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Is religion pseudoscience ? you be the judge...

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A pseudoscience is a set of beliefs or practices that pretends at being science-that puts forth evidence and arguments which it says are scientifically sound, but in fact are not. Pseudoscientists argue in support of new fundamental forces (e.g., Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance) and even entities (e.g., ancient aliens). The TV show Ghost Hunters is a prime example; they even have instruments-like voice recorders, EM meters, laser thermometers (and deluxe carrying cases)-which seem scientific, but of course do nothing to detect ghosts. But all pseudosciences have one thing in common: The arguments and reasoning they put forth violate basic rules of scientific reasoning.

As an atheist, and a logician, I'm often tempted by the notion that religion is just socially accepted pseudoscience (with tax breaks). After all, the arguments in favor of ghosts, alternative medicine and ancient aliens, are very similar to the arguments for angels, the "power of prayer" and God. Sleep paralysis and hallucinatory visions are taken to be evidence for ghosts/angels, post-hoc reasoning is used in arguments for alternative medicine/prayer, and "unexplained mysteries" are counted as evidence for aliens/God. But as tempting as this notion is, it's difficult to see it all the way through. Although I know plenty of people whose religious belief is steeped in pseudoscientific thinking, I also know religious people who pride themselves in their critical thinking abilities. Does this mean that religion isn't steeped in pseudoscience, or are these religious people who say they are critical thinkers just fooling themselves? I'd hate to think the later is true.

This last month I attended (and presented at) a conference on "Special Divine Action" (i.e. miracles) at St. Anne's College in Oxford (July 13-16, 2014). It was sponsored by the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion and the John Templeton Foundation, both of which are dedicated to demonstrating the compatibility of science and religion. It was headlined by some pretty heavy hitters, including Oxford professor and Christian philosopher, Richard Swinburne. If anything would dissuade me of the notion that religion is pseudoscience, it would likely be this conference. I hoped to find champions who decried the pseudoscientific elements of religion, openly spoke against them, and instead embraced lines of thinking compatible with science.

I was partially successful in my conversations, where I met some wonderfully rational religious people who understood and cared about science. They helped me hone some of my own arguments and I hope I helped them hone theirs. Unfortunately, I also found creationists, people who believe in demons, new-ageism, and even defenders of the pseudoscientist Rupert Sheldrake. Some even refused to say Dawkins' name-saying instead "the D word"-because (as someone suggested) he was like Voldemort. If you say his name, especially in Oxford, he might appear. And then there was the New Testament scholar who insisted that the idea that 21st century medical doctors are more qualified to distinguish illness from death than 1st century Palestinians was just a conclusion driven by "western bias."

But what was most disappointing were the headliners-the keynote speakers, none of whom were academic lightweights, and all of whom were there to speak at the request of the foundations. Although a few of the talks were interesting, far too many were tinged with pseudoscience-and the biggest names seemed to be drenched in it.

Disappointment 1: Correlation Entails Causation

My hopes for science friendly religion were frustrated on the first day by New Testament and Early Christianity scholar Graham Twelftree, who presented a defense of his criteria for determining, historically, whether a miracle has occurred. Unfortunately, his criteria endorsed a classic bit of pseudoscientific reasoning: post hoc ergo propter hoc ("after this therefore because of this"). He took an unusual event's proximity to a "religious context" (e.g. a prayer) as evidence for divine intervention. Worse yet, it turns out this was simply a way to justify his own miraculous belief (which was rooted in the same fallacious reasoning); during the Q&A, he revealed that his argument was motivated by his belief that his childhood asthma was cured by God because his wife prayed for him during an attack (when he was around age 20), and then he never had one again.

Forget the fact that his wife, and others, likely prayed for him many times when his attacks could only be stopped by medication, and that people outgrow asthma all the time. Even if this was the only time anyone prayed for him, and it was an even more serious disease, the fact that she prayed and then he got better is not a reason to conclude that the prayer made him better. Correlation does not entail causation; that's why "after this therefore because of this" is a logical fallacy. This is the same reasoning you find in medical pseudoscience books, like Kevin Trudeau's Natural Cures "They"Don't Want You To Know. They are filled with countless anecdotes like "I did X and then I no longer had Y, so X cures Y!" Of course, in fact, X does not cure Y. As any scientifically minded person knows, only controlled double blind studies can demonstrate such causation, and such studies have actually shown that X does not cure Y-whether X be a natural cure or prayer. My quest to find science friendly religion was not off to a good start.
Disappointment 2: Almost Intelligent Design
Then there was Robert Russell, founder and director of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences and the Ian G. Barbour Professor of Theology and Science in Residence at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. He argued that randomness in the quantum world leaves room for divine action. Miracles are classically thought of as violations of natural law, but many at the conference though of them simply as special divine actions in the world. Others expressed dissatisfaction with thinking that God breaks the natural laws that he himself wrote. Since quantum events are random and without a natural cause, if God were to cause them he would not be violating any natural law. Voila, a notion of miracles seemingly compatible with science. Interestingly, Russell noted, this makes possible theistic evolution; since mutations in DNA are the result of quantum events, God can direct evolution by causing certain mutations to happen at certain times.

While I found his talk interesting, and I am friendly to this definition of miracles-and I would hesitate to say that he was endorsing pseudoscience (he seemed to be a good scientist to me)-his thesis was not consistent with both traditional theism and scientific fact. Three things seemed to be wrong. First, hidden variable theories, which propose hidden causes for quantum events have already been disproven experimentally. Suggesting that God is the hidden cause of quantum events would seem to contradict these observations. Even if God only steps in occasionally, to cause select quantum events, that is still inconsistent with quantum theory-at least as I understand it-and thus God's action would not be consistent with natural law, as Russell wants.

Second, interjecting a new entity to explain what is already sufficiently explained is not scientifically preferable-so interjecting God as the cause of quantum events is not scientifically preferable. Quantum events need no cause. Think of it this way. We know that heat is explained simply by the motion of molecules. But suppose that some scientist named Bob insists that the motion of the molecules is caused by a new, separately existing weightless substance (called caloric), that flows in out of substances as they heat and cool. I suppose that's possible, but introducing a new substance to explain what already is explained is not scientifically preferable. It's not the simplest (more parsimonious) explanation-it introduces a new entity. And it doesn't help explain anything. In fact, it just raises more questions than it answers: What is the nature of this substance? Why is it weighless? How does it move molecules? Etc. There is no scientific reason for Bob to defend this hypothesis. Only if Bob is director of something like "The School of Caloric Studies" do we perhaps begin to understand his motivation for introducing it.

But third, and most troublesome, was Russell's suggestion that God directs evolution by controlling mutations in DNA. This is incompatible with how we know evolution occurred, given what theists say about the nature of God. Through mere selective breeding we can direct evolutionary change quite quickly; think of how quickly we have produced different breeds of dogs. If we were able to dictate mutations on the genetic level, with the full knowledge of the traits that each gene generates, we could likely go from single celled organisms, to a rich ecosystem (which includes humans) in just a few million years. But evolution via natural selection, as it actually occurred, was extremely inefficient and took a few billion years; it meandered constantly (there are millions of dead ends on the evolutionary tree), produced countless useless mutations (it sometimes took millions of years for an advantageous genetic mutation to appear), and is extremely cruel (it took five mass extinctions to finally produce human life). If God directed evolution, he's about the most absent-minded, inefficient and cruel deity one could imagine.
Disappointment 3: Swinburne
Then there was Richard Swinburne's talk on the resurrection of Jesus. (For those who don't know, Swinburne was the Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford from 1985-2002 and has published prolifically in defense of Christianity.) Let's set aside his gross overestimation of the historical reliability of the Scriptures and just consider his main argument. Unlike the biblical authors (e.g., John 20:31), who take Jesus' resurrection as evidence of his divine nature, Swinburne takes Jesus' divine nature as evidence for his resurrection. In a nutshell, Swinburne argued that if you grant that his arguments ( published elsewhere) for God's existence (e.g. the fine tuning argument), and his argument that such a God would want to become incarnate, and would want to offer himself as a sacrifice for sins, and would also want to resurrect his incarnate self from the dead-grant him all of that-and it's likely that Jesus was divine and thus rose from the dead.

I can't express how disappointed I was in this argument. Basically, if you grant that specious arguments for Christian theology work, then Christian claims about history are already likely and don't need much evidence. I suppose this conditional statement is true. If I grant that God has decided to make something like the Jesus story happen in history-well, then I guess the best candidate for when and where God made that happen is around the time and place that Jesus lived. Likewise, if I grant Muslim theology, it's likely that Mohammed ascended to heaven on a horse named Barack; if I grant that God wants Karen Gillan to fall in love with me, it's likely she will. But not only is this conditional trivially true, such arguments get things exactly backward-the miraculous historical events (like the resurrection) are supposed to be the evidence for the theological claims, not the other way around. What's more, the difficult and interesting part of the argument is left unstated. All the hard work is done by arguments trying to establish the theological claims.

If such arguments obviously worked, I guess granting them for the sake of seeing what their conclusions entailed would be acceptable. But such arguments, to put it mildly, fall flat on their face-including the fine tuning argument of which Swinburne is so fond. Not surprisingly these arguments are steeped in pseudoscience, misunderstand real science, and are essentially giant " mystery therefore magic" fallacies. Again, my quest for religion compatible with science was frustrated.

(To be honest, although I was disappointed, I wasn't surprised to hear this from Richard Swinburne. He's argued, in print, that God allows millions to be killed in the third world by hurricanes and earthquakes so that we can experience the good of feeling compassion for them. Swinburne is very smart-and smart people are very good at coming up with creative ways to defend false things they want to believe. Swinburne's argument for the resurrection was just more of the same.)
Disappointment 4: "Unsolved Mysteries"
But the most appalling lecture came from Craig Keener, professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary, whose bio boasts that he has authored 17 books-comprised of thousands of pages and tens-of-thousands of citations. He argued that modern-day accounts of miracles make the historicity of the biblical miracle stories more likely. Perhaps ironically, I think this modest thesis is true. Even in the modern world (although most of his examples came from the third world) stories still abound of people experiencing what they take to be miracles-even extraordinary healing miracles, like a blind man's iris growing back spontaneously. (A full account of his argument, and the stories he has collected, can be found in his 1172 page book Miracles.) So it's not unlikely that in first century Palestine the same thing was true; reports of miracles were probably everywhere. After all, it was a pre-scientific age in which medical doctors and diagnoses did not exist, mass hysteria was common, the power of our senses to lead us astray was not appreciated, and people did not understand the nature of illness or injury and often mistook them for death. It's not unlikely, therefore, that there were events that seemed to people to be quite extraordinary-even miraculous-during Jesus' ministry. In fact, Jesus was one of many apocalyptic preachers of the time to whom miracles were attributed; I'm sure many of those miracles stories are rooted in historical events too.

But what was disturbing about Keener's talk, given the venue, was that he refused to actually apply any scientific or critical thinking to the miraculous reports that he gave. He was willing to admit that some of them could be explained, but took the fact that he couldn't think of a natural explanation for others to be evidence of divine intervention. (This is, once again, the mystery therefore magic fallacy.) He took the fact that he knew the people involved personally (or was the person himself in one case) as a reason to think that what their senses or memory told them happened was exactly what actually happened. He didn't even consider the possibility that their senses could be leading them astray, that their memory could be faulty, that their attention could have faltered or simply that the stories had been exaggerated upon retelling. (In reality, of course, our senses, memories and attention lead us astray far more often than we realize, and "amazing stories" are often exaggerated upon their first telling.) And after talking to him afterward, it became clear that he believes that the majority of these stories are not only the result of divine intervention, but direct evidence for the truth of the Christian religion. In fact, he apparently even believes in demonic intervention, as he admitted to me that his experience with "curses" in the Third World caused him to rethink his "western theistic views."

This lecture did the most to reinforce the notion that religion is just culturally accepted pseudoscience. I could have just as easily found a lecture on a collection of equally mysterious and unexplained occurrences at a UFO conference, a psychic reunion, a ghost convention-or on that old show "Unsolved Mysteries." And just like these stories, Keener's stories can be easily explained. In fact, it's been my experience with such things that a little investigation will likely reveal that most of the events never happened-or at least didn't happen as his retelling suggests. For example, do a little research and you will find that the Amityville horror-the most widely known and corroborated "true story" of a demonic haunting-was completely fabricated. It's likely not a coincidence that Keener's medically documented stories were pretty easily explainable, and the seemingly inexplicable ones were always stories you had to take on people's word. So perhaps modern day miracle stories don't provide evidence for the historicity of the biblical miracles after all; like modern day miracle stories, they probably are so far removed from what actually happened that they cannot be regarded as historical.

(To be clear, I'm not saying that Keener is intentionally lying, or even that the people from whom he heard the stories are. I'm only saying that there was obviously a lot of gullibility and credulousness standing between the stories I heard and the events that took place-so much so that what actually happened likely bears little resemblance to the story as told.)

And I can't bypass a logical critique of the argument. Keener's miracle stories all spoke to the truth of Christianity-they involved prayers to Christ, lead to conversions to Christianity, etc. But of course, one could find just as many stories embedded in other religions that are equally inexplicable, that involve prayers to other gods and lead to conversions to other religions. What do we say about such stories? Well, either they are legitimate or not. If we criticize them and say they're not legitimate, then to be consistent we have to apply the same criticism to the Christian stories and arrive at the same conclusion. If so, the evidence the stories provide for Christianity evaporates. If the miracle stories from other religious are legitimate, then we are forced to say that they provide evidence for the truth of those other religions. And since those religions are contrary to Christianity, and even teach that it is false, they serve as evidence that Christianity is false. So, either way, the evidence modern-day miracle stories provide for Christianity evaporates.

What does Keener say about the miracles stories of other religions? "I don't think God loves people in other religions any less." In other words, the stories are true and it's the Christian deity that is making these miracles happen. But, of course, this in no way answers the objection. Members of those other religions would say that it is their god who makes them happen, and that is responsible for making the Christian miracles possible. With no way to determine whose god is causing which miracles (both hypotheses predict the same miracles in the same circumstances), the evidence these miracle stories provide for any particular religion evaporates. At best, they provide evidence merely for the existence of a god about which we know nothing, or some kind of pluralism. But they definitely do not provide the evidence for Christianity that Keener claims.
Is Religion Pseudoscience?
Theists often complain that the "New Atheists" have the same understanding of religion as fundamentalists who are anti-science zealots that take their scriptures far too literally. Enlightened religion, they claim, rejects literalism and is compatible with science. People say the same to me when I express my concern that religion is socially acceptable pseudoscience. They assure me that enlightened religion is not. But when two of the world's most distinguished academic organizations, devoted to demonstrating the compatibility of religion and science, put these kinds of arguments on display-during keynote addresses at an international conference-it's hard for me to take this claim seriously. Definitely, certain theists' religious beliefs are compatible with science, but they are the minority in religious circles-even, perhaps, academic religious circles. This doesn't mean that religion is just socially acceptable pseudoscience-after all, religion does much more than put forth arguments which it says are scientific but aren't. But it does mean that, for those who want religion to be seen as compatible with scientific reasoning, there is much more work to be done.

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I presented at a conference on special divine action sponsored by two organizations dedicated to demonstrating the compatibility of science and religion. I hoped to find people friendly to both science and religion. Unfortunately, even the headliners were far too friendly to pseudoscience.

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Here we have one of the most known prophets in majority of the major religions, Moses.  He was the prophet who first received the 10 commandments by God. Reasons of belief all tie into the same thing that i have mentioned in the other posts as well, which is religion. The main thing this topic has in common is blind faith. That is the essence of religious belief. majority of religious scriptures cannot be proven at all but are still believed because of blind faith. Some religions depict Moses completely different then one and other. Who do we believe, or do we believe at all.  

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Here we have one of the most known prophets in majority of the major religions, Moses.  He was the prophet who first received the 10 commandments by God. Reasons of belief all tie into the same thing that i have mentioned in the other posts as well, which is religion. The main thing this topic has in common is blind faith. That is the essence of religious belief. majority of religious scriptures cannot be proven at all but are still believed because of blind faith. Some religions depict Moses completely different then one and other. Who do we believe, or do we believe at all.  

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here is a video, website and picture of the prophet Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is considered a prophet in a lot of religions but in some he is also considered a god.  The reason of belief starts from religion itself. People are raised into believing in religion no matter what. Even if it defines logic people still believe in it. Its is pure blind faith. There are millions of articles and documentary that prove flaws within the image of Jesus Christ. One of the key flaws i found was people considering him god. In countless religious scriptures he is quoted saying ``i am not a god but a messenger of god``. Needless to say that after reading such logical articles one would completely re-analyze this specific figure in religion.

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here is a video, website and picture of the prophet Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is considered a prophet in a lot of religions but in some he is also considered a god.  The reason of belief starts from religion itself. People are raised into believing in religion no matter what. Even if it defines logic people still believe in it. Its is pure blind faith. There are millions of articles and documentary that prove flaws within the image of Jesus Christ. One of the key flaws i found was people considering him god. In countless religious scriptures he is quoted saying ``i am not a god but a messenger of god``. Needless to say that after reading such logical articles one would completely re-analyze this specific figure in religion.

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Here is a video, website and picture of the Greek prophet named Tiresias. This video gives us a description about him and his life and what part he played in greek mythology. In the times when greek mythology was prominent, believing in this specific prophet was taught to everyone. It was basically blind faith. At that time any story with mystical elements that was told was automatically linked to god. Greek mythology in general was based on a lot of fake evidence.

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Here is a video, website and picture of the Greek prophet named Tiresias. This video gives us a description about him and his life and what part he played in greek mythology. In the times when greek mythology was prominent, believing in this specific prophet was taught to everyone. It was basically blind faith. At that time any story with mystical elements that was told was automatically linked to god. Greek mythology in general was based on a lot of fake evidence.

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Moses' story is told in the Book of Exodus, but it starts in Genesis with the story of Abraham and his family with whom God makes a covenant. Generations later the Biblical Moses draws the extended family together in the form of a nation with a structure and code of law, given to him on Mount Sinai. Below, Peter Machinist explores the story of Moses, the Exodus hero, in "The Man Moses."

Some might say that God himself was the Exodus hero, but in human terms the Biblical Moses takes center stage throughout the whole Pentateuch. Who was Moses? A rather solitary leader, one with his people but set apart, even in his childhood, when he was raised by the pharaoh's daughter as if he were an Egyptian prince. Set apart also in that he married an alien wife-Midianite or possibly Ethiopian. Even his physical characteristics-a speech defect-set him apart from others and is accommodated by God who arranges a leadership duo with Moses and his priestly brother Aaron. His role was unique-even to receiving the Law and seeing God, as evidenced by Moses' blinding countenance.

The Biblical Moses also has an unusual death. God says he must die alone on a mountaintop outside the promised land. Who was Moses? We might say he was a man who was a son of Abraham who led the people but was not typical of them.

In "The Man Moses," Peter Machinist proposes that our Exodus hero is a type of anti-hero, outside the stereotype of a tribal or national leader. He might represent the people of Israel themselves, Biblically portrayed as being outsiders. Further, Moses' otherness might also serve to turn the spotlight not on himself but on the message he delivers to the people: the Law. Who was Moses-the Biblical Moses? Who was the man chosen to meet God on Sinai and receive the Law on behalf of God's chosen people?

Below, Peter Machinist explores the character of the Exodus hero-the Biblical Moses-in "The Man Moses."

In the FREE eBook Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodus, top scholars discuss the historical Israelites in Egypt and archaeological evidence for and against the historicity of the Exodus.

The Man Moses

by Peter Machinist

The introduction of Moses in the first chapters of Exodus marks a new, a second beginning in the Bible's account of the history of Israel. The first beginning had been in the Book of Genesis with Abraham and the patriarchs that followed him. There the focus was on Israel as a family bound in relationship or covenant to its God. Moses' beginning marks the extension of the group from family to nation, though a nation still with a strong sense of kinship. Here the emphasis is on the development of a common administration, as well as on the re-presentation of the covenant as a code of law that gives the nation its structure, without which it cannot survive.

The Moses who shepherds in this second beginning dominates the biblical narrative through the remainder of the Book of Exodus, indeed through the rest of the Pentateuch; his only rival, and ultimate superior, in narrative attention, as, of course, in other spheres, is God Himself. But this Moses comes to us as a strange and difficult person. Running throughout the narrative of Exodus, and of the Pentateuch as a whole, is the depiction of a unique individual: one with little or no precedent, solitary, not easily approachable, set apart from the very community he is born to lead.

This quality apart emerges in a variety of ways. For one thing, Moses' origins may be in the community of Israel, yet they are not of it. The text of Exodus 2 (verses 1 and following) is at pains to assign him a genealogy within the family of Israel-at pains, perhaps, because it then has to recognize that he was adopted into the court of the Pharaoh, given his name by the Pharaoh's daughter, and raised as Egyptian royalty. It is well known what Sigmund Freud did with this portrait, arguing that the Israelite genealogy was, in fact, a later, pious construction that tried to mask Moses' true roots as an Egyptian who only subsequently took on the cause of the Israelite slaves as his own. Whether Freud's thesis-and, as he made clear, he was not the originator of it-is correct or not, it does underscore the ambiguity of Moses' connection with Israel in the biblical portrayal.

That ambiguity is fortified by other features of Moses' family life. His wife, Zipporah, is not from Israel, but from the Midianites of the region of Sinai (e.g., Exodus 2:15-22), and her foreignness is later criticized by none other than Moses' brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, in the context of a challenge to Moses' own legitimacy and leadership (Numbers 12). (Incidentally, the label that Aaron and Miriam pin on Moses' wife, "Cushite," has the effect of making her even stranger to an Israelite settled in Palestine, since it normally refers to the Ethiopians, a people much farther away from Palestine than the Midianites.) There is also the son Moses has with Zipporah: he is named Gershom, according to the biblical text, precisely because this is to memorialize Moses as outsider (Exodus 2:22).a Gershom has as well a curious genealogical niche. For while he has descendants, they are not arranged in a line of divine promise and authority such as is found with Abraham and his family (e.g., Genesis 26:2-5). Indeed, in Judges 18:30-31 (following here the textual tradition that reads the ancestor's name as Moses, not Manasseh), we learn that Gershom's descendants were priests to an idolatrous cult in the Israelite tribe of Dan.

As for the character of Moses' leadership, here too there is difference. He is assigned, for example, a traditional title in Israel, that of prophet-a title first given to Abraham (Genesis 20)-but he is unlike Abraham and the others, for as Deuteronomy comments: "There has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom Yahweh knew face to face" (Deuteronomy 34:10; cf. Numbers 12:6-8). To be sure, in another biblical encounter, Moses is not allowed to see God's face, but only His back (Exodus 33:20-23); still that encounter leaves Moses a preternatural, even divine sheen, which once more sets him apart: "When Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, his face was all aglow with radiance (qaµran), and they were afraid to come near to him" (Exodus 34:30)-just as, one may add, they had been afraid to go near to God and His quaking mountain of Sinai (Exodus 19).

Even apparent defects or negatives in the character of Moses become occasions on the part of the biblical authors to find superlatives of uniqueness. Thus, in the confrontation with Aaron and Miriam, the sinful effrontery of their challenge to Moses emerges all the more clearly in the description of Moses at the opposite extreme: "The man Moses was very meek, more than all humanity that was on the face of the earth" (Numbers 12:3). And when God commands Moses to free the Israelites from Egypt, and Moses protests his competence to challenge the Pharaoh because of a speech defect-a "heaviness of mouth and heaviness of tongue" as the text says (Exodus 4:10)-this defect is turned, by God, into the basis of a new arrangement, wherein Aaron shall do the speaking, and Moses will direct him as though he were God Himself (Exodus 4:16).

Finally, there is the matter of Moses' death, at the end of the Pentateuch in Deuteronomy 34. It flatly contradicts the pattern of expectation that the biblical narrative had accustomed us to, namely, that promises would be fulfilled and lives would reach closure. For Moses is not allowed to die in, let alone enter, the land promised to Israel already in patriarchal days-the land that he had been divinely commanded to return Israel to, without any indication, initially, that he would be barred from it (so Exodus 3, 6:2-9). Indeed, at the end Moses cannot even be buried in the promised land, as key patriarchal figures had been, including Jacob and Joseph, who had died outside of Israel (Genesis 49:29-50:14, 24-26; Joshua 24:32-33). Rather, Moses dies and is buried outside of the land, across the Jordan River in Moab, a region otherwise often at odds with Israel; and he is buried in a spot unknown, placed there not even by human hands, but by God alone. Now the Bible, it has to be noted, tries to explain this end; yet it succeeds in doing so only by a series of incomplete and obscure reasons (Numbers 20, esp. 6-13; 27:12-14; Deuteronomy 3:26; 4:21; 32:50-52)-a situation that later Jewish commentaries, in turn, made desperate efforts to fill out and discuss, if not to clarify. All of this, thus, only serves to underscore what an extraordinary fate Moses is given in the biblical text, and how well it echoes and rounds out the equally strange picture of his origins in, but not of, Israel.

For the Bible, in sum, Moses is indeed a man apart-apart not only from the people he guides and the land to which he directs them, but apart also, in many fundamental ways, from the kinds of leaders the previous generations of patriarchal figures had been. He remains the permanent outsider, a unique and towering figure.

Watch full-length lectures from the Out of Egypt: Israel's Exodus Between Text and Memory, History and Imagination conference, which addressed some of the most challenging issues in Exodus scholarship. The international conference was hosted by Calit2's Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego in San Diego, CA.

The question that remains is why should this be so, and what does it mean. Three possibilities, at least, come to mind. First, one might say that, considered from a broader historical perspective, Moses' characterization is not completely surprising. The stories circulating in many societies often picture their founders as different from the rest, even as distant-in short, as heroes. Yet if Moses in some sense belongs to this common type, in other ways he is an unusual, perhaps rare mutation of it, since, in his excessive modesty, distance, inexplicable fate, and strangeness, he is a kind of anti-hero: someone who does not easily serve in the native tradition as a role model, someone who cannot really be emulated.

Moses' strangeness in the Bible may also be understood as a mirror of Israel as a whole, for Israel, too, is portrayed as the quintessential outsider, without easy parallel or precedent, to the other nations around it and to the religions and cultures they represent. Indeed, Israel is an outsider to the very land which its God promises it and which it then has to make its own in a continual struggle. Or, as the prophet Balaam exclaims, "Behold a people dwelling alone, and not reckoning itself among the nations" (Numbers 23:9).

Thirdly, and lastly, by focusing on Moses as outsider, and especially as remote, inimitable outsider, the Bible ends up by shifting the emphasis away from who Moses is to what he communicates, namely, to the Law and to God as its source. We face, then, the paradox that the towering character of Moses may be stressed in the Bible, at least in part, precisely to efface him, so that his message may emerge more clearly and sharply. In other words, there is no cult of personality here-that is, no cult of human personality-and this comports with a more general strain of ambivalence in the biblical corpus toward human leaders and the limits of human authority (e.g., Judges 8:22-24; 1 Samuel 8-10; Hosea 8:4, 13:9-11). If the ultimate emphasis, therefore, is on Moses' message, on the laws he mediates from a totally nonhuman source, we must observe, as a final point, that this is a message which, against the person Moses, is not remote or inimitable. For the laws it offers are laws designed for the human community: laws that, however difficult, all can carry out (e.g., Deuteronomy 29:10-14; 30:11-14), and must carry out if they are to complete the process by which "God created humanity in His image" (Genesis 1:27).

Who, then, is Moses, as the biblical authors see him? Despite the complexities of their portrayal, he is at the core the appointed one who brings Israel to "serve God on this mountain [Sinai]" (Exodus 3:12), and so to receive the Law for their lives.

This essay is a revised version of one originally published in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin 27:2/3 (1998); copyright the president and fellows of Harvard College.

"The Man Moses" by Peter Machinist originally appeared in Bible Review, April 2000. The article was first republished in Bible History Daily in February 2012.

Notes:

1. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (1939; New York: Vintage Books, 1955; German original: Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion [1939]).

2. See James L. Kugel, The Traditions of the Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 856-859, 885-887; S.E. Loewenstamm, " The Death of Moses," in G.W.E. Nickelsburg, Jr., ed., Studies on the Testament of Abraham (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976), pp. 185-217.

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Who Was Moses? Was He More than an Exodus Hero? - Biblical Archaeology Society

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Moses' story is told in the Book of Exodus, but it starts in Genesis with the story of Abraham and his family with whom God makes a covenant. Generations later the Biblical Moses draws the extended family together in the form of a nation with a structure and code of law, given to him on Mount Sinai.

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Jesus is a religious leader whose life and teachings are recorded in the Bible's New Testament. He is a central figure in Christianity and is emulated as the incarnation of God by many Christians all over the world.

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Tiresias, in Greek mythology, a blind Theban seer, the son of one of Athena's favourites, the nymph Chariclo. He is a participant in several well-known legends. Among the ancient authors who mention him are Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, and Ovid.

At Thebes, Tiresias played an active part in the tragic events involving Laius, the king of Thebes, and his son Oedipus. Later legend told that he lived for seven (or nine) generations, dying after the expedition of the Seven Against Thebes.

Besides longevity, another of Tiresias's features involves his having lived as a man, then as a woman, and then as a man again. Reportedly, he had been turned into a woman as the result of having struck and wounded mating snakes. When Tiresias returned to the site of the transformation seven years later to see if the "spell" could be reversed, Tiresias did indeed see the same snakes coupling and was changed back into a man.

That experience of life as both sexes may have inadvertently caused his blindness. One story holds that Hera and Zeus disagreed about which of the sexes experienced more pleasure during sex, with Hera arguing that the answer was men, by far. When they consulted Tiresias, he asserted that women had greater pleasure than men, and Hera thereupon struck him blind. Zeus, in thanks for his support, gave him the gifts of prophecy and longevity. Another version has it that Tiresias was blinded by Athena after he saw her bathing. Chariclo begged her to help him, so Athena, instead of restoring his ability to see the physical world, gave him the ability to see the future.

Tiresias also had a role in Homer's Odyssey. In that work, Tiresias retained his prophetic gifts even in the underworld, where the hero Odysseus was sent to consult him.

The figure of Tiresias recurs in later European literature, both as prophet and as man-woman, in such works as Guillaume Apollinaire's Surrealist play Les Mamelles de Tirésias (first performed 1917; "The Breasts of Tiresias") and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1922).

Mic Anderson, Copy Editor.

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Tiresias, in Greek mythology, a blind Theban seer, the son of one of Athena's favourites, the nymph Chariclo. He is a participant in several well-known legends. Among the ancient authors who mention him are Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, and Ovid. At Thebes, Tiresias played an active part in the

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Moses the Prophet

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Biblical Revelation & Ancient Prophecies BBC

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History Channel Documentary    MOSES at Mount Sinai Bible

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History Channel Documentary MOSES at Mount Sinai Bible

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Jesus Christ The Messiah

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There are several factions using different means to control the masses.(Bankers, Governments, Kings & Queens and Religion) All depend on deception in this endeavor. Only when you see past all the lies, will you gain your freedom. Cheers

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I wrote, edited, produced, and directed this particular podcast. It was part of a project with Jenni Moss in the Classical and Modern Languages, Literature, and Culture department at Wayne State University.