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> We know the Exodus didn't happen because the supernatural elements described cannot have happened, ... Of course the supernatural events could have happened!

> We know the Exodus didn't happen because the supernatural elements described cannot have happened, ... Of course the supernatural events could have happened! Unless you're certain that: - matter exists (i.e., physicalism or dualism is the correct metaphysical worldview) - the universe is strictly a physics simulation - there's no God who's capable of fiddling with human affairs (or interested in doing so)

krapp 3mo ago
>Of course the supernatural events could have happened! Unless you're certain that: Yes, I am certain of these things because I am an adult with an education, and an awareness of the difference between mythology and reality. If you believe in magic, and that the Bible describes reality more correctly than the entirety of science, and that archaeology and Biblical scholarship are all wrong, and that somehow out of all of the religions that humans have concocted only the Abrahamic God is the correct one, then the onus is on you to prove that.
- coffeecat 3mo ago
  During Albright's time, the archaeological evidence was generally interpreted as being in support of Old Testament narratives. Later generations of archaeologists mostly took the opposite view. The bottom line is, there's very little to go by, and the little archaeological evidence that exists can be interpreted either way, depending on one's preferred conclusion.
  - krapp 3mo ago
    Could it be that later generations of archeologists took the opposite view because the preponderance of evidence uncovered in that time pointed in that direction (and because the cultural and political stigma against contradicting the Bible diminished over time,) or are you implying that the interpretation of archaeological evidence either way is simply a matter of arbitrary personal preference? And notwithstanding that, there is absolutely no credible evidence of the supernatural at all. On what basis do you believe the Bible and its supernatural claims could have happened?
    - senderista 3mo ago
      Archeology has certainly been affected by unscientific intellectual fashions: take the post-WW2 marginalization of mass migration hypotheses, which happened as a reaction to Nazism, not on the basis of any scientific evidence. It took the ancient DNA revolution (i.e. being embarrassed by outsiders who could prove the archeology consensus was wrong) to correct this purely political scientific bias. (Note that historical linguists generally continued believing in mass migration all along though.)
    - coffeecat 3mo ago
      > Could it be that later generations of archeologists took the opposite view because the preponderance of evidence uncovered in that time pointed in that direction (and because the cultural and political stigma against contradicting the Bible diminished over time,) My understanding is that the shift can mostly be attributed to the rise of biblical minimalism as the dominant interpretive framework. Radiocarbon dating of the Jericho ruins did rule out Albright's preferred late Exodus date. But the radiocarbon date is consistent with an (in my opinion, far more interesting) earlier Exodus date, which would line up with the hypothesis that the Israeli people were the Hyksos, and which would also line up with a sequential interpretation of the timeline presented in Joshua, Judges, and Samuel. > or are you implying that the interpretation of archaeological evidence either way is simply a matter of arbitrary personal preference? Archaeological evidence constrains the set of defensible explanations. But the available evidence from this time period (Exodus, conquest of Canaan) is so scarce that it mostly comes down to personal preference. > And notwithstanding that, there is absolutely no credible evidence of the supernatural at all. How could it be otherwise? If there were reproducible evidence, then the phenomenon in question would be classified as natural. > On what basis do you believe the Bible and its supernatural claims could have happened? I'm quite certain that mind is more fundamental than matter, and I'm not very sure about a whole lot else.
      - simiones 3mo ago
        > How could it be otherwise? If there were reproducible evidence, then the phenomenon in question would be classified as natural. Imagine that we found, today, the burning bush, still on fire but not consumed by it, thousands of years later. Say someone tried all known techniques to extinguish it, but it wouldn't. We may be able to study and characterize it precisely and call it "natural" in that sense, but I think many would agree that it would be very clear evidence that this claim in Exodus was actually historically based. Similarly, say that we had credible videos, and other instrument recordings, of the blue fire that the Orthodox Patriarchs claim descends from the heavens on Jesus' tomb every year on Orthodox Easter. We may even develop a theory of what the substance is and what it represents and where it originates (spatially) and so on - but if it happens spontaneously and only affects certain things (candles held by the faithful) and not others (say, gasoline-soaked rags prepared by a scientist to test this out), then even a scientist would have to conclude that this phenomenon is real and outside the realm of physics as it is understood today.
  - simiones 3mo ago
    Not really. Sure, sometimes long established archaeological conclusions get overturned by new digs, new sources, or just new methods or new evidence of similar events in other places and so on. But one very important thing to add here is that there is no bias against the naturalistic narratives of the Bible in mainstream archaeology / Bible scholarship / historiography. Huge swaths of the Bible are considered firmly historical, with many important Bible characters being well attested to and many events in the Bible being accepted as historical facts. For example, the prophet Elijah and King Ahab are widely considered to be real people. The events of the exile to Babylon are (now) considered as well to be real historical events.
Brendinooo 3mo ago
Yeah. > witness something that defies all natural explanation > write about it > people say it cannot have happened because it was a supernatural element You see this too with stuff like "anything that predicted the destruction of the temple must have been written after because no one can predict the future." Like, the whole point of huge chunks of the Bible is that world-altering supernatural events actually happened, and the authors want people to know about them. I don't think it's terribly unreasonable to stake out a position of "supernatural elements cannot happen" and there are absolutely cogent responses to what I just did rhetorically, I just don't like that people who think that way try to assume the center; it's worth pointing out that it's the tail that wags the dog in big chunks of historicity debates.
- AnimalMuppet 3mo ago
  I think that this arises from one of two presuppositions: Either 1) the physical universe is all that exists, or 2) science is the only way to learn truth. (These two presuppositions are not strictly independent of each other.) These are presuppositions. They are assumptions that you make at the start of the game, that you build your interpretation of the world on. They are not empirically proven in any way. (For #2, show me the scientific experiment that proved it.) But people have built these presuppositions so deeply into their thinking that they don't even realize that they're making them. Within the silo of those presuppositions, of course miracles don't ever happen! But, if that's you (not Brindinooo, but you the reader), try to step outside that for a moment, just as a thought experiment. For this experiment, let us hypothesize that God actually exists - not just the word or the idea, but that someone is actually there. And let us hypothesize that he can actually do things, things that change physical reality. (You could think of it as breakpointing a running program with a debugger, and changing the value of a variable, and then resuming. The value actually changes, with no antecedent that the program can see.) And let us hypothesize that God actually does this - he actually changes something. (Digression: A typical way of thinking about the scientific method is four steps: Systematic observation, search for regularity among the observations, forming a hypothesis to explain the regularity, and testing the hypothesis.) For our thought experiment, let us suppose that science observes God doing something at step 1 (systematic observation). Now, what is science going to do with it? It's going to throw it out at step 2 (search for a regularity), because there is no regularity - unless God does the same miracle repeatedly. But if it makes it past that step, the next problem comes at step 3 (forming a hypothesis). Under current thinking, God will never be the hypothesis. But in our thought experiment, God is actually the cause! And even if God were to be the hypothesis, the next problem comes at step 4 (testing). How could you test the hypothesis? "Uh, God, could you do that again, and please sign it this time"? I don't see how you could do the experiment, even in principle. So there is no direct scientific evidence that God exists, because science is not a tool that is capable of investigating that question. But if God exists, and if he actually does something, even if we don't see it with science, we might see it with history. Somebody might have observed it and recorded it. And when you read such a thing, how do you react? Do you say "That's impossible?" You're right; it is. But what is your next statement? "Therefore it didn't happen"? If that's your response, it indicates that you're in the silo of the material-universe-is-all-that-exists presupposition, and can't or won't think outside of it. Instead, I think you're reaction should be "That's impossible, but did it happen?" Because the impossible happening is exactly the signature that we would expect if God exists and actually did something. So the fundamental question is not whether these events have a supernatural element or not. The fundamental question is whether they happened.
tshaddox 3mo ago
If you’re not a realist, just say so. Then we’ll know that there’s no point in engaging with your epistemology, because your epistemology also admits claims like “the Universe sprang into existence last Thursday,” or “I am the only entity that exists,” or “Jupiter doesn’t actually exists, it merely appears to exist.”
- Brendinooo 3mo ago
  My epistemology admits that "the Universe sprang into existence last Thursday" could be true even if we might have no way of proving it; to me this is obviously far more correct than saying that it must not be true because we cannot prove it. Doesn't mean I believe it's true, though: I think the point is more being willing to admit that humans might not be the pinnacle of existence, fully able to comprehend every mystery of the universe.
- coffeecat 3mo ago
  While I do reject realism, I disagree with all three claims. > “the Universe sprang into existence last Thursday” I have memories from before last Thursday; therefore, this claim would contradict what currently seems to be true. That's the best I can do. If you're a physicalist, you cannot deny this claim with certainty either: if electrical activity in the brain is truly the substrate of consciousness, then you have to admit to the possibility that you could be a brain in a vat, hooked up to some kind of world simulator. > “I am the only entity that exists” That would imply that I'm God. And I'm pretty sure I'm not God. Therefore, other conscious entities must exist. > “Jupiter doesn’t actually exists, it merely appears to exist.” To be is to be perceived, in my view. I don't think there's a meaningful distinction between the two.

krapp 3mo ago

>Of course the supernatural events could have happened! Unless you're certain that: Yes, I am certain of these things because I am an adult with an education, and an awareness of the difference between mythology and reality. If you believe in magic, and that the Bible describes reality more correctly than the entirety of science, and that archaeology and Biblical scholarship are all wrong, and that somehow out of all of the religions that humans have concocted only the Abrahamic God is the correct one, then the onus is on you to prove that.

coffeecat 3mo ago
During Albright's time, the archaeological evidence was generally interpreted as being in support of Old Testament narratives. Later generations of archaeologists mostly took the opposite view. The bottom line is, there's very little to go by, and the little archaeological evidence that exists can be interpreted either way, depending on one's preferred conclusion.
- krapp 3mo ago
  Could it be that later generations of archeologists took the opposite view because the preponderance of evidence uncovered in that time pointed in that direction (and because the cultural and political stigma against contradicting the Bible diminished over time,) or are you implying that the interpretation of archaeological evidence either way is simply a matter of arbitrary personal preference? And notwithstanding that, there is absolutely no credible evidence of the supernatural at all. On what basis do you believe the Bible and its supernatural claims could have happened?
  - senderista 3mo ago
    Archeology has certainly been affected by unscientific intellectual fashions: take the post-WW2 marginalization of mass migration hypotheses, which happened as a reaction to Nazism, not on the basis of any scientific evidence. It took the ancient DNA revolution (i.e. being embarrassed by outsiders who could prove the archeology consensus was wrong) to correct this purely political scientific bias. (Note that historical linguists generally continued believing in mass migration all along though.)
  - coffeecat 3mo ago
    > Could it be that later generations of archeologists took the opposite view because the preponderance of evidence uncovered in that time pointed in that direction (and because the cultural and political stigma against contradicting the Bible diminished over time,) My understanding is that the shift can mostly be attributed to the rise of biblical minimalism as the dominant interpretive framework. Radiocarbon dating of the Jericho ruins did rule out Albright's preferred late Exodus date. But the radiocarbon date is consistent with an (in my opinion, far more interesting) earlier Exodus date, which would line up with the hypothesis that the Israeli people were the Hyksos, and which would also line up with a sequential interpretation of the timeline presented in Joshua, Judges, and Samuel. > or are you implying that the interpretation of archaeological evidence either way is simply a matter of arbitrary personal preference? Archaeological evidence constrains the set of defensible explanations. But the available evidence from this time period (Exodus, conquest of Canaan) is so scarce that it mostly comes down to personal preference. > And notwithstanding that, there is absolutely no credible evidence of the supernatural at all. How could it be otherwise? If there were reproducible evidence, then the phenomenon in question would be classified as natural. > On what basis do you believe the Bible and its supernatural claims could have happened? I'm quite certain that mind is more fundamental than matter, and I'm not very sure about a whole lot else.
    - simiones 3mo ago
      > How could it be otherwise? If there were reproducible evidence, then the phenomenon in question would be classified as natural. Imagine that we found, today, the burning bush, still on fire but not consumed by it, thousands of years later. Say someone tried all known techniques to extinguish it, but it wouldn't. We may be able to study and characterize it precisely and call it "natural" in that sense, but I think many would agree that it would be very clear evidence that this claim in Exodus was actually historically based. Similarly, say that we had credible videos, and other instrument recordings, of the blue fire that the Orthodox Patriarchs claim descends from the heavens on Jesus' tomb every year on Orthodox Easter. We may even develop a theory of what the substance is and what it represents and where it originates (spatially) and so on - but if it happens spontaneously and only affects certain things (candles held by the faithful) and not others (say, gasoline-soaked rags prepared by a scientist to test this out), then even a scientist would have to conclude that this phenomenon is real and outside the realm of physics as it is understood today.
- simiones 3mo ago
  Not really. Sure, sometimes long established archaeological conclusions get overturned by new digs, new sources, or just new methods or new evidence of similar events in other places and so on. But one very important thing to add here is that there is no bias against the naturalistic narratives of the Bible in mainstream archaeology / Bible scholarship / historiography. Huge swaths of the Bible are considered firmly historical, with many important Bible characters being well attested to and many events in the Bible being accepted as historical facts. For example, the prophet Elijah and King Ahab are widely considered to be real people. The events of the exile to Babylon are (now) considered as well to be real historical events.

Brendinooo 3mo ago

Yeah. > witness something that defies all natural explanation > write about it > people say it cannot have happened because it was a supernatural element You see this too with stuff like "anything that predicted the destruction of the temple must have been written after because no one can predict the future." Like, the whole point of huge chunks of the Bible is that world-altering supernatural events actually happened, and the authors want people to know about them. I don't think it's terribly unreasonable to stake out a position of "supernatural elements cannot happen" and there are absolutely cogent responses to what I just did rhetorically, I just don't like that people who think that way try to assume the center; it's worth pointing out that it's the tail that wags the dog in big chunks of historicity debates.

AnimalMuppet 3mo ago
I think that this arises from one of two presuppositions: Either 1) the physical universe is all that exists, or 2) science is the only way to learn truth. (These two presuppositions are not strictly independent of each other.) These are presuppositions. They are assumptions that you make at the start of the game, that you build your interpretation of the world on. They are not empirically proven in any way. (For #2, show me the scientific experiment that proved it.) But people have built these presuppositions so deeply into their thinking that they don't even realize that they're making them. Within the silo of those presuppositions, of course miracles don't ever happen! But, if that's you (not Brindinooo, but you the reader), try to step outside that for a moment, just as a thought experiment. For this experiment, let us hypothesize that God actually exists - not just the word or the idea, but that someone is actually there. And let us hypothesize that he can actually do things, things that change physical reality. (You could think of it as breakpointing a running program with a debugger, and changing the value of a variable, and then resuming. The value actually changes, with no antecedent that the program can see.) And let us hypothesize that God actually does this - he actually changes something. (Digression: A typical way of thinking about the scientific method is four steps: Systematic observation, search for regularity among the observations, forming a hypothesis to explain the regularity, and testing the hypothesis.) For our thought experiment, let us suppose that science observes God doing something at step 1 (systematic observation). Now, what is science going to do with it? It's going to throw it out at step 2 (search for a regularity), because there is no regularity - unless God does the same miracle repeatedly. But if it makes it past that step, the next problem comes at step 3 (forming a hypothesis). Under current thinking, God will never be the hypothesis. But in our thought experiment, God is actually the cause! And even if God were to be the hypothesis, the next problem comes at step 4 (testing). How could you test the hypothesis? "Uh, God, could you do that again, and please sign it this time"? I don't see how you could do the experiment, even in principle. So there is no direct scientific evidence that God exists, because science is not a tool that is capable of investigating that question. But if God exists, and if he actually does something, even if we don't see it with science, we might see it with history. Somebody might have observed it and recorded it. And when you read such a thing, how do you react? Do you say "That's impossible?" You're right; it is. But what is your next statement? "Therefore it didn't happen"? If that's your response, it indicates that you're in the silo of the material-universe-is-all-that-exists presupposition, and can't or won't think outside of it. Instead, I think you're reaction should be "That's impossible, but did it happen?" Because the impossible happening is exactly the signature that we would expect if God exists and actually did something. So the fundamental question is not whether these events have a supernatural element or not. The fundamental question is whether they happened.

tshaddox 3mo ago

If you’re not a realist, just say so. Then we’ll know that there’s no point in engaging with your epistemology, because your epistemology also admits claims like “the Universe sprang into existence last Thursday,” or “I am the only entity that exists,” or “Jupiter doesn’t actually exists, it merely appears to exist.”

Brendinooo 3mo ago
My epistemology admits that "the Universe sprang into existence last Thursday" could be true even if we might have no way of proving it; to me this is obviously far more correct than saying that it must not be true because we cannot prove it. Doesn't mean I believe it's true, though: I think the point is more being willing to admit that humans might not be the pinnacle of existence, fully able to comprehend every mystery of the universe.
coffeecat 3mo ago
While I do reject realism, I disagree with all three claims. > “the Universe sprang into existence last Thursday” I have memories from before last Thursday; therefore, this claim would contradict what currently seems to be true. That's the best I can do. If you're a physicalist, you cannot deny this claim with certainty either: if electrical activity in the brain is truly the substrate of consciousness, then you have to admit to the possibility that you could be a brain in a vat, hooked up to some kind of world simulator. > “I am the only entity that exists” That would imply that I'm God. And I'm pretty sure I'm not God. Therefore, other conscious entities must exist. > “Jupiter doesn’t actually exists, it merely appears to exist.” To be is to be perceived, in my view. I don't think there's a meaningful distinction between the two.