does Israel have 'a right to exist"?

you beat me to it m8 !!!!!!!

or that could of been the part he made up to double bluff people into thinking his whole story is true.

2 million hebrews witnessed it along with the Egyptians.

so he's a nice guy, god then yeah ?


fuckin sound it

they witnessed God did they ? says who ?

2 million hebrews, they either witnessed hashem or conspired together and pulled off the greatest lie known to man.

But somewhere along the line I'm sure one of them would of let the cat out of the bag.

yeah but joe how do we know these two million hebrews wittnesed God ?

Interesting. But the point i was trying to get at was why is it ok without the o? Surely, the original kiddush hashem would have been with His name written in hebrew? So now it's been translated to English, and then it was translated to g-d. My point was that is it not the meaning that's sacred, rather than how it's written. So isn't writing g-d exactly the same as writing God?

Because its documented, either you're calling an entire nation liars or they believed that they witnessed g-d on mnt sinai.

If hashem did talk to the Hebrew slaves on mnt sinai then what would we expect to see next? All of the nation would follow the Laws, and educate their children to follow the laws. And, each generation would pass the Laws to the next one, generation after generation. Fine. That is exactly what our tradition claims happened. But what if He didn't speak there? Then what? Well, then you have millions of people, an entire nation agreeing on the same lie. A huge conspiracy. Every person in the desert lied the same lie.

Its either one or the other, the Jewish nation lied when Israel came into creation or they believed they witnessed g-d.

The English name is still a name for g-d.

But so is g-d.

I'm not trying to be smart or have a go. Just wondering what the jewish line of thought on it is, eg. are them some hardcore ones who won't even write g-d?

mate documents mean bot all . Every religion is based on these sacred documents which to be perfectly honest could have been written by anyone . Religion is falible thats a fact . there has never been and will never be any unrefutable evidence that G-d has been seen , exsits , spoke to moses or bucked some virgin and had a jesus !

I do believe there is something there.But basing your beliefs on a book written a long time ago by people claiming to have witnessed god is a bit naive / hopefull .

But thats just my opinion .

1 fuckin NIL

Joe I happen to believe your version, but it doesn't take a genius to suggest a different slant on events.

Who's to say the 'plagues' were acts of God? What if they were just natural disasters, and Moses had his followers believe it was an act of his God?

How do you know there wasn't some disease that spread round Egypt over the course of a day or two wiping out a lot of their population (the 'first borns')?

How do you know God parted the sea for Moses? It could have just been a particularly shallow inlet or something (I'm not very geography-minded).

Anyway, as I said above, I believe your version, I'm just highlighting that you sholdn't be so blinkered.

Its not its an abriviation "Jews do not casually write any Name of God. ...Judaism does not prohibit writing the Name of God per se; it prohibits only erasing or defacing a Name of God. However, observant Jews avoid writing any Name of God casually because of the risk that the written Name might later be defaced, obliterated or destroyed accidentally or by one who does not know better. Normally, we avoid writing the Name by substituting letters or syllables, for example, writing "G-d" instead of "God." "

If we didn't write any of the letters that exist within the word g-d we'd lose out on half the english language

I wouldn;t say naive/hopeful, it's just a question of faith. Which is what this is all about.

Joe can try and argue til he's blue in the face, and draw up obscure facts, readings, opinions, variations, but at the end of the day no one can prove anything.

thats the important bit....

Its not based on a book, its based on a mass of archeological evidence, thousands of books (all backing the others up), oral and documented law passed from generation to generation, etc.

Islam relied on the word of the prophet Muhammad, Christianity - Jesus, Buddhism – Buddha. Judaism is different the Jews claim that g-d revealed himself to 2.5 million people (that’s quite a brash claim to make), not only that but these 2.5 million people confirmed this (in a whole host of historical, Jewish, genealogical and archeological information).

But outside of this detailed recording of events the actual contents of the Torah is phenomenal, for example how did a bunch of men sitting around in Israel know every single species of weird animals in Australia and England?

The Torah makes two bold claims. One is that every word of it is true or the entire thing is garbage. It also claims that in the history of the earth, there will only be four species of animals that either split their hoofs or chew their cud, but not both. If even one animal other than the pig, camel, rock badger, and jackrabbit ever show up on the planet chewing its cud or splitting its hoofs but not both, then the entire Torah is garbage. That's a pretty bold claim to make for a bunch of men sitting around thousands of years ago. Amazingly to this day those men are and were correct about those four types being the only ones. So, why would they chance it? And, how on earth could they be so lucky as to be correct? The odds against both of those things happening are astronomical.

Obviously one can chose to skeptical about the Torah, but that’s beside the point – the revealing of hashem at mnt Sinai is well documented by modern historical standards – of course we can question it just as we can question the existence of Boadicea – but modern evidence would suggest both events happened.

The question isn’t whether or not the Jews believed they witnessed hashem, the question should be was it really hashem.

I agree, I'm not trying to prove the existence of hashem... I have problems with large sections of Judaism myself and I consider myself Jewish

I'm merely commenting on events modern historians believed to of happened.

The Hebrews were slaves.
For some reason they were set free (whether it was the result of tragedy the Egyptians believed the Jews to be responsible for is speculation).
There is a mass of evidence that suggests the Hebrews believed Hashem spoke to them on mnt sinai (it could of been a black guy with a megaphone for all I know).

I'm not suggesting that Judaism is true or false, I'm looking at the events from a historical perspective.

I just said the very same thing.

But for the modern atheist to comprehend the entirety of Judaism would be equal to me trying to understand a conversation on nuclear physics... Over the last two years I've engrossed myself in Jewish study - initially I wanted to disprove it, but the more I read the more enlightened I felt... I think it was the science behind the Torah which really captured my imagination.

But as a rookie to Judaism it is unlikely that I’d be able to project what little I’ve read in a manner that it could be comprehended by you hardline atheists