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Author | Topic: Did the Biblical Exodus ever happen? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Buz, we can tell that you are not on the side of truth by your constant attempts to deceive.
quote: i.e. he has valid credentials UNRELATED to Egyptology or archaeology and his work UNRELATED to those fields - in areas where he does have valid credentials is not regarded as crackpot. This does not change the fact that The Exodus Case contains crackpot Egyptology with Moses identified as two different people - both of them along with much more craziness, all of which has been discussed here. Work so obviously crackpot that you don't dare to defend it. Here's is what one archaeologist has to say of the book:
The Exodus Case is such an extreme example of pseudo-science that any reasonably well-informed reader will wonder if Mller is joking...
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
So let us sum up the facts:
All the scriptural "evidence" offered is either false or based on a misunderstanding. None of it stands. There is not one piece of physical evidence that is even likely to have anything to do with the Exodus. Other evidence that Buz claimed to have was never produced and apparently never existed. It is claimed that Moller's reputation in other fields is such that we must regard his claims as trustworthy despite the lack of significant evidence in his favour - and all the evidence that Moller's work is credulous and ignorant at best and heavily relies on the claims of the disreputable Ron Wyatt. And Buz tries to claim that it is his opponents who are unfairly biased ?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: I'd guess that he's aware of the fact that there is not even one piece of physical evidence that is even likely to have anything to do with the Exodus. And any objective person would agree. One more thing Buz, can you drop the childish slanders ? You couldn't come up with any decent evidence and that's a fact. Accept it like a man.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
I'm going to disagree here, because you are missing part of the text. The Egyptians supposedly brought a large chariot force, while the Israelites were a huge mass of civilians with their women and children. There's no need for the terrain to be a trap - the superior Egyptian mobility would have been enough to force a battle. Chariots need open level space to work, though. So, if anything, the text implies open terrain.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
But Exodus is quite clear on the nature of that "trap". The Israelites are instructed to go back, so that the Pharoah (wrongly) thinks that they dare not attempt to cross the wilderness and are "trapped" within Egyptian territory. There's simply no need to go beyond the text and talk about the battle site - or any particular location - at all.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
To sum up more accurately:
It was shown that Buz's "Biblical description" of the site was nothing of the sort. This is only "debatable" in Buz's idiosyncratic usage, which is merely a refusal to accept the truth. It was shown that the claim of a shallow crossing at Nuweiba was a falsehood, spread by the supporters of Ron Wyatt - in fact this had been covered thoroughly in earlier discussions, so Buz had no reason to repeat it. And I need hardly point out that a purely hypothetical sandbar is NOT evidence. It has not been shown that Nuweiba is the best site at all, indeed there has been little discussion of alternatives. The dark-topped mountain (to call it blackened begs the question) has not been shown tobe of any great significance. Without strong corroborating evidence, it is worthless. There is nothing whatsoever linking the petroglyphs to the Exodus, therefore they are not evidence of the Exodus. This is not debatable either. There has been no evidence presented that the Biblical Mount Sinai is in Midian. This point is therefore not evidence, either. Moller's credibility IS hurt by his book - as has been shown here. Not that he has any reputation in archaeology to lose anyway. This point merely shows why argument by authority is considered a fallacy. The final point about the rock is also silly. We have the usual ignorance of the Bible - there is no mention of the rock splitting at all. We also have an ignorance of geology - water flow would round the angular fragments, thus the presence of these fragments shows evidence against water flowing there. And without evidence of water flow, we have no connection to the Exodus. A split rock alone is not evidence.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: As Jar says, if your sandbar iisn't hypothetical, where is the evidence it was there? And no, I don't have to deny that your hypothetical is possible (although I see no reason to consider it even remotely plausible). Hypothetical possibilities are not evidence.
quote: I never said that Moller was a "lying imposter" and I am under no obligation to provide evidence to support claims that you dishonestly try to put into my mouth. If Moller provided any evidence that I have not dealt with it was not in your summary, or to the best of my knowledge anywhere in this thread. So it seems that I have done enough research there. A shame that Moller neglected his research when it came to Egyptology but you don't want to discuss that, do you?
quote: Presumably you mean the alternative site on the Gulf of Aqaba, which is better in many respects than Nuweiba - but even further from the traditional location of Mt. Sinai.And, I will add, your misreading of the Bible is only evidence of your failure to study it. quote: As I said you need strong corroborating evidence - and I gave reasons why none of those things qualify. So it seems that there is no need to discuss this further - you need to show that those other points really are strong corroborating evidence.
quote: Or you would invent an excuse to explain away the lack of this evidence. You did that when you finally admitted that the topography of Nuweiba was not suitable for crossing by inventing a hypothetical sandbar. And then you invented excuses for the lack of evidence for the sandbar. Likely, just as with the lack of archaeological evidence for the Israelites wanderings you would say that the marks of burning would not survive.
quote: There is no evidence that they worshipped a calf, and why should they not draw images of hooved animals ? It's up to you to support your claim that this is evidence by drawing a clear connection to the Exodus. Until you do, I am not making a "feeble argument" - I am reporting the fact that the petroglyphs cannot be considered significant evidence for the Exodus.
quote: According to a site promoting Ron Wyatt's views - remember Ron Wyatt, the guy so disreputable that you try to avoid mentioning his involvement? And your claim of Apostolic support is the old misrepresentation of Galations 4:25 which has already been debunked. produce proper references to Josephus and Philo and I'll discuss them. But if al you have is the assertions of an untrustworthy website, there's nothing worth bothering with.
quote: I have made up my own mind, and the "evidences" really are so inconsequential that they deserve to be waved off. And if I'm wrong about any one of them, it's your job to show that - and you haven't.
quote: I suppose that you have to discount objectivity, since it so often gets in the way of your arguments. As I recall your argument for water flow was that there was a trail of angular rock fragments, with no clear explanation of why it should be attributed to water action.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Do you have evidence that it is ?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
So essentially your only evidence is your personal impression - an opinion I do not share. Your idea that Noah's flood must have somehow placed a massive sandbar there in that specific spot is simply wild speculation. Even if we ignored the fact that there was no such flood, there is still no reason why it should create your hypothetical sandbar.
I'm going to need something more than a questionable personal opinion before I accept that Nuweiba beach is a delta. And I don't find the idea of a magic flood that does whatever Buzsaw wants at all plausible.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: I haven't seen these drainage channels. Perhaps you could actually provide evidence rather than claiming it exists ? However since it would be disingenuous or naive in the extreme to jump from a minor delta to a massive sandbank present at the right time - and you've clearly no reasonable way of bridging that gap - it appears that the delta issue is moot.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
I see what may be two channels, which is well short of the extensive network I would expect of a delta. And we still have no evidence that there was ever a massive sandbar, or that if there ever was such a thing, it was there at the time of the Exodus.
Perhaps the beach is only in part a delta, with other processes building it up further. This is consistent with the limited extent of the river channels, and further undermines your unsupported assertion that the a catastrophe is needed.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: That's somewhat less than completely honest. The only flood referred to is the filling of the Black Sea. The connection to the Biblical flood is only the largely discredited idea that the Biblical flood was a distorted account of that much smaller event. It does NOT support the idea that the Bible's Flood story is literally true. The rest of the paragraph is even worse. Of course you need to attribute magical powers to the flood to deny all the hard empirical evidence that says that it didn't happen. You also need to claim that the Flood obeys you to justify your claim of a massive sandbar at Nuweiba. But, to any rational, objective person these claims do not support each other. They only show the desperate lengths you will go to rather than accept that you are wrong.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Please provide support for this claim (from a reliable source).
quote: In other words, nothing that comes close to justifying the claim that this is Mt. Sinai. Especially when we consider that you don't have a viable crossing point for the Gulf of Aqaba.
quote: You do realise that falsehoods don't count ? All you have is a few pieces of pathetically weak evidence which don't add up to anything like a convincing case.
quote: That's wrong - in the piece you quote Percy wants to examine your claimed evidence, rather than demanding more. The fact is, that if many mountains in the regions have dark tops then you cannot claim the fact that this mountain has a dark top is evidence that it is Mt. Sinai. We would have no reason to believe that the dark coloration on your preferred site is anything other than its natural colour which cannot support your claim.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: The "Biblical record" makes no mention of animal carvings.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17827 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3
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THe facts are that:
1) A significant portion of Buz's "evidence" turns out to be false. Amazingly Buz does not find this to be a problem. 2) Other parts are speculative hypotheses - which also disqualifies them as evidence. 3) The evidence that ISN'T false is only weakly connected to the Exodus at best. If we wish to compare it with the Big Bang there is nothing comparable to the Hubble Recession or cosmic microwave background, for instance. In short, Buz utterly failed to make his case. His whining about bias is nothing more than a disingenuous attempt to deny this fact 0 yet another example of his basic dishonesty. Or maybe Buz really does feel that false assertions should be counted as evidence and that it is unfair to expect him to stick to the truth. And Buz, as you should already know if you choose to challenge me on this, I can produce plenty of examples of false claims that you have made in this thread.
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