Thousands of years ago the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. They had been slaves for several generations, but they were eventually let go. I am not going to talk about the plagues or the parting of the red sea, but rather the beginning of the Jewish Religion.
The Jewish Law that was written by the Israelites while they were in the desert is one of the most complex religions in history. More importantly, it was one of the first monotheistic religions. It also became the most important and influential belief system in history.
How do those facts work as evidence for God? As I said before, the Israelites were slaves for generations. This means that they were uneducated and living in a very polytheistic country. When they left Egypt, it would have made sense if they began following a religion that was similar to Egypt’s, but they created an entire new one that was totally different from Egypt. The complexity of the religion, and the benefits of following many of the laws in that time, would have been impossible for a small and uneducated society to put together and then follow. But they did, and than their religion survived for thousands of years and changed the world.
The fact that such a small and uneducated society was responsible for the most influential and revolutionary religion in history, a religion that was completely different from that of the Egyptians, suggests that there was probably a divine influence guiding them. For this reason, I think it is rational to believe in God.
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And the fact that all "convincing" evidence comes from Holy Books makes it unlikely that the Biblical accounts are accurate. Also, I'm sure I could find stories of seemingly uneducated people doing amazing things, does that mean we must believe in whatever they preach?
ReplyDeleteI do not agree with this. Most of the "convincing" evidence also comes from historical fact (archeology, Egyptian record, etc). The Israelites were enslaved in Egypt. The Egyptians were very polytheistic. The Israelites did create an extremely unique, complicated, and most importantly, successful/influential monotheistic religion. And, if you did find another culture that did this much (I'm not sure there are any, especially when it comes to the originality and quickness the belief system was created) that is not necessarily enough to believe everything they preach. Remember, this argument is just a piece of the collection of arguments converging to demonstrate God's existence and role in history.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting,
TRG
As for a quick and unique religion growing up rapidly, what about Scientology? Or Mormonism?
ReplyDeleteMormonism came out of Christianity and is not very unique. In fact, most Mormons claim to be a denomination of Christianity.
ReplyDeleteScientology has not had close to the impact of Christianity and became popular because the founder wrote some popular books. It is still not even that huge and has made little impact that I can see on the world. Furthermore, it was created in a society that has been interested in Space for quite some time. Judaism, however, was a monotheistic religion created out of a society that was huge on polytheism.