Originally posted by Maju Originally posted by Cezar You know, I had the proof that God exists and that he created the Universe only I've found nobody neded that kind of proof Yes, I need it.

I don't have it anymore.

The creationists said they didn't need because it was different of what the Bible/holly book said. The already knew the truth so they didn't need any new evidence on that. They more like wanted to get some real proof that evolutionists were wrong.

The agnostics, wether creationists or evolutionists, said that they didn't care. They just have better things to do since the most preffered a scientific approach to any problem.

The atheists told me to get rid of it, or they will say that they faked the evidence.

I finally wemt to an astrophysics laboratoy. They say they didn't need that proof, too, unless I would bring with it a solid theory to explain it. I said:"Ain't that supposed to be your job?". They said yes, but their theory(es) didn't need that proof of mine to answer their problems. Their theories although incomplete, were self sufficient without my proof.

Finally, I gave it to the monkeys. They say that they might need it in case someone else would try to exercise nonsense zillions of years of typing with them .

Here's more info about Elohim, taken from the online Catholic encyclopedia:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05393a.htm

Elohim

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See also GOD.

(Sept., theos; Vulg., Deus).

Elohim is the common name for God. It is a plural form, but "The usage of the language gives no support to the supposition that we have in the plural form Elohim, applied to the God of Israel, the remains of an early polytheism, or at least a combination with the higher spiritual beings" (Kautzsch). Grammarians call it a plural of majesty or rank, or of abstraction, or of magnitude (Gesenius, Grammatik, 27th ed., nn. 124 g, 132 h). The Ethiopic plural amlak has become a proper name of God. Hoffmann has pointed out an analogous plural elim in the Phoenician inscriptions (Ueber einige phon. Inschr., 1889, p. 17 sqq.), and Barton has shown that in the tablets from El-Amarna the plural form ilani replaces the singular more than forty times (Proceedings of the American Oriental Society, 21-23 April, 1892, pp. cxcvi-cxcix).

Etymology

Elohim has been explained as a plural form of Eloah or as plural derivative of El. Those who adhere to the former explanation do not agree as to the derivation of Eloah. There is no such verbal stem as alah in Hebrew; but the Arabist Fleischer, Franz Delitzsch, and others appeal to the Arabic aliha, meaning "to be filled with dread", "anxiously to seek refuge", so that ilah (eloah) would mean in the first place "dread", then the object of dread. Gen., xxi, 42, 53, where God is called "the fear of Isaac", Is., viii, 13, and Ps. lxxv, 12, appear to support this view. But the fact that aliha is probably not an independent verbal stem but only a denominative from ilah, signifying originally "possessed of God" (cf. enthousiazein, daimonan) renders the explanation more than precarious. There is no more probability in the contention of Ewald, Dillmann, and others that the verbal stem, alah means "to be mighty": and is to regarded as a by-form of the stem alah; that, therefore, Eloah grows out of alah as El springs from alah. Baethgen (Beitrage, 297) has pointed out that of the fifty-seven occurrences of Eloah forty-one belong to the Book of Job, and the others to late texts or poetic passages. Hence he agrees with Buhl in maintaining that the singular form Eloah came into existence only after the plural form Elohim had been long in common use; in this case, a singular was supplied for its pre-existent plural. But even admitting Elohim to be the prior form, its etymology has not thus far been satisfactorily explained. The ancient Jewish and the early ecclesiastical writers agree with many modern scholars in deriving Elohim from El, but there is a great difference of opinion as to the method of derivation. Nestle (Theol. Stud. aus W�rt., 1882, pp. 243 sqq.) supposes that the plural has arisen by the insertion of an artificial h, like the Hebrew amahoth (maidens) from amah. Buhl (Gesenius Hebraisches Handworterbuch, 12th ed., 1895, pp. 41 sq.) considers Elohim as a sort of augmentative form of El; but in spite of their disagreement as to the method of derivation, these writers are one in supposing that in early Hebrew the singular of the word signifying God was El, and its plural form Elohim; and that only more recent times coined the singular form Eloah, thus giving Elohim a grammatically correct correspondent. Lagrange, however, maintains that Elohim and Eloah are derived collaterally and independently from El.

The Use of the Word

The Hebrews had three common names of God, El, Elohim, and Eloah; besides, they had the proper name Yahweh. Nestle is authority for the statement that Yahweh occurs about six thousand times in the Old Testament, while all the common names of God taken together do not occur half as often. The name Elohim is found 2570 times; Eloah, 57 times [41 in Job; 4 in Pss.; 4 in Dan.; 2 in Hab.; 2 in Canticle of Moses (Deuteronomy 32); 1 in Prov., 1 in Is.; 1 in Par.; 1 in Neh. (II Esd.)]; El, 226 times (Elim, 9 times). Lagrange (Etudes sur les religions s�mitiques, Paris, 1905, p. 71) infers from Gen., xlvi, 3 (the most mighty God of thy father), Ex., vi, 3 (by the name of God Almighty), and from the fact that El replaces Yah in proper names, the conclusion that El was at first a proper and personal name of God. Its great age may be shown from its general occurrence among all the Semitic races, and this in its turn may be illustrated by its presence in the proper names found in Gen., iv, 18; xxv, 13; vi, 43. Elohim is not found among all the Semitic races; the Aramaeans alone seem to have had an analogous form. It has been suggested that the name Elohim must have been formed after the descendants of Shem had separated into distinct nations.

Meaning of the Word

If Elohim be regarded as derived from El, its original meaning would be "the strong one" according to Wellhausen's derivation of El, from ul (Skizzen, III, 169); or "the foremost one", according to N�ldeke's derivation of El from ul or il, "to be in front" (Sitzungsberichte der berlinischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1880, pp. 760 sqq.; 1882, pp. 1175 sqq.); or "the mighty one", according to Dillmann's derivation of El from alah or alay, "to be mighty" (On Genesis, I, 1); or, finally "He after whom one strives", "Who is the goal of all human aspiration and endeavour", "to whom one has recourse in distress or when one is in need of guidance", "to who one attaches oneself closely", coincidentibus interea bono et fine, according to the derivation of El from the preposition el, "to", advocated by La Place (cf. Lagarde, Uebersicht, etc., p. 167), Lagarde (op. cit., pp. 159 sqq.), Lagrange (Religions semitiques, pp. 79 sqq.), and others. A discussion of the arguments which militate for and against each of the foregoing derivations would lead us too far.

If we have recourse to the use of the word Elohim in the study of its meaning, we find that in its proper sense it denotes either the true God or false gods, and metaphorically it is applied to judges, angels, and kings; and even accompanies other nouns, giving them a superlative meaning. The presence of the article, the singular construction of the word, and its context show with sufficient clearness whether it must be taken in its proper or its metaphorical sense, and what is its precise meaning in each case. Kautzsch (Encyclopaedia Biblica, III, 3324, n. 2) endeavours to do away with the metaphorical sense of Elohim. Instead of the rendering "judges" he suggests the translation "God", as witness of a lawsuit, as giver of decisions on points of law, or as dispenser of oracles; for the rendering "angels" he substitutes "the gods of the heathen", which, in later post-exilic times, fell to a lower rank. But this interpretation is not supported by solid proof.

According to Renan (Histoire du peuple d'Israel, I, p. 30) the Semites believed that the world is surrounded, penetrated, and governed by the Elohim, myriads of active beings, analogous to the spirits of the savages, alive, but somehow inseparable from one another, not even distinguished by their proper names as the gods of the Aryans, so that they can be considered as a confused totality. Marti (Geschichte der israelitischen Religion, p. 26), too, finds in Elohim a trace of the original Semitic polydemonism; he maintains that the word signified the sum of the divine beings that inhabited any given place. Baethgen (op. cit., p. 287), F.C. Baur (Symbolik und Mythologie, I, 304), and Hellmuth-Zimmermann (Elohim, Berlin, 1900) make Elohim an expression of power, grandeur, and totality. Lagrange (op. cit., p. 78) urges against these views that even the Semitic races need distinct units before they have a sum, and distinct parts before that arrive at a totality. Moreover, the name El is prior to Elohim (op. cit., p. 77 sq.) and El is both a proper and a common name of God. Originally it was either a proper name and has become a common name, or it was a common name has become a proper name. In either case, El, and, therefore, also its derivative form Elohim, must have denoted the one true God. This inference becomes clear after a little reflection. If El was, at first, the proper name of a false god, it could not become the common name of a false god, it could not become the common name for deity any more than Jupiter or Juno could; and if it was, at first, the common name for deity, it could become the proper name only of that God who combined in him all the attributes of deity, who was the one true God. This does not imply that all the Semitic races had from the beginning a clear concept of God's unit and Divine attributes, though all had originally the Divine name El.

Where did you find this evedence?

Originally posted by Maju Originally posted by JanusRook Very appropiate indeed: it seems an eye but it's actually a big explosion. Explain to me logically why a being encompassing all the qualities of god can't have an eyeball made up of stellar explosions. Don't misunderstand me. I'm also pantheist. But are you sure it is actually the eye or maybe another less honorable part of the anatomy. Remember that god is dog written backwards.

Thats only in english. what about hebrew?

The earliest copy of the Torah we have was written in Greek in Alexandria. Only evidence I can think of about its origins.

By some standards I guess you could narrow it down to a group of Greeks or at least Greek-speaking Alexandrines (?Alexandrians?). But they might get off with an 'innocent by reason of insanity' verdict.

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes....

How does it resemble God?Tell me...How can that resemble God?And I've noticed that Christianity is the most argued against Religion on this forum...I wonder why?Maybe its because Christianity has been identified with Crusades,European Imperialism and Racism(No offense),the slaughter of Native Americans,the use of slavery and using the Bible as a code of justification,contradicting its own holy book,and the radical ideas of many Christians surpasses that of Muslim,Judaic and any other religion.The Bible also has some racist remarks,and its followers have been known to be racist and supremacists throughout the centuries.Sorry,but its the truth.Islam's God has no shape or form,he is eternal.He can be embraced by all ethnic groups.But the Christian God(who is referred to as the same God)is mostly identified with European features,which symbolizes one side to one ethnicity.Even his son,Jesus,looks nothing like the people whom he came from.

I have no discrimination towards today's followers,but followers of the past is what keeps me drifting from Christian,and even propoganda does not make me believe Islam is bad,though American News Media sure is making it seem that way.I have nothing against anyone,I'm just speaking my mind.Even George Bush has said,"God gave me this task to bring those terrorists to Justice!",sounds like he is on a crusade,and it sure has turned bloody indeed.I have no religion.I am neither Christain,nor Muslim,not even Atheist.I am just :insert name here:.Thats it.I belong to no faction of religion,or secular humanism,or science.History tells people about what happened in the past,but interest in history has slowly faded,which in turn makes people arrogant about what happened in the past,and it makes people still succumb to relgious beliefs.

I will say this.It is foolish to say there is a God and there isn't.It seems people will just believe anything nowadays.You cannot disprove or prove anything out of a whim.Those Holy Books were written by ordinary humans,humans,and humans are likely to fantasize certain things,and give them more significance.Humans lie.Humans cheat.Humans kill.It is in our nature.It cannot be stopped.I don't believe Mary was a virgin.It is almost impossible at that point in time to produce a child like that.I can believe that jesus had done no wrong,that doesn't seem impossible.Thats my two cents.ANyone willing to argue can argue to a puff of air,because I won't reply.Thats just me,and I think these topics are getting more senseless.They just become religion bashing like I have done here.No one can simply answer these questions.These tend to get off of their status.

-Vamun Tianshu

I like Douglas Adams's take on the Argument fronm Design in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (great book, appalling film)

Here he usesthe Babel Fish as the embodyment of the Argument from Design.

"I refuse to prove that I exist, for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."  says God,

"But, the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED." say Man

"Oh dear, I hadn't though of that" says God, and promply vanishes in a puff of logic.