This question has bothered me for a long time. It still does.<\/p>\n
I watch TV and see some local religious preacher talks about, say, evolution. He (it’s almost always a “he”) enthusiastically explains how humans differ from all animals and not associated with them. Some other time he explains about the “history” of the great flood. I watch TV and hear another preacher who may talk about the Torah allegedly written by “God”. And so on and so forth.<\/p>\n
And I honestly think… There are exactly two possibilities here:<\/p>\n
1. The guy seriously thinks that man was made from dirt. He thinks that the “new moon” should be blessed on a monthly basis. That snakes talk and prophets ride horses to the sky. The guy’s mind is some half a millennium behind the rest of us.<\/p>\n
2. The guy is not stupid, but he’s a barefaced liar. He fools his audience for the purpose of controlling them, even if he knows he’s telling a bunch of foolish lies.<\/p>\n
So – which is it? Is he a fool or a liar? Perhaps some mix of the two?<\/p>\n
— * — * —<\/font><\/p>\n A while ago I saw an interview with a religious Jewish person who happened to be a historian. It was before the holiday of Passover, and he was asked about the story of the exodus from Egypt.<\/p>\n “If you ask me as a historian,” he said, “this story is a famous myth. However, if you ask me as a religious Jew, this of course happened to our ancestors.”<\/p>\n This guy was not a fool and not a liar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This question has bothered me for a long time. It still does. I watch TV and see some local religious preacher talks about, say, evolution. He (it’s almost always a “he”) enthusiastically explains how humans differ from all animals and not associated with them. Some other time he explains about the “history” of the great […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,27,10,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-argument-and-preaching","category-judaism","category-logic","category-missionary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":579,"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions\/579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}