A history of God
h/t Bud:
A few thoughts:
I can't help but think of Dan Dennett's excellent lecture from AAI 2009 and the "use-mention error" he talks about. This is really a history of the concept of God. I suppose that title's a bit less interesting.
I haven't delved much into Old Testament scholarship, which I suppose is mostly because most of the people I end up debating are Christians. Jews are a little harder to come by, particularly Jews who obsess over things like inerrancy. Aside from the fact that there's no historical evidence that the Jews were ever actually in Egypt (a pretty good example of when absence of evidence does in fact constitute evidence of absence), I don't know much about the historical background of the Old Testament. So it's nice to see someone tackling the Old Testament more thoroughly.
I've followed Evid3nc3's videos on Youtube for a while, and there's a sentiment that he touches upon often (and again in this video) that definitely strikes a familiar chord with me: when you stop pretending God exists, everything makes far more sense. It makes perfect sense why Yahweh wasn't mentioned until a few thousand years ago while humanity has been around for 200,000 years. It makes sense why there's polytheism throughout the Old Testament, why the Old Testament God is a capricious bloodthirsty tyrant, and why no one else on the planet had heard of this One True God. It's because just like Thor and Ra and Baldr, people made Yahweh up.
A few thoughts:
I can't help but think of Dan Dennett's excellent lecture from AAI 2009 and the "use-mention error" he talks about. This is really a history of the concept of God. I suppose that title's a bit less interesting.
I haven't delved much into Old Testament scholarship, which I suppose is mostly because most of the people I end up debating are Christians. Jews are a little harder to come by, particularly Jews who obsess over things like inerrancy. Aside from the fact that there's no historical evidence that the Jews were ever actually in Egypt (a pretty good example of when absence of evidence does in fact constitute evidence of absence), I don't know much about the historical background of the Old Testament. So it's nice to see someone tackling the Old Testament more thoroughly.
I've followed Evid3nc3's videos on Youtube for a while, and there's a sentiment that he touches upon often (and again in this video) that definitely strikes a familiar chord with me: when you stop pretending God exists, everything makes far more sense. It makes perfect sense why Yahweh wasn't mentioned until a few thousand years ago while humanity has been around for 200,000 years. It makes sense why there's polytheism throughout the Old Testament, why the Old Testament God is a capricious bloodthirsty tyrant, and why no one else on the planet had heard of this One True God. It's because just like Thor and Ra and Baldr, people made Yahweh up.
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