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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.
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
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.
Link it here when you make it and I'll get to it this evening when I put the kids in bed.
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.
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.)
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.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."
Where does God say He hates Molech?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?"
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.
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.
I'm sure by now we all know that most atheists are lack-of-belief atheists and not there-definitely-is-no-God atheists.
Yet these same Christians positively assert that no God exists aside from the God of the Bible. How do they know this?
Aron Ra defines a god as a magical anthropomorphic immortal and that's what I go with. Thor is a god.
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.
If I recall correctly, one of Jacob's wives had many "family idols."
No, that is not true.
We know this from the Bible.
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