Christianity's most inconsistent position

Tree of Life · Nov 2, 2018

Nihilist Virus said:
Ok. Please tell me who the last king of Judah was. Was it Zedekiah, son of Josiah?

Shallum, AKA Jehoahaz (these are the same person according to Jeremiah 22:11 and 2 Kings 22:30), was 23 years old when he began to reign according to 2 Kings 23:31 and 2 Chronicles 36:2.

According to 1 Chronicles 3:15-16, Shallum is Josiah's youngest son of the four mentioned. Zedekiah is his older brother.

But then 11 years later, when Shallum is dead (though he would be 34 years old), we see that his older brother, Zedekiah, is only 21 according to 2 Kings 24:18 and 2 Chronicles 36:11.

So either Zedekiah is younger than his younger brother (I shouldn't have to say this is impossible), or else 2 Chronicles 3:15-16 does not intend to be listing the sons in order of birth despite explicitly doing so, or else it's a different Zedekiah who became king.

So was it Zedekiah, son of Jehoiakim? (This Zedekiah is nephew of the other Zedekiah.)

Jeremiah 36:30 states that God cursed Jehoiakim. Jehoiakim is told he will have no one to sit on the throne of David. And yet Zedekiah, his son, was the last king of Judah and reigned for 11 years. That prophecy would've been great had it been addressed to Zedekiah. Instead the prophecy was an immediate failure.

This would really take us outside the scope of the thread. If you want to start a separate thread on this issue then I will participate there.

Nihilist Virus · Nov 2, 2018

ewq1938 said:
Atheist literally means "no God" so you are altering the definition and setting up your own strawman here.

Definition of ATHEIST

atheist
noun

athe·ist | \ˈā-thē-ist \
Definition of atheist
: a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods : one who subscribes to or advocates atheism

Right, a person who does not believe in the existence of any god. It's saying lack-of-belief right there. It's not saying that atheists claim there definitively is no god.

Nihilist Virus · Nov 2, 2018

Tree of Life said:
This would really take us outside the scope of the thread. If you want to start a separate thread on this issue then I will participate there.

Ok I'll copy-paste it onto a thread right now. Let's see what you got.

gaara4158 · Nov 2, 2018

As a former Christian, for me the belief that there were no other gods came not from a place of skepticism, but as a part of my faith that God was the one true supreme being. If God was real, then by definition no other gods were.

Tree of Life · Nov 2, 2018

Nihilist Virus said:
Ok I'll copy-paste it onto a thread right now. Let's see what you got.

Link it here when you make it and I'll get to it this evening when I put the kids in bed.

Nihilist Virus · Nov 2, 2018

Tree of Life said:
Link it here when you make it and I'll get to it this evening when I put the kids in bed.

Who was the last king of Judah?

Nihilist Virus · Nov 2, 2018

gaara4158 said:
As a former Christian, for me the belief that there were no other gods came not from a place of skepticism, but as a part of my faith that God was the one true supreme being. If God was real, then by definition no other gods were.

By definition there'd be no other supreme being. That doesn't mean Thor couldn't exist. There's no magic wand that will let you say, "My worldview can legitimately assert that Thor does not exist, but your worldview can't do this."

Petros2015 · Nov 2, 2018

I think it is in Isaiah, or maybe Jeremiah, God says something to the effect of 'is there any other God but me? I know of no other'

So God has no God. Irony of ironies, it seems that God is an atheist.

Nihilist Virus · Nov 2, 2018

dzheremi said:
Traditional Christianity, like Judaism, maintains some idea of "the gods of the nations" (i.e., the gods of those peoples who did not worship YHWH, like Baal, Horus, Amun, Ashur, etc.), but with the understanding that these are idols or worse (Psalm 96; 1 Corinthians 10:20). Does that mean that they do or do not exist? I think a case could be made for either, but at least in my own tradition they are sometimes treated as though they do, and perhaps for the Egyptians -- having previously been worshipers of these other gods (you can even tell this in the Coptic names of some of our saints and priests like Sarabamoun, which is a combination of the gods Serapis and Amun) -- this makes more sense than the attitude of others that says that there can only ever be one being that people call god. Even the shema, the statement of ancient Israel's monotheism, says adonai eloheinu, adonai echad -- the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. It doesn't say anything about other people's gods (that's elsewhere, as in the Psalms), only about the Israelites' God.

Following this kind of attitude, we in the Coptic Orthodox Church have prayers like this one, which is the sixteenth part of the midnight praises (tasbeha) for Sundays:

Who is likened unto You, O Lord among the gods, You are the true God, the Performer of miracles.

+ You revealed Your power, to the people, and You saved Your people, with Your arm.

You descended into Hades, and brought up, those who were captives, in that place.

+ And granted us again, the freedom, as a good God, for You have risen and saved us.

+++

You will hopefully notice that it says "O Lord among the gods, you are the true God". So the gods of the nations exist in some sense, but they aren't the true God.

Yes, 'we' were doing the whole "no god but God" thing long before Muhammad and co. ever existed, and obviously we both got it from the Jews in some sense (just as the Jews were themselves influenced by others, like the Zoroastrians).

So I don't really see how this is inconsistent. You let the nations have their gods (in the sense that they'll continue to have them anyway, since that's the nature of localized/national gods), but only recognize the One God that you worship.

If you want to say that this means "Thor exists", then fine, but that's you saying that, and it doesn't do anything to shake our belief in the one God -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. +

Basically, it's more about recognition than actual physical or spiritual existence. You can worship an old can of Coca-Cola if you want to, but I'm not going to recognize that as God just because you do, even if you gather an entire tribe or millions of people who also worship your Coca-Cola can. (I'm thinking here of the phenomenon of "cargo cults" where just that sort of thing happened, in a way; it just never spread beyond isolated tribes, for obvious reasons.)

First, I never said or implied that Thor exists. I'm using him as an example. Your post seems to be about henotheism, which is not what I'm addressing. For most Christians, it's nothing but pure, absolute, monolithic monotheism, and they flatly deny the existence of other gods while criticising atheists for doing the same thing... even though atheists actually don't do that. At least no atheist I know of.

gaara4158 · Nov 2, 2018

Nihilist Virus said:
By definition there'd be no other supreme being. That doesn't mean Thor couldn't exist. There's no magic wand that will let you say, "My worldview can legitimately assert that Thor does not exist, but your worldview can't do this."

Well, part of the doctrine is that there are no other gods, so if you accept the Christian god you accept that there aren’t any others. But you’re right, it’s special pleading to try and disprove Greek mythology with skepticism and then refuse to use it on Yahweh. Hence, my atheism.

Hank77 · Nov 2, 2018

Nihilist Virus said:
You mean the part where he says he hates Moloch? Like the kid from God's not Dead said, "How can you hate something that doesn't exist?"

Where does God say He hates Molech?

Petros2015 · Nov 2, 2018

Well here is a good question- what does it take to earn the title of 'God'?

I guess you have to be your own first cause for starters? I mean, we can't go around giving every supernatural entity that intervenes in human affairs the title of 'a God'? Can we?

There has to be a certain bar or standard. Take Thor. Does lightning real well, but... how many universes has he created? Has he designed things like Light, Gravity, Time, Love?

No? Just doesn't meet the bar then.

Nihilist Virus · Nov 2, 2018

Petros2015 said:
I think it is in Isaiah, or maybe Jeremiah, God says something to the effect of 'is there any other God but me? I know of no other'

So God has no God. Irony of ironies, it seems that God is an atheist.

That's been covered extensively in the thread. I'm saying that it means there is no other supreme being and that it does not imply Thor does not exist.

Nihilist Virus · Nov 2, 2018

Petros2015 said:
Well here is a good question- what does it take to earn the title of 'God'?

I guess you have to be your own first cause for starters? I mean, we can't go around giving every supernatural entity that intervenes in human affairs the title of 'a God'? Can we?

There has to be a certain bar or standard. Take Thor. Does lightning real well, but... how many universes has he created? Has he designed things like Light, Gravity, Time, Love?

No? Just doesn't meet the bar then.

Aron Ra defines a god as a magical anthropomorphic immortal and that's what I go with. Thor is a god.

Petros2015 · Nov 2, 2018

Oh well, there might be a lot of those or things like them running around. I wouldn't call them Gods or feel I owed allegiance to them.

Radagast · Nov 2, 2018

Nihilist Virus said:
I'm sure by now we all know that most atheists are lack-of-belief atheists and not there-definitely-is-no-God atheists.

No, that is not true.

"Atheism is the position that affirms the nonexistence of God. It proposes positive disbelief rather than mere suspension of belief." (Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Nihilist Virus said:
Yet these same Christians positively assert that no God exists aside from the God of the Bible. How do they know this?

We know this from the Bible.

Petros2015 · Nov 2, 2018

Nihilist Virus said:
Aron Ra defines a god as a magical anthropomorphic immortal and that's what I go with. Thor is a god.

They tend to make real nuisances of themselves. Last time we saw one of those we nailed it to a cross and it came back to life.

Nihilist Virus · Nov 2, 2018

gaara4158 said:
Well, part of the doctrine is that there are no other gods,

The first commandment looks kind of weird if we assume there are no other gods. "I am a jealous God and you will have no other gods before me" is a thing we'd expect a henotheistic deity to say. Why would his people be tempted to worship slabs of stone when they just had a conversation with a living deity that took them out of slavery by the use of many miracles?

As we get closer to modern times, we find that suddenly monotheism is the new fad. That's why everyone is quoting Isaiah at me on this thread. Isaiah mocked other gods by calling them slabs of wood, but Isaiah's time was late (the exile) and during the time of Abraham everyone believed in many gods. If I recall correctly, one of Jacob's wives had many "family idols."

so if you accept the Christian god you accept that there aren’t any others.

That's the narrative that the church has been pushing, for sure, but if you read the early parts of the Bible it's not clear that there is only one deity.

But you’re right, it’s special pleading to try and disprove Greek mythology with skepticism and then refuse to use it on Yahweh. Hence, my atheism.

Radagast · Nov 2, 2018

Nihilist Virus said:
If I recall correctly, one of Jacob's wives had many "family idols."

Nobody is denying the existence of idols, or that people worship(ped) them. What we deny is that there is a real Aphrodite corresponding to the many statues of Aphrodite.

Nihilist Virus · Nov 2, 2018

Radagast said:
No, that is not true.

OK, so how does a conversation go when you talk to an atheist who insists that no deity could possibly exist?

We know this from the Bible.

So if an atheist claims that no god could possibly exist, then the atheist has to scour all of existence to prove it, but for you to make a nearly identical claim you just have to cite a book?

Christianity's most inconsistent position

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