it mentions how not to get punished by god for being in contact with unclean things, which would be the response you would expect from primitive humans if they
observed a pattern of those things making people sick. nothing miraculous about that.

if you could prove any of that actually happened you might have a point. first things first.

Discoverable knowledge cannot be evidence of something supernatural. If you find formulas for advanced carbon epoxy materials in the bible then you have something. But the medical knowledge written in that book does not exceed the state of human knowledge at the time it was written. At all.

It's much stranger to postulate that knowledge did not advance for thousands of years.

(and obviously there's no evidence that this knowledge was introduced "all at once together by an outside source". )

Also, nice of god to leave such wonderful instructions on how to combat disease by washing hands, when he could have also left the formula for penicillin.

combined with animal sacrafice

all i have to say is that god can go fuck himself for not putting the cure to cancer in the bible.

I don't know very much about religion, but if God handed you the keys to all the locks in the world then what in the world would humans do? We would have no new discoveries or inventions. We would be quite bored. Not to say that it wouldn't be nice to have the cure for all diseases so that people won't have to suffer. But people die and diseases are just one of the many ways a person dies.

Thanks. I did not know any of that.

I can't figure out what your point is.

sounds like a little more sophisticated version of the excuse "it doesn't seem like the god of the bible exists because he's hiding"

Umm, suffocate under a million ton rubble of keys? How exactly would God do that anyway?

Knock knock

Who's there?

God

God who?

Umm, GOOOODDDD!!!

Oh you! What can I do for ya?

I'm bringing you all the keys to all the locks in the world!

Oh, uh, whoooaaaa there big fella. You aren't planning on leaving them in the yard are ya?

I AM GIVING YOU ALL THE KEYS!!

Well, don't get snippy there big fella , but uh, what if I don't want ALL THE KEYS!??

YOU CAN UNLOCK ALL THE LOCKS THOUGH!

Hey, mister I KNOW ALL i don't really want to unlock .. hey look, there's Fred
down the street cutting his grass. He LOVES locks!! Hey Fred, Come here! God
has something for you!

i really don't know sh** about religion, don't much care either. but this was pretty damn funny

Lol next time I'll be sure not to use metaphors

Lucky Christians, not having to wash up before eating raw scallops. Sign me up!



You totally assume that the jews were 100% down with the egyptian way of doing things. Maybe they had washed their hands for centuries before being enslaved, but nobody had ever claimed it to be an order from god so it wasn't written down as law. And your big example is that the egyptians used dung to try and heal cuts. Which do you think is more likely, that the jews noticed this method wasn't working and tried the opposite, or that an invisible, omnipotent, and all powerful god showed up and explained it to them? More likely, that somewhere along the line jews noticed that raw shellfish made them sick and then put it in the religious book to make it official, or that nobody had never noticed the explosive diarrhea that can come with raw scallops until god told them all about it? And so on.

or maybe the judean nation didn't actually even exist at the time of the ebers papyrus, and deuteronomy wasn't written until 1000+ years of learning-it's-good-to-wash-your-hands later.

I don't think Deuteronomy was written in 1800 AD, but I could be wrong.

That's still way before Confucius.

since the torah doesn't mention bacteria i don't see the relevance of that date. lots of ancient cultures learned to wash their hands
through trial and error contemporary with or before the torah was written. big whoop.

Yea the medical community figured it out in 1846




Wait till they look into undercooked pork

you mean that diseases are caused by bacteria, not that washing prevents spread of sickness.
the torah doesn't say anything about the former and there is no connection whatsoever between
knowing those two things, implied or otherwise.

Oh we know what you implied...


You just apperently are not honest enough with yourself to admit when your point is flawed because it's not based on anything but a preconceived idea that you hold that you are right about everything.

another example of "operation equivocate" in action. just stop.

you (and brvheart) are directly implying that ancient people could not possibly have learned through simple trial and error that washing
prevents spread of illness - until bacteria was discovered nobody could have possibly known that unless god told them.

since almost every ancient culture did exactly that, that just makes you definitionally delusional, or stupid, or both. you're not helping your cause here.

Well I know the Zulus and the Incas learned it, but modern medicine in England didn't 'know' it until the middle of the 19th century. In fact they 'discovered' it after one doctor made the postulation. But not until he was completely mocked and ridiculed for being a fool. Even after having half the women in the pregnancy exam room die almost directly caused by the failure ot wash their hands, the modern medical doctors of the day did not believe that washing the hands after examing dead bodies would make ANY difference in the health of the live women they examing next.

Maybe they were all Christian doctors though, that would explain how they could have been so backwards.


But go on claiming that it's 'obvious' that darwinian evolution invented the washing of the hands knowledge millions of years ago because you just know it's true, and everyone else in the world would know it's true as well. It's common sense, because it's so easy to understand in today's world, so it must have evolved.

Those idiot doctors really screwed up your neat little package of 'claiming the obvious'

as did the anceint greeks, probably before the torah was even written.



even if this is a true example not taken out of context (which i doubt) it's irrelevant to the point.

Instead of random claims, could you please provide the huge list of cultures, prior to 2000BC, that were washing their hands thoroughly before preparing meals. Thanks.


Also, I will immediately disregard as false, any written manuscript or cave drawing presented, unless the information comes from several contemporary independent sources. (It's just too hard to verify, and could have been written later)

then you should disregard as false your own date for the torah.

You guys are totally missing the point.

That which can readily be learned through observation cannot be evidence of externally provided knowledge.

This list was shorter than I had imagined.

deuteronomy was written much later than you imagine.

this is true. but at the same time if the exodus story were based in fact, and deuteronomy was actually contemporary
with the ebers papyrus, it would be a bit of an anomaly that egyptian and hebrew cultures weren't somewhat
more synchronized. it wouldn't be evidence of divinely provided knowledge, but it would require some additional
explanation.

since the exodus story is myth and deuteronomy was written 1000+ years later there's nothing to explain.

This is 100% true*...For the rest of us..you can go with the experts who disagree




*if you consider hope truth

your "experts" (apologists) who believe exodus is a literal history of the jews are in the minority, probably a very small minority
in the overall archeological community, and they can't even agree among themselves on the date, whether the hyksos were the
jews or not, who the pharoah of moses was etc. it's kind of a joke.

Obviously you consider the people sitting next to you in the pew as experts, because as far as biblical scholars go, you couldn't be further from the truth.

Not to be a nit, but your op doesn't lend itself to believing you have a good grasp of the subject.


crow likes to pretend that everyone is on board wiht him, but the truth is, the short bus he is on isn't even very full

nothing you post lends itself to believing you have a good grasp of any relevant subject.

and the OP has nothing to do with archeological consensus on evidence for the exodus (obviously)




you were the one who appealed to authority. anyone who cares enough to research the subject is free to do so. attacking me won't change what they will find.

cult speak + dodging the question = crowtrobot

I kind of find this comment funny. I quoted another author and linked to a story he was describing about the CNN article. I was incorrect (since he was incorrect) in my statement that the document did not reference the resurrection. Then I realized my mistake, and admitted it. This last action is something you are quite clearly unable to do. And my making one mistake regarding one story about an old biblical text, does not warrant further conclusions about my knowledge of religious scholars.

But as you've already proven, logic isn't your strong point.

Or it is..and you don't follow...


ever think of that?

There is no world in which the conclusion you made about me is logical.

But, if there is one thing you christians are good at, it's making snap judgments. Thanks for not letting us down.

both the ancient greeks and romans practiced ritual hand washing. the ancient chinese were also heavily into cleanliness. other asian peoples have the custom of keeping one hand clean for eating (while using the other for toilet paper) that go back 1000s of years. contemporary cultures also practiced thorough washing off of "unclean" stuff such as blood and bodily discharge, and knew enough not to touch dead bodies unless they were cleaned. there's nothing about the ritualistic cleanliness rules in deuteronomy that would have been particularly insightful for the time period in which it was written.

as for "prior to 2000 BC" i don't know what was going on then and don't care since that's completely irrelevant.

what's really funny is comparing the amount of insight and experience that would have been necessary for primitive egyptians to engineer the pyramids (something we are still struggling to understand today) with the amount of insight and experience that would have been necessary to learn that it's good to wash your hands.

maybe you should be worshipping Ra.

This is really not a bad idea. If there is anything worth worshipping, it is probably the sun.

or taweret, because "He who will save us all" lies in its shadow

She-Ra FTW

Nice.