Breivik Didn't Kill Because He Believes God Will Send Muslims to Hell, He Killed Over Keeping Norway a Secular Society

Someone Thought He was More Merciful than God (not than the one he believes in, but than the One Who revealed Himself) — Other Answer to Same (YEC) — Breivik Didn't Kill Because He Believes God Will Send Muslims to Hell, He Killed Over Keeping Norway a Secular Society

He was in fact excluded from the Masonic Lodge he belonged to the day following his crime.

Is Hell a Just Punishment? | Christian vs Atheist
Kristi Burke | 5 June 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qemcr5t-4Tc

1:35 I don't subscribe to that kind of evasion.

Yes, God is judging us, we are not judging ourselves.

Those who go to Hell have chosen Hell, but not at the moment when they are sent there. The time when they chose it was while committing mortal sin and not repenting (including if they were otherwise Christian or not).

I also don't subscribe to feeling uncomfortable when speaking of God judging.

Because, I know what the alternative ideas are.

• there is no afterlife (the atheist version doesn't involve any opinion on why God would want it like that, a theistic one would be "God's interested in how we live in society, he made it so this world is all there is" = Babylonian view, with a somewhat extreme twist)
• afterlife is generally just boring (Babylonian view as stated)
• "God's love burns the blessed from the inside and the damned from the outside" (makes God an automaton who cannot in any way shape or form help us to sth better than what we chose, it's an opinion among Greek Orthodox)
• "we all spend eternity with God, we only experience it in different ways" (dito, Robert Barron's view)
• "God redeems everyone in the end" (makes man an automaton, which makes one wonder why God allowed us even to sin in the first place, may be one version in Judaism)
• "God annihilates those He doesn't want in the Millennium" (makes God's punishment attack the essence of evil men, by annihilation, rather than the will of them, by suffering = makes God punish the wrong thing, and be even crueller — if just for a moment — to the damned than the idea of eternal punishment makes Him)

2:47 As soon as there is a shade of psychiatry involved, no, people will not get what they deserve by their actions.

People will get punished according to how "dangerous" they are by their "mentality" (as analysed by shrinks).

3:00 Both Hell and Mental Institutions are about people who refuse to learn their lessons.

The difference is, according to the Christian faith, the God who sends someone to Hell actually knows exactly what lessons were given, how one could or could not have reacted better to them, and is not condemning anyone for a sin they are just "materially" committing (as in physically doing the act) if they are not at all accountable for it.

Meanwhile, shrinks are actually harsher to one's comfort and at least subjective wellbeing, the less they think one accountable. The more they excuse one, the more you have to fear they will also abuse you, even for the rest of your life. Even if what you did was no worse than stealing in a grocery store or getting on a train without paying the ticket.

3:14 Here is from the Breivik trial:

On 24 August 2012, beginning approximately 10 a.m. CEST, the court formally began to read the verdict against Breivik. Breivik was adjudged sane and sentenced to containment—a special form of a prison sentence that can be extended indefinitely—with a time frame of 21 years and a minimum time of 10 years, the maximum penalty in Norway.[5]

Now, what is exactly coming forth? Well, there are voices saying "he'll never get out" ...

• The maximum penalty under the military penal code is life imprisonment.
• The maximum determinate penalty (civilian penal code) is 21 years' imprisonment, but only a small percentage of prisoners serve more than 14 years. Prisoners will typically get unsupervised parole for weekends after serving a third of their sentence (a maximum of 7 years) and can receive early release after serving two thirds of their sentence (a maximum of 14 years). In 2008, to fulfill its requirements under the Rome Statute, Norway created a new maximal penalty of 30 years for crimes against humanity.[1]
• The indeterminate penalty (civilian penal code), called "preventive detention" (Norwegian: forvaring), is set at up to 21 years' imprisonment, with no eligibility for parole for a time period of at least 10 years, depending on the sentence. If the prisoner is still considered dangerous after serving the original sentence, the detention can be extended by five years at a time. Renewal of the detention every five years can in theory result in actual life imprisonment. Preventive detention is used when the prisoner is deemed a danger to society and there is a great chance of them committing violent crimes in the future. However, after the minimum time period has elapsed, the offender can petition for parole once every year, and this may be granted if it is determined that they are no longer a danger to society.[2]

He got option three.

Well, the problem is, once a man is under shrinks, in Scandinavia it's actually indeterminate. Plus, a grant is never definitive.

How evil is that?

Allowing shrinks into the penal system means, people will not just be locked up, they will be baited to see if they are still dangerous.

3:24 Catholicism definitely says that no venial sin and no accumulation of venial sins as longer as they stay just that can get you to Hell.

And for one mortal ... 1) only if you aren't forgiven while still alive, and 2) those who don't bother to get forgiven usually accumulate mortal ones, dying and being damned after only one is theoretically possible, but highly rare, and 3) Hell has very different pains depending on what mortal sin you are damned for.

So the principle you mention holds for God's justice as well.

3:44 Hell is not "the harshest extent" it's the end station for unrepentance.

The harshest extent is the degree of Hell that's worst. That's what Satan got.

3:54 If you decided to steal an apple from the grocery store for fun, it's venial, and you won't be sent to Hell for that.

If you decided to steal an apple from the grocery store because you needed sth to eat and knew it was no good asking, well, that's not a sin at all.

If you thought it was no good asking and were wrong, it was not a sin at all when you were sincerely wrong.

5:36 "every single day torturing him"

That's a very fair assessment of what happens to someone sentenced to be treated by shrinks.

It's not quite the same for Hell.

Every devil was once a good angel. Including but not limited to Satan.

Every devil knew exactly what he was doing, did it anyway, and is nothing like eligible for parole anyway.

They have however for some time been granted a game : how many men can they succeed in damning?

A devil who succeeds in damning a person, i e seducing him to sth he gets damned for, will have the meagre enjoyment of torturing that person who was stupid enough to trust his promptings. That's one part of the tortures. There is also fire, both for the damned and for the devil that got him. But another part is having at least a glimpse of what one missed, how one could have been eternally happy instead, and at least a glimpse of how one was responsible at the turning point.

God has made souls in such a way that after a certain time, they cannot change their basic orientation. That certain time occurs when one dies. The point of tortures is, while God doesn't force the damned to change, He also doesn't offer them an eternal illusion about what they actually chose.

And if you know anything about persons making themselves and others miserable, you might realise that part of that is allowing them at least glimpses of what their own mentality entails. At least enough for them to be miserable by their own doing.

5:48 The shrinks are above that kind or rules.

They are above the law.

6:03 A person in prison usually has a healthy body.

This means, a body which is adapted to what God has given him, not to what his mind would give him, if allowed sufficient time to degrade it.

The damned before the day of resurrection have no bodies that can offer them any kind of pleasant distraction (not just speaking of sex, I mean even food or the feel of air and sunlight in the yard). The damned after the day of resurrection have bodies that fit their eternal state of mind.

6:10 "more humanely than God"

That illusion comes only from our justice system never ever having to have one sentenced criminal eternally on its hands.

7:13 In fact, if the matter is sufficiently grave, the judge won't give two hoots on whether you had actually looked up the fact that murdering 77 on Utøya was illegal or not.

So, being "absolutely certain" of the law is not a requirement for just punishment.

It's sufficient to be reasonably certain it would normally be wrong (whatever bad excuses you may give yourself for "this once" and whatever illusions you may have about the legal system).

7:26 C o m e ON!

You know perfectly well that there are people who did not lear to read at all, did not learn to look things up, and so on, and if the crime is serious enough they still get sentenced.

Pretending this is fair because "they could look it up" is partly disingenious, and partly, insofar as really applicable, a fair parallel to how God does His justice.

No one is sentenced to Hell for a sin he had no way of knowing was sinful.

And the fact of not having a Bible doesn't make all that much of a difference for lots of sins.

Who shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them, and their thoughts between themselves accusing, or also defending one another,
[Romans 2:15]

This involves homosexuality voluntarily lived out as mentioned in the previous chapter. The fact of being attracted to someone of the same sex may not be a sin, because it may be a punishment (for religious deception). But the fact of acting it out, well, all societies have at least traces of some idea that this is wrong. Including our own, where the trace takes the form of calling "homophobia" a "reactionary mindset" ... as if it were or even conceivably could be wrong to prefer the ideas of loads of generations before over a very new one which is stated as very new, or a very exceptional one, which is stated as exceptional ("yeah, people used to be homophobes ... except the Greeks" ....)

7:37 Speeding can be known to be a crime because no one is allowed to drive before getting a drivers licence.

No one is — and no one should be — required to take a licence for actually living.

But there is another part about speeding. In order to know the crime, you need to know the speed limit.

Imagine you drive across the border in Tijuana. Mexican police catches you for speeding. There is a road that says "60" and you have concluded it's "60 miles per hour" ... in fact, it's "60 km per hour" ... the Mexican police will probably let you off one time, if you didn't actually hurt anyone, but even then you can have a somewhat heated conversation about "didn't you know we 'ave the metric seestem?" or "didn't you see how everyone else was driving slower?"

Speed limits is a perfect example of the kind of things you might really need to have a Catholic Catechism (based on the Bible, but with good simplification, and I don't mean the infamous CCC, get something like Baltimore Catechism N° 4 or Catechism of St. Pius X) in order to comprehend. However, God will never damn you over simply being genuinely ignorant of His limits on the mortal sin you get damned for.

The voices He gave you to keep off that road to Hell are the exact same that will keep you accountable for actually knowing the law on the relevant issues.

7:53 Your example is actually a very good reason to be against sowing religious confusion.

Why was Tyndale burned? No, it was not for translating the Bible, that was against an English jurisprudence on heresy, possibly the actual text of 1401 even, but it was not against the laws of the Catholic Church overall.

If you did so without approval of your bishop, you were a suspect of heresy, but you weren't condemned as in the reports on the Coventry trials (outside England, that is).

He was burned in Vilvoorde, and his Inquisitor had made sure that:

• he believed a sinner who's justified need make no good works to remain justified
• he intended to preach that (which is like cherrypicking Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9 and leaving out verse 10).

That interpretation of Romans 3 actually was "against the law of the land" ... what happened in the English speaking world, and has spread to lots of other places, no state is entirely free, is the exact confusion you are speaking about.

However, there definitely are crimes that are not about "the speed limit" ... again, the ones damned by God will never be simply damned for what they committed in genuine ignorance, not actively opted for.

8:02 You have just given an excellent reason why the Catholic Church as a first basis of Catholic doctrine doesn't hand out a Bible to everyone, like the Gideons, but insists on Catechesis with a few simple to learn by heart lists, and then the explanations attached to such lists.

8:25 In the Catholic Church, your priest IS law enforcement.

When you confess sins you were sure were sins to your father confessor, you also add "I also did this, it happened like this, do I need to repent of this" and he tells you yes or no.

In the overall world, your conscience (as it exists before you silence part of it) is law enforcement.

8:41 Confessional ambiguity is no valid reason.

Of the confessions available today, check out which ones were available in 1400. Mormons weren't. Ray Comfort wasn't. The Catholic Church was. For that matter, so were Waldensians. Go back 600 years more. The Waldensians weren't, the Catholic Church was.

Your choice is between Catholic and Orthodox, which side of the split in 1054 was faithful to the past of the Church prior to that. Or, somewhat more exotic, you might go for one of the Churches known as Copts, Armenians, Assyrians.

But like Matthew 28:16—20 is precise about "all days" it's also precise about "all nations" ... the Church cannot be a national monopoly of a specific nation. Bavarians and Poles are very different between them or with Latin Americans. Orthodox are more homogenous, and the other ones that were around in 800 and still are, are historically restricted to one or two nations except some periods when Nestorians were indeed outside the Assyrian people.

9:16 No, you do not have to have faith to believe any of it.

Faith is the virtue that helps you keep believing all of it, even when you might doubt some of it.

9:22 As said, Church history. Look up which existed and which didn't exist 100, 200, 400, 800 years ago.

9:31 You might pretend that Orthodox and Anglicans disagree with Catholics on whether contraception is a sin.

First, you can watch Europe, country after country, have its pension systems destroyed and its old either more miserable or able to make the young more miserable or both, because Europe has contracepted more than the US.

But then you can check and see that 100 years ago, Anglicans and Orthodox still agreed with the Catholic Church.

1920 Lambeth Conference gave a Catholic conclusion, 1930 Lambeth Conference a non-Catholic one. With Orthodox, it's even later, 1970's under Communist pressure.

9:39 No, between religions, as between confessions, 9 times out of 10, it's not all subjective.

It's a difference about the exact speed limit between people who agree that speed driving on public roads is wrong.

The secularist idea is often the least rational, it's like saying "the German Autobahn has no speed limit," (I think that's technically true for relevant stretches) "let's have no speed limit next to our Kinder garden, yeah!!!!" (The attitude to abortion is obvious and the attitude to homosexuality and other contraception should be able to show its bad light to people who have some sense of cause and effect and some accurate knowledge about Europe right now — including Russia which had a pension rebellion headed by Navalny which fortunately Covid and Ukraine took the eyes away from).

10:00 It's actually, unless the supposed marriage itself is a case of sexual immorality. You didn't know you married your long lost sister or brother. You didn't know you married a trans to the opposite sex. You didn't know your spouse needed to be unmarried (or didn't care) so, you hoped your marriage was one, when it wasn't.

And I mean objectively, not about the quality of the emotions. Here is Matthew 19, the two verses that are relevant, and under it the Catholic comment:

Matthew 19:8 He saith to them: Moses because of the hardness of your hearts permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

9 *And I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and he who shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery.

Comment:

Ver. 8. Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you, &c. Whether this was permitted in the old law, so that the man who was divorced from his wife could marry another woman, is disputed. Some think this second marriage was still unlawful, though tolerated, and not punished. At least in the new law, a divorce upon just causes may be sometimes permitted; but this does not make it lawful for the man or woman so separated to marry another. (Witham)

The latter part of this verse, of St. Paul, (Romans vii. 3,) and the constant tradition of the Church, shew that the exception only refers to separation, but not to the marrying another during the life of the parties. In this place Christ restores the original condition of the marriage state, and henceforth will have it to be a perfect figure of the hypostatic union of his divine person with our human nature, as also of his nuptial union with his Church, and consequently that it should be indissoluble. (Tirinus)

Ver. 9. And I say to you. It is worthy of remark, that in the parallel texts, St. Mark x. 2. and St. Luke xvi. 18. and St. Paul to Corinthians vii. 10. omit the exception of fornication; and also that St. Matthew himself omits it in the second part of the verse; and says absolutely, that he who shall marry her that is put away committeth adultery. It perhaps crept in here from chap. v. 32, where it is found in a phrase very similar to this, but which expresses a case widely different. Divorce is in no case admitted but in that of adultery. This is what Christ teaches in chap. v. 32, and to this the exception is referred, marked in the two texts. But in this very case the separated parties cannot contract a second marriage without again committing adultery, as we must infer, from a comparison of this text with the parallel texts of St. Mark and St. Luke. (Bible de Vence)

If we did not understand it in this manner, the case of the adulteress would be preferable to the case of her who should be put away without any crime of her own; as in this supposition, the former would be allowed to marry again, which the latter would not be allowed. (Tirinus)

St. Augustine is very explicit on this subject. See lib. 11. de adult conjug. chap. xxi. xxii. xxiv.

St. Jerome, in his high commendation of the noble matron, Fabiola, says of her: "that though she was the innocent party, for the unlawful act of marrying again, she did public penance." (In Epitaph. Fabiolæ.)

This universally received doctrine of the Catholic Church was confirmed in the general council of Trent. (Session xxiv. canon 6.)

10:08 Whether cheating or abusing, you have a case for leaving the person, you have no case for marrying someone else.

When it comes to the abuse, it's a question how grave it is, and when it comes to cheating, it's also a case on how much you tolerate or whether you are unfaithful yourself.

10:50 "a subjective law, that's not readily accessible to all people and that dishes out the worst possible punishment"

Were you trying to describe shrinks?

a) basically any diagnostic criterium is subjective, either because it's a matter of judgement, or because it becomes so when full application would be impossible and give the corps immediately bad reputation and trigger a hard blowback
b) how they work is not readily accessible (DSM-V is huge)
c) and being treated like you cannot make your own decisions, and often with medications that torment you, the rest of your life definitely is dishing out the worst possible punishment, in this life.

12:02 Not an excellent way of putting how Jesus redeemed us, no.

Sounds a bit like Calvin. If he'd ventured beyond his robber's nest in Geneva to for instance Rome, he might have paid for saying so on a bonfire.

Jesus paid the penalty of dying, due to Adam's sin, so He's the right to resurrect us, reverse the penalty.

But when it comes to damnation, what Jesus did was gaining the graces of forgiveness and the transforming grace for us, by offering a sacrifice way beyond what the insult to God's majesty was.

14:14 Jesus is not a random stranger.

Innocent, yes. Stranger, no, not to those who are saved.

14:32 The thing Jesus did carry for us, and with us, was dying.

Justice demands His rising from the dead, since He was innocent.

Then justice also demands we can be raised from the dead, it was us He died for, and His sacrifice is worth infinitely more, since it's God's sacrifice of Himself, to God.

So, He gains Resurrection for everyone, not just for Himself, as the case would have been had He been a man.

In the case of Damnation, He never was a standin in the first place, and those who pretend He was are classed as Heretics by the Catholic Church.

14:39 He already was God of the entire Universe before His Incarnation, and remained so.

15:17 First of all, the justice of Hell is not about what crime you committed, it's about whether you repented of a mortal sin before dying.

Between different damned, there is justice about what gravity the crime had, or mortals sins that aren't crimes in human justice.

Between different saved, there is justice about the reward, on how well you did penance, how well you loved God.

B U T the justice of someone being sentenced to Hell is:

• he cannot be annihilated, because God refuses to punish him that much
• he cannot change any more, since he decided to not change while he had an opportunity
• he should not be sponging on God and better people for an illusion of the happiness he hasn't when he missed the real thing.

Continuing with Kristi Burke

Metatron Made Some Mistakes in His Video on Historic Truth being Objective · First Half of a Video by Kristi Burke · Continuing with Kristi Burke

15:10 Exactly.
"it's what we know, all we know, it's all what we have to go off of"

I'd say exactly the same thing for the New Testament, specifically Gospels.

Unless you have a good historic counternarrative.

"I'm not dedicating my entire life and my faith ..."

1) what counts as good evidence counts as good evidence
2) what you decide to dedicate your life to is what you decide to dedicate your life to.

You know, some people have been very seriously convinced Christianity is true, and even so very unwilling to dedicate their life to Christ even in the most basic way of avoiding mortal sins after baptism (and getting baptised if one isn't already).

So, while Christianity being true kind of gives a reason for on some level or other (anything from simple Christian to monk or nun, or even to martyr) to dedicate your life to Christ, this doesn't mean evidence for it being true have to be weighted like motives for dedicating your entire life.

15:51 "people passed along orally before people wrote down"

Let's take Gospel after Gospel, traditional view.

Matthew - no, he was one of he original twelve.
Mark - heard St. Peter who was one of the original twelve.
Luke - heard many of the original witnesses.
John - was the beloved disciple whether that means the Son of Zebedee, as most have thought since Irenaeus, or a Cohen who was a lesser disciple, as Jean Colson took from some hints mainly from before Irenaeus, partly from Bible, partly from Early Church Fathers who stayed in Asia Minor.

So - if by "before" you mean "as sources" - no, no, no and no.

Futhermore, prologue of St. Luke's Gospel says the earliest attempts at writing Gospels were not all preserved.

I would say, there was deliberately a kind of experiment. St. Luke was not given St. Matthew to read. He was told to piece things together, as he was already writing Acts, and he came to a result remarkably close to St. Matthew. Indeed, one of the things said about how St. Mark heard Peter involves: Luke went to Rome to Peter to get the Gospel authorised (like kind of by the first Pope, so, St. Clement the Stromatist saying this, and he was from Alexandria, not too many decades after St. Mark went there, is an arguament for papacy), Peter held up Matthew and Luke side by side, read now from one, now from other, added some own comments, skipped some, jumped some, and Mark didn't notice, but thought Peter was dictating a Gospel, and dutifully took it down.

This means, St. Peter was very impressed by how close Luke came to Matthew.

16:00 The game of telephone is a very good model for what happens when a hysteric housewife picks up the telephone to phone a few other hysteric housewives, and each then picks up her telephone.

It's not a good model for organised oral transmission of what already happened, is much less urgent, and where you can take the time to actually ask intelligent questions and note their answers, and where those who were learning best were picked out for being the next persons to transmit it. Not a good model at all.

16:50 I agree, the argument is lousy.

It cuts both ways.

Sure, you might not have the right to conclude against believing, but most of them (and probably all who are stating that sentence) would on that principle not have a right to conclude for believing.

They could say, "but hey, we rely on Biblical scholars like" (a fav on the Protestant side you are more likely to hear about is what I gather of Lydia McGrew from her fan Erik Manning, but insert any other you have heard of).

You could argue in return that you rely on scholars like Bart Ehrmann or (a little more radical) Richard Carrier.

But right now you are not giving an extra argument against believing, you are answering an argument for believing which really isn't one, just so we are clear on that.

17:00 "it's meant for all people to read and know who God is ..."

No, it's not meant for that.

Here is another way in which doing Christian apologetics will tend to destroy Protestantism, in my own case it made me Catholic, for instance over people telling me "if you don't trust the Catholic Church" (and I didn't - I bought into silly criticisms of Catholic institutions I had really just heard of through a telephone game which might start with Erasmus for Inquisition or with Luther for Indulgences, and into stupid conspiracy thinking about Jesuits) "why do you trust the Bible, that's where the Reformers had the Bible from" - which is true.

I was hearing in history (ninth and tenth grade) on how England and on how Sweden went from Catholicism to Protestantism, each with a slightly different version, and I completed by looking for info in encyclopedias about Scotland or Germany and somewhat less about Netherlands. I knew as a fairly solid historic fact ...

"it's what we know, all we know, it's all what we have to go off of"

... that the Reformers came more than a millennium after the Apostles, and didn't have the NT from them, but from the Catholic Church.

Which, unlike your Evangelical friends doesn't tell one "you only have to read the Bible to know who God is" ...

On the contrary.

Romans 10 says oral explanation is needed:
12 For there is no distinction of the Jew and the Greek: for the same is Lord over all, rich unto all that call upon him. 13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. 14 How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear, without a preacher? 15 And how shall they preach unless they be sent, as it is written: How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, of them that bring glad tidings of good things!
II Peter - chapter 3 - says reading Bible books can be an occasion for self deception:
16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction.

18:36 To get the main gist, it is enough to trust Catholic bishops, successors of the original apostles.

Yes, that is a credible claim, at least with some leeway.

Orthodox, Copts, Armenians, Assyrians also have bishops going back to the Apostles.

Sure, some of them are going to miss some things, and I just identified an Irish migrant heritage bishop in 1943 as behind a very unwise ruling on Genesis. Not just into "day age" and similar, but even into remodelling the view of Genesis 5 and 11 to suit some moderns ... but that bishop certainly would have told you correctly how to get saved.

Why is less erudition needed?

Partly because it isn't, it's just a different erudition than some modern universities. Bishops actually do consecrate lots of their life to looking into doctrine.

But partly because, the erudition you use is about reconstructing what the original intent was into a Protestant world already disagreeing on it, a Catholic only has to be erudite enough to understand and defend what he's got from tradition - from the Apostles.

19:24 I'd agree - the Bible is, in at least some passages, including certain epistles (specifically mentioned by St. Peter in II Peter 3) not a book for all people to read on their own.

21:12 Yep.

People who didn't know how to even read the Gospels had access to them from Church windows and icons.

Thank you for vindicating the Catholic Church.

22:30 There are two different things here.

The Bible itself, as confirmed by Trent Session IV, does involve the Bible being inerrant.

But it does not promise, nor is it confirmed by Trent anywhere, that nothing in the Bible can be difficult or to some insufficiently instructed misleading as it stands, when the correct understanding, due to cultural changes, is for a modern reader sometimes better conveyed by a paraphrase. Especially the Bible nowhere promises no one will be translating it wrong, and Catholic priests have sometimes burned Protestant vernacular Bible translations over this (and outside England usually not over the fact it is in vernacular as such). For instance, can one use prayer beads and repeat a short prayer like a mantra and enter a kind of light trance? Well, yes. Reading or singing the psalms will also help one enter a state of at least light trance. But some Protestants object because their translation of Matthew 6:7 involving the word "repetition" ... the Greek has "stutterspeak" (battologein), the Latin uses an equivalent "many words" - between them it conveys someone making a petition nervously (like someone stuttering), and starting over and over again in different words, because one is not sure which words the gods will be pleased with and not (perhaps on purpose) misunderstand. Which adds up to a long text, not to many repetitions of a short one.

And before you ask, as you would have back when you were a Protestant, "aren't Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists supposed to be Pagans, and don't they use prayer beads" - yes, but they were very much NOT Greco-Roman Pagans. Greco-Roman paganism involves idols, temples, altars, ritual butchery knives, vessels to get the blood and the meat, and lots of other stuff but no prayer beads. A Greco-Roman prayer to Jove would typically involve a presentation of the offering given, and a request, followed by the immolation of the offering, or if it was a promise, not immediately followed by it. That's it. Hearing the guy pray was exciting (to a certain type of man) exactly as hearing a politician make a speech or raise a toast was.

Romans had very marginal contact with Indians, whether Hindu or Buddhist, and they classified both of these, as well as both Christians and Jews, as "worshippers of Bacchus" - from their pov indulging in a religion of ritual irresponsability. What Jesus was speaking of was Greco-Roman paganism. The Centurion who saw things obey Jesus had more confidence in Jesus than he had ever had in Jove. This is why he could word his request in simple words rather than long explanations. However, Christian prayer is not always just about making requests, prayers of praise are involved in the petition "hallowed be thy name" whather they are 150 psalms or 150 Hail Mary.

25:32 "that in any other circumstance would be completely untrustworthy"

I'd be curious about those other circumstances.

If I don't trust Hercules actually killed a hydra, this is because I think the hydra was not a biological being, but a demonic manifestation. But I still do trust it was plaguing people passing through the Lernaean marshes before Hercules came there, and was no longer doing so after he passed. Equally, I don't trust his being Jove's son at all, but I do trust he had so much muscle force (and irascibility and domineering behaviour), probably partly from demons, as to make his pagan surroundings and himself believe that.

Were your argument that if I trusted the history of Hercules, I'd have to worship him, so, it would have been un-Christian to trust it even as history? Not how Catholics throughout lots of centuries have seen it.

First Half of a Video by Kristi Burke

Metatron Made Some Mistakes in His Video on Historic Truth being Objective · First Half of a Video by Kristi Burke · Continuing with Kristi Burke

Is it Reasonable to Reject Biblical Claims? | Thoughts From an Ex-Christian
Kristi Burke, 17 sept. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRljZtsDvmU

3:28 "Supernatural claims"

4:03 I haven't seen any war action.

I haven't been to Ukraine, sure, but I still have never seen any war action.

Nor have I seen a peace treaty being signed. Sure the Versailles Treaty or the Capitulation of Appomatox aren't myths?

4:11 "because supernatural claims cannot be proven"

As I have been accused of being a flat earther, I do take good looks at some nooks and crannies flat earth is really coming from.

"I don't believe in Portuguese claims like Magellan, because Portuguese claims cannot be proven. Round earth claims cannot be proven"

Said by any and every Hindu in Goa who was flat earther because of distrust in the Portuguese ...

I have personally not been to China, and not further into the Pacific than a stretch of Newport beach in CA ... can you prove the Pacific exists and China exists, without appealing to stories, like that of Marco Polo, nicknamed Il Millione or politicians claiming to visit Xí Jìnpíng, and who said politicians never lie? You know the joke:

"Q How do you know a politician is lying?"
"A He's moving the lips"

Something which also might apply to salespeople ...

4:18 "science is our best way to make conclusions about our reality"

Because scientists never lie?
Or because they are never mistaken in how they conclude?
A N D ... what is the relevance in relation to supernatural claims?

For the last of these, the fact is, any given science will definitely study natural claims, and by the very fact of doing so, will be leaving out whether nature exists on its own or exists in dependence of something supernatural, and if so, how much or little that interferes ...

4:21 "the scientific method"

No science ever was content with what Popper called the scientific method.

All of them, without exception, need lots of pieces of method that are not involved in Popper, and if there be such a thing as a "science about what actually happened" ... it definitely is so different from what sciences are usually like, that it needs a method of its own, very distinct from it.

Wait - heard of history, going by eyewitness testimony?

4:33 Peer review is definitely not part of the "scientific method" as outlined by Popper.

It's just (especially in pre-publishing peer review, a kind of censorship) the protocol followed currently by researchers in many fields over many universities.

4:39 "it's literally a process in which you attempt to prove yourself wrong"

Literally this is so since Popper.

In fact, no.

The good test is not asking a scientist "did you attempt to prove yourself wrong" - "yes" - "what happened" - "I failed" - "oh, you are probably right, then" ... the good test is when scientists and other types of researchers attempt to prove each other wrong. It's called "debate" ...

4:58 Two methods for studying the supernatural world.

• a) metaphysics (including but not limited to irreducible complexity and Kalam)
• b) history (supernatural, by definition, is sth independent of nature, but of which nature is not independent - could show in miracles ... hence, is it most likely that Matthew:
  • i) lied
  • ij) was mistaken
  • iij) or wrote the truth?)

5:36 "not verifiable"
According to what methodology?

Or according to your parrotting of a favourite scientist you looked up to?

What you mention are (mostly) events, and you have not given any ground for there being a different process of verifying a talking snake from an orally handed down genealogy, or a water jar getting water in and putting wine out than verifying whether a specific man went to a specific party.

7:04 "they ate something"

Seems to be already refuted:

"Some believe[5] the dancing could have been brought on by food poisoning caused by the toxic and psychoactive chemical products of ergot fungi (ergotism), which grows commonly on grains (such as rye) used for baking bread. Ergotamine is the main psychoactive product of ergot fungi; it is structurally related to the drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25) and is the substance from which LSD-25 was originally synthesized. The same fungus has also been implicated in other major historical anomalies, including the Salem witch trials.[11][12]"

"In The Lancet, John Waller argues that "this theory does not seem tenable, since it is unlikely that those poisoned by ergot could have danced for days at a time. Nor would so many people have reacted to its psychotropic chemicals in the same way. The ergotism theory also fails to explain why almost every outbreak occurred somewhere along the Rhine and Moselle rivers, areas linked by water but with quite different climates and crops".[2]"

And as you are so into peer reviews, The Lancet after all is a peer reviewed paper.

"sth psychological"

W a i t ...

"Waller speculates that the dancing was "stress-induced psychosis" on a mass level, since the region where the people danced was riddled with starvation and disease, and the inhabitants tended to be superstitious. Seven other cases of dancing plague were reported in the same region during the medieval era.[1]"

Footnote links to Viegas, Jennifer (August 1, 2008). "'Dancing Plague' and Other Odd Afflictions Explained : Discovery News". Archived from the original on October 13, 2012. Retrieved 2023-04-24.

The problem with her idea it's a natural result of psychological factors is, she only gives a parallel, equally unexplained, which equally warrant the question of whether there was something demonic involved.

"1962. Tanganyika, East Africa. In a rural boarding school on the shore of Lake Victoria, dozens of adolescent girls began to laugh and cry uncontrollably. After trying to stem these mysterious breakouts for a month and a half, school officials gave up and sent everyone home. As the girls fanned out to their homes across the region, their behaviors spread too. Over 1000 people were affected. Families and governments enlisted all kinds of experts to give them a clue about what was going on. Eventually, an official diagnosis: mass hysteria. About two years after it began, the epidemic petered out. Nobody died. Everybody recovered."

Two notes on it:

• 1) they were adolescent, meaning staying in school was perhaps not the best choice for their chastity;
• 2) 1962 was the year when Vatican II was convoked - if the girls in Tanganyika were not Catholic, God could have decided Lutherans and Anglicans needed to give a good chuckle to a false council actually helping their bad cause.

"The Christian population is largely composed of Roman Catholics and Protestants. Among the latter, the large number of Lutherans and Moravians point to the German past of the country while the number of Anglicans point to the British history of Tanganyika. All of them have had some influence in varying degrees from the Walokole movement (East African Revival), which has also been fertile ground for the spread of charismatic and Pentecostal groups."

7:20 "Lack of consistency"

9:04 If a medical faculty tells a psychologist to do real bonding, and an epidemologist to do measures of hygiene ... (neither case extended to all of human society outside clinics, btw) ... is the medical faculty being inconsistent? Or is it dealing with different actors in different situations in ways that are different according to the different roles and situations?

A military conquering a homeland - better needed then than in 1948 - and a caste of people living extra holy (we Catholics refer to some of the things you quoted as "Evangelical counsels" = not for everyone!) =|= NOT the same thing.

Dealing with people whose human sacrificing idolatry was a plague worse than Nazism and Communism combined (at least in immediate gruesomeness, in Communism abortions are at least hidden away) and dealing with normal people around you =|= ALSO NOT the same thing.

BETH

Can you expound on your thoughts? I’m confused as to what you believe, respectfully

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Go through it again, @BETH-dr4ko.

I was adressing the claim of inconsistency between the directives given to Joshua in taking Canaan and the directives given in the Sermon on the Mount by Our Lord Jesus Christ.

THEN ask if there is still some particular that is unclear to you.

9:50 Theophany vs revelation of God's nature=|= AGAIN NOT the same thing.

10:27 "Timing of written events"

11:04 the claim that Synoptics were written after AD 70 comes so late (recent centuries) as to be very untrustworthy compared to Church internal traditions of when ...

11:53 Have you heard of sth called "learning by heart"?

Also, Sermon on the Mount is in Matthew, traditionally the earliest Gospel, 30's or 40's.

12:02 Do you remember "A, B, C, D"?

Do you remember lyrics of any song?

Have you ever learned a text by heart?

Can repeating a text you have learned by heart over and over help you accurate recall?

I know for a fact that people can learn not just the Apostolic but also the Nicene Creed by heart.

Now go to the longest of the texts, I suspect it is the Sermon on the Mount, and see how many Nicene Creeds long it is ...?

I checked it myself.

CLXX words Nicene Creed in Latin

DCCXV words Matthew V (except intro)
DLXIX Matthew VI
CDXXXIX Matthew VII

MDCCXXIII words Sermon on the Mount = c. 10 Nicene Creeds.

12:22 Take a look at this part:

Every one therefore that heareth these my words, and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock, And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock.

And every one that heareth these my words, and doth them not, shall be like a foolish man that built his house upon the sand, And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof.

Once you hear that and learn it by heart, what are the chances you get any of it wrong, as not just not the right word, but not the right meaning?

Or this part:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called children of God. 10 Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that were before you.

In fact, this has also a very clear thematic unity, which makes the miss-out unlikely.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men. You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house.

So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

You have a parallel between salt and light ... but the city on a mountain comes in a bit off beside the other parts.

Can St. Matthew have learned sth by heart, forgotten part of it, and kept what he recalled?

Or can he have mixed up what was said on this occasion, with other ones where "candle on a candlestick" and "city on a mountain" are put in parallel?

Well, it could be Jesus actually did add this quirky extra on the spot, as it stands, but if He didn't, if a part connected with city is lost or if mountain and bushel are paralleled because of bushel mentioned in other lessons Our Lord gave, does it matter, as the teaching is obviously the same (and one which Protestants don't like - visible perpetuity of the Church, as Jesus founded it = no room for the Reformation)?

Would it matter?

12:32 Falling asleep is a process that takes some minutes.

Those words were probably what they heard before falling asleep. Perhaps heard repeated while waking up a few times very uneasily and falling back into sleep.

They were close enough for Jesus to stop praying and wake them up when He wanted to.

12:51 How many oral retellings does it take before sth becomes unreliable?

It is not just a question of how many inbetweens, but also of, how long and detailed instruction is each giving the next one. It was given the culture of oral teaching very arguably a very far cry from telephone game (no long or detailed instruction even allowed).

I note the prayer in Gethsemane was written down in Matthew, by one of the original earwitnesses (you can hear what someone's saying even if you have your eyes closed while going to sleep).

12:57 "God breathed the story"

In fact one God-breathed word in this connexion is:
Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a narration of the things that have been accomplished among us; According as they have delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word: It seemed good to me also, having diligently attained to all things from the beginning, to write to thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mayest know the verity of those words in which thou hast been instructed.
Another one is:
And he that saw it, hath given testimony, and his testimony is true. And he knoweth that he saith true; that you also may believe.

This pretty much excludes the theory that Gospel writers were unaware of the story apart from the inspiration from God they were receiving while writing. On the contrary, normal acts of memory and research are at work, and God inspires recalling exactly the right thing or chosing exactly the right version, not any kind of new knowledge of it coming ex nihilo.

13:37 Time to:

• prop Jesus up as a God, though He did not call Himself so
• go from Jewish Apocalyptic cult into actual separate religion
• to create subgroups of Christians (with different ideologies)
• write / discover new things

These operations actually:

• take more than just time
• do not explain the records of the miracles.

Unless you go for people having time to get martyred and then deciding to change their message with some frauds ...

The subgroups with different ideologies are outside the Church that Jesus founded and which wrote the Gospels, they are prime examples of "heresy" ....

14:14 What contradictions?

14:55 How about dedicating your next week (that's not your entire life, I hope) to finding three events in history (outside miracles) and asking yourself exactly how much they could have got wrong and why?

Trying to Correct Mrs Kristi Burke on Babel

Deconstructing the Tower of Babel | When God Confused Everyone
Kristi Burke, 21 July 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w56ZgxQg2A

3:21 from the east

Hebrew has miqqedem, usually translated from the east, Greek has apo anatolôn, genitive plural, means from the east, Latin has de oriente, means from the east.

Old translations to vernaculars also have from the east, like Douay Rheims and King James for English.

The idea of "eastward" comes from a kind of fridge logic, about placing the Genesis 11 Babel in Southern Irak, in South-East Mesopotamia. The place where we have a small city carbon dated to 1800 - 2000, which later became big under Hammurapi and Nebuchandnezzar. Wait a minute, to get there from "Ararat"you don't go from east to west, but mainly from north to south and slightly from west to east? Well, what if it really is "from the east" and this is not necessarily a different political-religious entity or meta-entity, but still a different geographic location from the city of Hammurapi and Nebuchadnezzar? May have its perks for credibility, actually.

3:34 Latin and Douay Rheims have Sennaar - SEN-na(h)-ar.

3:48 "want everyone to be peaceful and work together"

Well, what if God prefers peaceful over working together?

Can some peoples' collaboration get into the way of other peoples' peace?

Is WORK the most peaceful state of man? Especially team work? Especially internationally scrutinised team work?

The date of Genesis 11:1, everyone had a single language by default - there was one language on the Ark, and the descendants were not very big fans of conlanging. So, eventually, God did some conlanging for them ... the one language was not God's plan for making cooperation a huge thing.

4:50 I think you and your hubby among the Riqueños ... imagine getting there after overworking at a pressure heavy worksite?

That's what God did for some of the people by conlanging + the miracle of sudden language replacement. Others at least got away from the worksite.

5:17 "a tower that reaches to heaven"

Again wrong.

A tower, the top of which reaches into heaven.

At Cape Canaveral, the capsule or module or whatever you call it, that eventually reached the Moon, was just the top of a threestep rocket, that stood like a tower before take-off.

I'm not the least saying Nimrod could have pulled it off technologically. But that doesn't mean he didn't think he could.

So, the international (anachronistic word, better say "global") collaboration was for a wild goose chase which would have led nowhere or to major disaster, depending on his choice for rocket fuel. As I think Uranium was used in wars before the Flood, and that Nimrod knew about it, just like later authors of the Mahabharata, I think he would have chosen a very disastrous rocket fuel, if he could have laid hold on it.

Sometimes, opting out of collaboration is a prudential and moral duty.

5:56 Before you think "they seem to be doing OK" - how about taking a look at what we can do with rocketry and skyscrapers?

Not much of a colonisation of heaven, is it? But at least, building rockets and skyscrapers is a specialised task for a very small portion of the earth.

Imagine everyone on earth drafted into such a hairbrained project!

Would you want to live in a 1000 storey skyscraper? What if the main elevator (there would be subsidiary ones to take one within the next fifty storeys from main storeys) got stuck?

Would you want to live on the moon or on an exo-planet, because Nimrod gets hysteric "another flood is coming!" - or would you prefer living on earth?

What if you certainly had the option to live on earth yourself, but were forced to work for those trying to colonise God's heaven?

6:11 There are two deviations from peace.

Open war.
Government warring against recalcitrants.

Now, let's take a place which I think was Nimrod's Babel. Skulls not attached to the necks have been found at Göbekli Tepe. Bodies without heads exposed to vultures have been depicted on ceramics found in Çatalhöyük, not very far from there. Like 700 km West. C. 50 days walk. Note, I would say Çatalhöyük is one of the earliest settlements directly after Nimrod's Babel.

Say Babel ended in 2556 BC, when Peleg was born, carbon dated as 8600 BC, as per Göbekli Tepe. Çatalhöyük is carbon dated to 7100 to 5700 BC. In my tables, one premiss of which is of course 2556 BC = "8600 BC", these carbon dates read like a little before 2399 BC to just about 2243 BC. So, Çatalhöyük starts c. 150 years after Babel is over, probably when Nimrod is still alive. Why? He's Ham's grandson, same generation as Sale.

Shelah 137 – 597 (after the Flood) - he survived c. 200 years after Babel, after Peleg was born.

So, Nimrod may have done so too. Or, he may have been very absent from Çatalhöyük, but they liked his system.

6:57 While it doesn't say that here, take a look at Jewish tradition, like Josephus.

Antiquities, book I, chapter 4.

CHAPTER 4. Concerning The Tower Of Babylon, And The Confusion Of Tongues.
1. Now the sons of Noah were three,—Shem, Japhet, and Ham, born one hundred years before the Deluge. These first of all descended from the mountains into the plains, and fixed their habitation there; and persuaded others who were greatly afraid of the lower grounds on account of the flood, and so were very loath to come down from the higher places, to venture to follow their examples. Now the plain in which they first dwelt was called Shinar. God also commanded them to send colonies abroad, for the thorough peopling of the earth, that they might not raise seditions among themselves, but might cultivate a great part of the earth, and enjoy its fruits after a plentiful manner. But they were so ill instructed that they did not obey God; for which reason they fell into calamities, and were made sensible, by experience, of what sin they had been guilty: for when they flourished with a numerous youth, God admonished them again to send out colonies; but they, imagining the prosperity they enjoyed was not derived from the favor of God, but supposing that their own power was the proper cause of the plentiful condition they were in, did not obey him. Nay, they added to this their disobedience to the Divine will, the suspicion that they were therefore ordered to send out separate colonies, that, being divided asunder, they might the more easily be Oppressed.

2. Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it was through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach! and that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers!

3. Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them divers languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion. The Sibyl also makes mention of this tower, and of the confusion of the language, when she says thus: "When all men were of one language, some of them built a high tower, as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven, but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave every one his peculiar language; and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon." But as to the plan of Shinar, in the country of Babylonia, Hestiaeus mentions it, when he says thus: "Such of the priests as were saved, took the sacred vessels of Jupiter Enyalius, and came to Shinar of Babylonia."

Let me underline:

He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach! and that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers!

7:23 Quite a lot of individuals want to make a name for their indivisual selves.

We read "let US make a name for OURSELVES" - so it was a collectivist project, actually stifling individual pursuit of glory, except for a few who were leading the common project.

7:53 Again your translation is wrong. It says "if" ... Here is Douay Rheims.

Behold, it is one people, and all have one tongue: and they have begun to do this, neither will they leave off from their designs, till they accomplish them in deed.

There is no "if" it is plain, non-conditional, future. It is at least speaking of their intentions.

So, saying the tower was completed at Cape Canaveral (or accomplished), doesn't mean a refutation of the story, doesn't mean God failed. It actually means God kept His promise or His prophecy was realised.

So, if God was thwarting their intentions, why not continue to do so?

Well, rocketry in the XXth C. was so much less tyrannical, and so much less dangerous to mankind, than the rocket project would have been under Nimrod. God wanted to momentarily thwart them, not to make success permanently impossible (since then, people have made lots of devices to bridge language barriers, so Wernher von Braun could help the Murricans).

8:00 "us" = Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Only the Almighty (the three Persons are each almighty, but not three almighties, but one almighty) can do the miracle of sudden language substitution.

So each of the persons adressed needs to be a Divine Person, not just an angel, or even less a man.

8:45 Your theory would make Genesis one of the very earlist books of the Hebrew Scriptures.

While a Fundie, attributing it to Moses, agrees, the scholarship on your side doesn't, they usually say Genesis was largely inspired by Mesopotamian myths. During the Babylonian captivity.

Here is an alternative theory. To Adam, to Heber, to Abraham and Lot, God was fairly upfront about the Trinity.

To Moses and Aaron, God told them basically, that was one of the things they had to keep secret up to when Jesus would come, and only indirectly hint at. Hence the absence of this kind of direct Trinitarian reference in later books, which I actually (as a Fundie, believing Genesis was by Moses using older material) do consider later.

9:24 I checked, the first references to God being almighty are actually from Genesis. Here are the first hits from an internal search machine on Douay Rheims site:

And after he began to be ninety and nine years old, the Lord appeared to him: and said unto him: I am the Almighty God: walk before me, and be perfect.
[Genesis 17:1]

And God almighty bless thee, and make thee to increase, and multiply thee: that thou mayst be a multitude of people.
[Genesis 28:3]

And said to him: I am God Almighty, increase thou and be multiplied. Nations and peoples of nations shall be from thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins. [Genesis 35:11]

And may my almighty God make him favourable to you; and send back with you your brother, whom he keepeth, and this Benjamin: and as for me I shall be desolate without children.
[Genesis 43:14]

And when Joseph was come in to him, he said: God Almighty appeared to me at Luza, which is in the land of Chanaan: and he blessed me,
[Genesis 48:3]

The God of thy father shall be thy helper, and the Almighty shall bless thee with the blessings of heaven above, with the blessings of the deep that lieth beneath, with the blessings of the breasts and of the womb.
[Genesis 49:25]

9:41 No, it's neither obvious nor evident that "these concepts evolve over time"

What is obvious is, if God is utterly simple, then getting to know God has its complexities, and so, if God wants to give His people (pre-Babel mankind, Hebrews / Jews / Catholic Church) a thorough knowledge of Himself, this means showing different aspects at different times.

10:33 Jesus is making the "proxy omnipotence" of the Church kind of match the "proxy omnipotence" of fallen mankind.

10:39 A person trying to kill everyone in a gruesome and graphic way who is trying to shirk from a hairbrained project is hardly being a disciple of Jesus.

So, Jesus knew His disciples could not ultimately abuse the power He was giving them.

He knew mankind had more than once collectively abused powers inherent in our nature, and was going to do so again.

10:49 God being ultimately in control doesn't equate to God "controlling" people out of their individual wills.

God refusing an immediate success doesn't control the ones failing to simply give up. Confer what I said about Çatalhöyük, starting out 150 years after Babel ended.

But whether it is collectively or individually, God controls the timing and the rate of success and failure.

Take a look at these two passages:

I know, O Lord, that the way of a man is not his: neither is it in a man to walk, and to direct his steps.
[Jeremias (Jeremiah) 10:23]

The heart of man disposeth his way: but the Lord must direct his steps.
[Proverbs 16:9]

So, man has the freedom to decide where he wants to go, but God has the control of whether he actually gets there. General fact.

11:08 After Babel, God singled out one people to incorporate His own plan.

What happened was not God forcing everyone to do as He would like them to chose, what happened was splitting up those rebelling against Him, so they had less opportunities to wipe out the people of successful shirkers. Yes, Hebrews shirled the Tower work site.

Here is what St. Augustine of Hippo says, City of God, Book XVI, chapter 11, citing only part:

And thus, although it is not expressly stated, that when the wicked were building Babylon there was a godly seed remaining, this indistinctness is intended to stimulate research rather than to elude it. For when we see that originally there was one common language, and that Heber is mentioned before all Shem's sons, though he belonged to the fifth generation from him, and that the language which the patriarchs and prophets used, not only in their conversation, but in the authoritative language of Scripture, is called Hebrew, when we are asked where that primitive and common language was preserved after the confusion of tongues, certainly, as there can be no doubt that those among whom it was preserved were exempt from the punishment it embodied, what other suggestion can we make, than that it survived in the family of him whose name it took, and that this is no small proof of the righteousness of this family, that the punishment with which the other families were visited did not fall upon it?

Well, if the confusion was the punishment for collaborating in an evil project, the exemption was probably for the righteousness of shirking it.

Heber and Peleg both outlived Çatalhöyük, but Shelah didn't.

Now, very arguably, the ages at death in Shem's line follow a neat curve, younger and younger, so we need not presume he was martyred at Çatalhöyük for shirking or for helping people to shirk, but he could have been, chronologically.

11:47 Giving someone free will is certainly ethical on God's part.

Giving a freewilled agent success in all his doings, would not always be so.

Is someone happy that Schindler foiled some guys? Is someone happy that Hitler didn't get Admiral von Trapp to Bremerhaven, but he and his went to Italy and then US?

So, why so upset that some people (who certainly retained their free will) got foiled?

12:20 [correcting her resumé] work for a hairbrained project, in more and more tyranny against shirkers, and with the unity more and more enforced by dictatorship tactics ....

13:08 Your reading of the Bible is faulty - like your reading of Nimrod's project.

13:29 If God had separated close kin, yes, that would have been cruel.

If he separated cruel foremen from harrassed workers, pretty much less cruel.

13:52 There is a very big difference between trying to divide siblings from each other or husband and wife or parents and not yet grown children - and putting out a dysfunctional skyscraper neighbourhood into individual country houses.

Nowhere in the text and nowhere in the normal comments I have seen is it suggested that God split families. At that point. St. Lucy disagreeing with her father and getting beheaded is for later on.

14:31 Contraception may be "freedom" to a woman contracepting, it's not to the children she actually gets, especially not if abortion was involved. It's not freedom for a child to hear "I could have aborted you" ...

And the generation Z is so much less free than the generation of the babyboomers was, their age.

14:47 "did not actually happen"

In Göbekli Tepe (and Çatalhöyük, and Jericho) we find no writing at all.

In the Palaeolithic, we find the same 32 symbols over and over again all over the earth.

After Göbekli Tepe, we find diverse writing systems, Vinca is not Mohenjo Daro.

To have one writing system, like the Latin alphabet, between different people, the obvious solution is to have:
a) either the same language
b) or the other languages get their writing from one and the same one, directly or indirectly.

The most natural result of having different languages is, if you write, you have different writing systems.

Pose Göbekli Tepe for Babel, and pose that carbon dates are distortedly prolonged, but in the right direction, and you have pretty good evidence that people went from one to several languages, and this around a place and time which is pretty good as a match for Babel. Already mentioned miqqedem.

@harveywabbit9541

Babel is two words of Bab and El aka gate of el aka gate of god aka gate of the ram (Ram's gate).

hglundahl

@harveywabbit9541 Would you mind telling me what that has to do with it?

That there is a ram's gate in Nebuchadnezzar's city? That must be it?

Have you seen the stones in Göbekli Tepe? Pillar one has five snakes and a ram.

@harveywabbit9541

@hglundahl
Haven't read anything on Gobekli Tepe in a few years. Sounds interesting. The Ram is associated with Jupiter in several areas. The biblical El gets this name from the twist ed ram horns and coriander seed. The Greek Zeus was depicted with ram horns. Moses (Aquarius) was depicted with cow horns as he personified the winter solstice in Aquarius (Age of Taurus)

hglundahl

@harveywabbit9541 OK, that's kind of a different debate, was not up for a New Age interpretation ...

@harveywabbit9541 You may have a point if you mean the worship of Jove has precedents in Classic Babylon and in Göbekli Tepe.

15:47 Actually, I think some of these Non-Conformist "churches" are Neo-Nimrodian.

I've encountered Calvinists online who pretend it is generally speaking sinful and mistaken to chose your own spouse.

I've encountered in real life a sect ma (and me) left over them deciding over our heads to send us to Canada. To them, that may have seemed rebellious of ma.

However, let's recall that Nimrod doesn't mean "I shall rebel" but "we shall rebel" ...

Some people who read mainly a language where "you" can stand for both "thou" and "y'all" have a hard time seeing Jesus condemned collective narcissism in the Pharisees, and try to pretend He felt exactly the same about individual narcissism, which is how some of them stamp any individual projects.

16:02 As Catholics, we have very strict rules about when a pastor can and can't speak on God's behalf.

For instance, he cannot chose your life for you.

If you go to a Catholic priest and say "I want to marry, could you give me a good tip on where to get a Catholic husband" (not you, you are already married), he can't say "no, God told me He wants you to be a nun" ... if Catholic priests do decide to run someone's life a bit Non-Conformist pastor style, the best they can do is keep out of a persons way totally or limit the interaction to only Confession. You know, when you go to one, you are supposed to be repenting of sins, not asserting your projects. Hence, not a very good time for a layman to tell a priest what he wants to do with his life.

18:49 Not everyone is capable of looking that up

But the Catholic Church is collectively capable of retaining it.