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If you just read the Bible you will see that the Jews worshiped tons of other gods, which was why God had to pwn them over and over. I'm not sure why the researcher in the OP's post thinks that "other gods" are such a big deal; if he'd just read the Bible he would see that there was way more than "Asherah" or whatever...lol.
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On March 24 2011 03:06 SnK-Arcbound wrote:Ancient Israelites worshiping different gods is not the same thing as them actually existing. The ancient Israelites worshiped tons of other gods than Yahweh, that's why he let them get taken over by invading people and thrown out of the holy land. He also claimed that Allah and Yahweh are the same god, one of the stupidest things anyone could say. Show nested quote +"Asherah was not entirely edited out of the Bible by its male editors," he added. "Traces of her remain, and based on those traces, archaeological evidence and references to her in texts from nations bordering Israel and Judah, we can reconstruct her role in the religions of the Southern Levant." If he even read the bible it was told that the neighboring nations worshiped other gods and idols other than Yahweh, and he instructed the Jewish people to kill them less they begin to worship false gods too ( they didn't, they did, and he kicked them out). This man did nothing of the sort to prove that god actually had a wife, instead of people worshiping Him and someone else. He quotes examples of people worshiping others than just Yahweh, and then deduces that there must actually be more than one, instead of what the bible already says about foreign gods. If you didn't know that the Israelites worshiped other gods than Yahweh, you really should just try reading some paragraphs of the bible. That this is a historic discovery is hilarious.
It's nothing new, Scholars have wrote about this long before although it's normally El or Baal who is a married to Asher and not Yahweh. Sometime around the writing of Deuteronomy is when El and Yahweh become "revealed" to be the same God. The main point is that Asher was in the temple for 2/3s of the Temples existence which reveals that polytheism was the norm. All the bashing of Asher in the Bible is always from Deuteronomy writers and later.
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On March 24 2011 02:53 FindMeInKenya wrote:Show nested quote +Christians have the burden of proof, not atheists.
I want to point out that I love usage of HAD, not HAS :D
Just kidding...
I am interested in Vatican´s opinion on this, that will be interesting.
Christians have proven the existence of God many times via many ways and methods. In fact, there's a whole major dedicated to this: Ontology. If you are interested in this matter, i suggest you see this. Here
This word 'proven;' I do not think it means what you think it means. Isn't that the same William Lane Craig that said he would still believe in the resurrection even if he was transported back in time and camped outside Jesus' tomb long enough to verify with his own eyes that Jesus was never raised from the dead? Hardly a paragon of logic and rationality, that one.
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On March 24 2011 02:43 Jswizzy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2011 02:43 Flaccid wrote:
Doubt it.
There's no way God could have accomplished what he did in seven days with some skirt nagging him at every step. 6 days 
And on the seventh day God drank too much at brunch and made a scene.
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This word 'proven;' I do not think it means what you think it means.
Yeah, that was a very bad choice of word on my part. I meant to say logical proofs.
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On March 24 2011 02:53 FindMeInKenya wrote:Show nested quote +Christians have the burden of proof, not atheists.
I want to point out that I love usage of HAD, not HAS :D
Just kidding...
I am interested in Vatican´s opinion on this, that will be interesting.
Christians have proven the existence of God many times via many ways and methods. In fact, there's a whole major dedicated to this: Ontology. If you are interested in this matter, i suggest you see this. Here
Woah, did I miss the papers where the existence of god has been proven? Ontology is not quite a major in proving the existence of god.
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On March 24 2011 03:22 FindMeInKenya wrote:Yeah, that was a very bad choice of word on my part. I meant to say logical proofs.
Same thing. I'm familiar with all of the major 'logical proofs' of God, as well as the myriad problems associated with them. I don't want to derail this thread by bringing them all in here, but maybe we can start a new thread to debate the veracity of those proofs. Let's just say that most philosophers don't find them as convincing as you seem to.
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While William Lane Craig does makes some crazy statement time to time, I found the arguments he brought in the video is a good start for some one who are interested in these matters.
Yes, ontology is not a mere major on proving the existence of God, but it does do that to a large degree, right?
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I agree, let's not bring in all the craziness in one thread.
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how do you find evidence for god's wife when there is no evidence for him at all...
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On March 24 2011 03:27 FindMeInKenya wrote:
While William Lane Craig does makes some crazy statement time to time, I found the arguments he brought in the video is a good start for some one who are interested in these matters.
Yes, ontology is not a mere major on proving the existence of God, but it does do that to a large degree, right?
http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Ontological_argument
It's a logical Fallacy
I just want to talk about Jewish mythology anyways not argue about religion.
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EPT
