Evidence for God

It was a deriviation from Babylonian worship of Marduk and other local deities such as El. Given the proximity of the various tribes that believed very similar things, that doesn't seem all that far fetched. Pharaoh didn't question the existence of the Israelite's deity: what was in question was the extent of the Israelite's deity's power. Pharaoh didn't change his mind at first, because his own magics and pantheon was equalling the power of the Israelite's deity.

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Exd 7:11 Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments.

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The story is essentially a god-off. If I could do laws-of-physics-bending magic, comparable with biblical miracles, it wouldn't be skepticism of the existence of a tribal deity but skepticism that the threats of the god of the Israelites are anything to be concerned about.

Your heretical objection to the Great Prophet rbp is noted. For the likes of unbelievers such as you is reserved the hell of being flayed for a thousand years a thousand times over while watching a thousand copies of your family going the same, before spending an eternity being humiliated by we who knew the truth when we heard it. Of course not, religions are rarely the result of a single lie or single liar! For Christianity to spread required dozens of gospel writers, all writing stories about one character that they claimed as true - many of which are massively contradictory. In turn, people changed these stories when they copied them. They, like any other human idea, cannot easily be traced to a single source.Why are you obsessed that a single liar is required as opposed to a collection of liars, delusional people, people who misheard or misremembered something or people acting to 'correct' a 'mistake' they think has been made in a text and so on, not all of whom are acting in concert? Well, it is difficult to say that there is one motive since there was not one single creator. However, the clues from history and the Tanakh leaves me believing that the Israelites were in danger of being absorbed and essentially destroyed by surrounding cultures as they lost their territories to others. By taking the traditions of their people which were slightly different from the traditions of the dominant cultures that they were forced to live under, and historicizing them, they sought to protect their culture against invasion/dilution and maintain solidarity through a common history even as the people were spread far apart. They chose El, the father deity of Canaan who in some circumstances took on the role of Marduk and later also Haddad.It seems to me, though, that given the fact that we have the exact same evidence that Allah appeared to the same 600,000 people as YHWH is claimed to have appeared to, means that this avenue of thought cannot provide evidence that the poster in the OP was seeking. The fact that the evidence is Biblical in nature rules out this evidence, even for later reformulations.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

That's not actually true is it? It's just that the evidence is sketchy and inconclusive with some gaps necessarily filled in. You asked 'what do you believe was the motive for the creation of this religion?' not 'tell me the uncontrovertable evidence for the Documentary Hypothesis'. Nevertheless - the non-Biblical evidence in favour of that historical hypothesis is better than the non-Biblical evidence for 600,000 people all simultaneously hearing the voice of God and only 1 person bothering to record it.Additionally, most - if not all - of what I was talking about wasn't the Documentary Hypothesis. I was talking about the known phenomenon of Historicized Fiction and Fictionalized History. Indeed they do - in fact all religions but Islam do. Significant numbers of people say the same thing about Abraham and Moses. No they don't. The Muslims think that the Jews' account had become corrupted and that a single unambiguous clarification was required. I'm not sure of the relevance to the argument at hand. If, in 5,000 years time there were a billion copies of the Lurr scrolls - all identical, would that be evidence that exists outside of the Lurr scrolls that Lurrism is the correct religion and all others are false?

You give us two pieces of evidence that are outside of the bible. Neither of which has any connection with YHWH. Why does the 'fact' that the world needs a creator (Atheists agree that the world has a creator, they just don't call it 'daddy' they call it by the names of 'the sun' and 'gravity' amongst others) necessitate that it is YHWH that did the creating?As for consciousness and freewill, the same objections apply. Even if we accept the evidence as being supportive of a generic 'god hypothesis' it doesn't irrevocably point to YHWH.The final evidence you try to bring forward is that the accounts in the Torah of the alleged witnesses to God are true, and that there were 600,000 people that all saw it. Obviously, this is not 'outside the Bible' but very much part of that collection of books.

Correct. Agreed, more or less. OK, so what testimony? The testimony recorded in Exodus does not count, so what testimony do you refer to? What testimony? Numbers? No, Jews are one of the smallest well known religions - Hinduism has it beat. Age? Hinduism at least matches it. You haven't provided evidence that exists outside of the Bible that YHWH is the Creator.You have provided evidence that may or may not argue that a Creator exists and that Judaism is one of the longest surviving religions. Outside of the Bible, how does you propose this demonstrates that YHWH is the creator?

Faith doesn't need to be blind. But blind faith is in the Bible. For example, faith as you say is the evidence of things 'not seen'. After all, Hebrews 11 then lists a bunch of examples of faith. "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet {built the ark}", "By faith Abraham...obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.", these are all what would be called 'blind' faith. They did it without question, without knowing exactly why they did it or what was to happen or why.Also, 2 Corinthians 5:6-7

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Therefore [we are] always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:

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(For we walk by faith, not by sight

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But of course you'll disagree, they didn't have blind faith in God - he spoke to many of them personally!. But then Jesus did give his personal blessings to those who believe 'blindly'. I shouldn't need to cite it, everyone knows "blessed [are] they that have not seen, and [yet] have believed. "And semantics aside, most people would colloquially refer to this as 'blind faith' and this is the kind of thing people refer to when they say 'blind faith'. It's not that Abraham had no reason to do what he did: he just didn't know why he was meant to do it exactly or what the consequence of following through with it were. He did it, blind to the ramifications because he had 'faith' in God.Then again, a power that can destroy the walls of Jericho, move mountains, give prophecy, cause a man to take his son to be sacrificed is a power that mere words have an difficult job overcoming. As it is said, Faith is a shield or breastplate: it renders its wearers practically immune from argument.This also renders OM's assertion that there is no 'blind faith' in Judaism absurd. There is some blind faith in all three Abrahamic religions. Any ideas? Other than internal feelings which you have put forward as a possible line of evidence (with all its associated problems), is there any other evidences that YHWH is the one?

So you think that the testimony given by followers of a religion with regards to the authenticity of their book is evidence that the specific creator referenced is the creator of the universe?No, apparently YHWH has legitimate grounds special treatment. Agreed; though I'm still unsure how the Torah gets an exemption. The point, you seem to be missing, is that there is only one source that states that 600,000 people believed they heard the word of God and that book claims to be written by a single author.So your logic:Judaism is only testifying to a man (Moses) that wrote the Torah years ago. If the followers of Judaism are more or less testifying about a book that was written by one person, it is easily believed that this person did actually write the book. However, the author could still have been lying.Now let us continue the critical train of thought. Regardless of what is easily believed initially: a book that contains details of the supposed author's death, could easily be believed to have not been written solely by the supposed author. That others might have added to the original writings or composed the whole thing entirely after the fact. Yes, but evidence must lead towards a single conclusion. That your chosen holy book claims a large number of witnesses to a supernatural event, and is still believed by people today cannot realistically be called 'evidence'. Similar claims could be made by any other extant religions.For example, the Qur'an says "The Hour has drawn near, and the moon has been cleft asunder". A huge number of people would have witnessed that! And Muslims still give testimony to their book. And they have evidence outside of the Qur'an demonstrating the existence of the book's supposed author.How can we separate all the claims of and about various Holy Books? We cannot do so. Instead of trying, the OP asks if there is any evidence outside the texts we can look to. The existence of jews does not lend credence to the claim that 600,000 people heard the voice of God at Mt Sinai. Outside evidence might be able to say something about 600,000 jews at the mountain.There might also be evidence that the Torah was written contemporary with the events it alleges occurs. Perhaps there is evidence that large numbers of people had access to these texts, (so we might argue that there would have been a public outcry and rejection of the doctrine if the claims were obviously fraudulent). I don't know, but the mere existence of jews doesn't really do it as far as evidence goes.If we squint we might agree it is evidence that mildly supports the claim, but it wouldn't even get us to 'a preponderance of the evidence' standard let alone as far as the lofty highs of 'beyond reasonable doubt': after all, all claimants have similar claims. Your claims for the Torah are little different than the claims of any other book. The claims against the other books can be levelled at your own. It is an evidential stalemate. Can you break it? I am granting that a Creator exists for the purposes of this debate. Is there any extra-biblical evidence that supports that Yahweh created it whilst gazing over the form of the salty waters? Is there something to make it stand particularly apart from the claim that Marduk created the world whilst standing on the defeated body of Tiamat/the salty waters? Hinduism started a long time ago. We're looking at beyond 1100BCE for Vedic religion, and you could stretch it to even as far back as 2000BCE. It became closer to the familiar Hinduism over time.How far do we go to get Judaism? We can see beginnings around 1000BCE, though some argue it wasn't strictly monotheistic until possibly as late as 300BCE.The point in time where Judaism started significantly standing apart from rival religions seems to me to have happened later than in Hinduism.What part of my rather incomplete historical knowledge of Hinduism and Judaism do you disagree with?

Jesus was God. Anybody in the Bible that spoke to Him, is verification of someone speaking to God. Why does this not count? I know this. I mentioned it in the post you replied to. However 'Accept the traditions of my religion, as well as what its Holy Book says' is not evidence that YHWH is the creator.If you had evidence that Moses wrote the Torah, that he presented it to the Jewish people (and its circulation wasn't limited only to a small priestly class of people who were the only literate ones), and that it was written at the time of the events it purported to be reporting...your case would be a bit stronger.Unfortunately for you, you have no evidence of the above. Thus you must insist on ignoring that this thread is about evidence that exists outside of the Torah. If only you would believe that the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by Achilles you would accept that the earth appeared once light and day had been born out of the chaos.You have a book, the earliest copy of which dates to much later than the time it claims to describe. There is evidence that the book could not have been written entirely at the time, by the claimed author. For all we know, the story about 600,000 people hearing the voice of God was added much later, when nobody was around to contradict it. We must also consider the literacy rate, as mentioned earlier. If the only group of people who had access to the texts and could read them, were the same people that changed it - then there is no verification at all.It seems at least equally likely that the story was concocted to illicit exactly the kind of thought process you are displaying here. And yet, ultimately, your 'sufficient proof' exists within the Torah, despite the topic being about evidence that exists outside of the Bible. Why would we consider Jewish tradition or the Torah as being impartial historians on this matter? I was using secular opinions on both as an equaliser. The evidence indicates that both religions have changed, despite what your traditions say. I don't assume that it did not happen, I conclude it is likely they did not. This thread is ideal if you want to present evidence outside of the Torah that might swing my conclusion. Yes, they weren't true followers of Judaism. What evidence, outside of the Torah, exists that Judaism was monotheistic from the outset? What is the earliest evidence for Judaism being monotheistic? Of even existing? Yes, any evidence that Judaism was not always monotheistic will illicit the 'no true Scotsman' response.

As I said, you'll disagree. Blind faith is a somewhat subjective term. I see much of Abram/Abraham's tale to be based on a model where God tries to create a relationship partly of blind faith: "Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country...So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him". Abraham essentially trusting this deity totally without knowing that things will be OK. The whole Sarai/barrenness storyline likewise speaks to me of this kind of relationship. God doesn't show Abram lots of miracles (mostly its just a few curses) or anything, he just assures Abram that not only will he be the father of nations but that it will be by Sarai!This rather blind obedience is borne, in my eyes, from a blind faith, a trust in the dark. You don't feel that way, I assume, but this is not the thread to get bogged down in this particular debate. Only 'empirical' in scientific sense. In truth, you are an empiricist since empiricism is, to quote wiki, "a theory of knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from experience.". You claim to have obtained knowledge through an experience. No, simple linguistic convenience allows me to, nothing makes any demands of me (without getting into determinism...) to do so. Internal feelings is a simple way of saying that your criteria of truth in the realms of theology are based on an unshareable experience, one that 'feels' or 'resonates' in a certain way with you personally. There is nothing you can 'point out' in the outside world and say 'experience that'. All of the events are occurring internally (without getting into a discussion brains vs soul...the events are happening within your brain or within your soul). Ideas are weapons greater than any piece of matter. Epistemology is a serious argument - wars have been needlessly fought over what someone 'knew' about someone else. Sometimes that knowledge comes from such 'strong inner convictions' and 'personal revelatory experiences' as you describe and people can die as a result. I personally think that the epistemology that celebrates such internal criteria of truths is easy to accept (very much so) but also dangerous because it is demonstrably true that most knowledge gained this way is false.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.