Evidence for the Supernatural

Um, there actually was a burgeoning civilization in Israel between the fall of the nation of Israel and its recreation at the hands of the British; the people of that civilization are called "Palestinians":Hardly a "wasteland." Actually, it had always been a fertile and productive land over those 19 centuries of the Jews not having stolen it yet.

A quick experiment:

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Crashfrog, your map is a straw-man, showing nothing as evidence that the land, by and large has been a wilderness nomadic herdsman's and fisherman's wasteland relative to what it was before the dispersion and after the return of the Jews as owners and occupants.

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Hrm, nope, making some of the text orange doesn't seem to have any effect on its veracity. It's equally false in all colors.

I did, in Message 59 . That message is currently awaiting substantive reply from you.Any time you feel like putting down your crayons and getting to it, that'd be fine.

Buz, you asked me a few days ago:

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Give me an example of my alleged propensity to post a bunch of unspecified other posts.

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Message 68 is exactly what I'm talking about. Wart asked you for the evidence; you just handwaved him to "the Buzsaw archives", as though that's a thing. The problem with trolling through the "Buzsaw archives" looking for evidence is that the "Buzsaw archives" consist almost entirely of two things:1) your complaints about "unfair treatment" at the hands of people who ask you for evidence, and
2) responses to requests for evidence telling people to "look through the Buzsaw archives"!When I was talking in that other thread about a more effective way to help you realize your goal of

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To spark up some interest, move the thread topic forward and to enlighten

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it's exactly this kind of message that I was referring to. Nothing in what you've just said to Warthog actually accomplishes your goals. I know you feel like you have this vast archive of evidence built up over a decade of posting at EvC. The problem is, even if that's true simply handwaving at the "Buzsaw archives" doesn't bring any of it forward. With almost 10,000 posts by you, that's a lot of dross to sift through to get at your gems.Here's my suggestion - nobody knows better than you what the best examples of your evidence are. Why don't you take a trip through the Buzsaw Archives and pull out some direct links to those posts, and then keep them in a bookmark or something so that when a new participant shows up asking for your evidence, they can be directed to it instead of being asked to sift through a decade of your posts?

Cheered for actually specifying a post referred to.

Well, ok, here's what you're overlooking that makes me find the re-establishment of Israel not all that "miraculous." It's safe to say that your position relies chiefly on two facts:1) That Israel was "coincidentally" re-established right where it used to exist, and
2) That the Jews "miraculously" were able to survive as a people over 19 centuries of displacement and oppression.1). Is there any evidence that everybody forgot where Israel used to be? It seems to me that the Bible is fairly clear about where Israel had been, and that Israel was the ancestral nation of Jews, so it's hardly surprising that if someone - anyone - were to go about creating ex nihilo a country for Jews, they'd put it where Israel used to be and call it "Israel." Again it's not the fulfillment of prophecy when you set out to deliberately fulfill it.2) Are today's Jews the same people as the people of ancient Israel? I don't see that they are, for the most part:(Born-abroad Israeli Jews by nation of birth.)As you can see, the majority of Israel's returning Jews are overwhelmingly of Central Asian birth, not of Middle East descent. You can see a better breakdown here. Judaism is a creed in addition to an ethnicity - people can decide to be Jews - and after 19 centuries of displacement, about the only thing they have in common with the Jews of ancient Israel is the religion. The survival of the Jewish people is as much a story of evangelism as it is of cohesion. Don't get me wrong, it's admirable. I just don't see it as "miraculous." That's hardly the world's oldest continual culture - Hindus have had a continuous culture and record of history for over 4000 years. But somehow I doubt that prompts you towards the veneration of Vishnu.

Well, ok, but where else would you establish it?Should I be impressed that the tea "miraculously" never fails to take on the shape of the inside of the teacup? That's what I'm getting at, though. Their "forebears" didn't live there because, for about half of all Israeli Jews, their forebears weren't the Jews of ancient Israel. The population of Israel aren't, for the most part, descendants of anybody who ever lived in Israel before 1947. No more than my wife is the descendant of my grandfather. You can argue the Bible, Buz, but you can't argue with genetics. That someone is Jewish does not mean that they have any particular ancestry of the ancient Jews of Old Israel. You only think that because you don't know anything about Jews. There are Ashkenazi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Sephardi Jews, and even Jews of Chinese extraction called the "Kaifeng Jews." They're united by a common religion, but there's a dozen independent peoples within that religion. To say that "Jews are Jews" and therefore all Jews are the descendants of Ancient Israel is as dumb as saying that you and Jar are both Christians, therefore you're related. You may be Brothers in Christ but Jesus didn't mean that to imply genetic sequence identity. Jesus, Buz, we don't say "Negro" anymore. Catch up with the times, you old racist.