I've said this before, but it needs repeating; there are atheists out there miles more articulate and well researched than myself so I refer to them from time to time. With that out of the way, I found this video interesting because it points out how some supernatural occurrences in the Bible are not only against God's will, but also beyond God's control. I have yet to find any Christians come up with apologetics for what was pointed out in the video.
I can give you some arguments, but first you are going to have to be far more specific and focus on only one of them at a time. The Moses shielding his face thing is usually regarded as a metaphysical spiritual symbolism, that there is something inherent that humans cannot look upon the face of God. (sort of in the same way that sin needs to be atoned for) The woman touching Jesus's cloak thing is a bit more complicated. It could have been an inherent power to Jesus (and by extension his clothes) that the woman's faith activated. That being either the divine side of Jesus's spirt, or the Holy Spirit that was in him, or God himself doing the healing, with Jesus's physical consciousness not being directly aware of what happened until right after it happened. For Samson, he had already had his eyes gouged out, and he was a violent and sinful man (let's not forget he had gone out and killed scores of people). He was also captured as a prisoner and going to be driven to suffer, and it would have been a short life for him in that situation. He had death coming. He prayed that he would be able to take some Philistines with him as his last act, and that he could be put out of his suffering. Yes, you can view it as a sort of suicide, but the other way it can be looked at is a last battle where he knew his life was going to be sacrificed. Not really so different from going into a battle where one knows one is very unlikely to return from. It goes without saying that all those Philistines in there probably got what they deserved.
It's generally regarded as an act of arrogance, not showing reverence, thinking that he could put his hand on the ark and it would not really matter. We can't know for certain, but presumably it was a situation where he did not really need to put his hand on it to keep it from falling. He was just being kind of lazy and taking the easy way to keep the ark steady. He would have known with complete certainty in those days that touching the ark was an absolute no-no. Remember when the Philistines captured the ark. I'm sure some of them touched it, and none of them were instantly killed. (Though their people suffered a deadly plague as a result)
A knee jerk reaction with good intentions hardly seems like something to be punished over. Also, what about the argument about creating objects that could inspire idolatry?
Maybe it was what was in his heart that those knee jerk reactions originated out of. If he had been truly reverent, and believed the word of the scriptures, he would have been far more careful, and taken measures to prevent that situation from happening. You'll recall that the High Priest tied a rope around himself so that they could drag his body out of the room in case he died. That demonstrates extreme caution and planning. Which is of course a sign of extreme reverence. I get the impression that Uzzah was kind of being lazy and not taking the procedure for transporting the ark as seriously as he should have. Plus there might have been other serious sins that Uzzah committed that we don't know about. (In those times there was a lot of murder and killings going around)
Well, that was one of the (ostensible) theological reasons for the split between Eastern Orthodox and Catholicism. The Eastern church believed religious icons could inspire idolatry. (In reality it was a bit of grey zone, since it's not entirely clear the icons were really being directly worshipped, and if an icon is there to represent the one God, it's not truly clear whether or not it constitutes an idol)
The trouble of even clocking out at a university is the equal opportunity wiccan/ pagan witch ceremonies on campus, Good Job Democrats with the Potions of Equal assembly!
We have a family friend who's an avowed athiest and doesn't see how any reasonable person could believe in religion, and will openly say it's absurd. He also believes wholeheartedly in blood type related diets, and has maybe twenty books on astrology for personal life guidance and to predict ones future in his personal library. I find that more than a little bit ironic.
Well that's ironic because icons form an essential part of Eastern Orthodox worship today the same way with Roman Catholicism with statues of the Virgin Mary. They claim it's not worshiping the objects but just showing reverence but that of course borders on idolatry. Protestants have various views and some are more nuanced than others. Some avoid images like the plague (especially Baptists). Others have images like the cross and in my former church there are images of Jesus ans angels. These images are reminders of where we are that is God's house. We did not direct our attention towards the images when in prayer.
And I would agree with you. If we are going to be outright atheists and declare no religion is true, we need to show consistency. If we on the other hand come from the position of finding value in spiritual experiences, we cannot dismiss the value of any religion entirely.
Thanks for the great video. The Bible is full of black magic and superstition from beginning to end. It mirrors the Talmud in that respect, which is why Gentiles should not believe in ancient Middle Eastern ethnocentric Jewish religious fairy tales.
all the artifacts of the bible that had "magical" qualities did so because it was God's power working through those items. They had and have no powers of their own they are ordinary objects just like any other.
