Was Moses insane?

[marco]

Moses chattered with God. He pulled a big rock down a hill and said: "God wrote on this." He said he had seen God's hindquarters because God flashed through the sky, showing his back quarters to the old man.

The reasonable reaction is to say: "Rubbish." If we read these reports in the present age should we deduce
(a) Moses was mad? (b) Moses was a liar? (c) Moses was favoured by God?

Any of these answers can be chosen, but what would influence our choice?

[H.sapiens]

Moses chattered with God. He pulled a big rock down a hill and said: "God wrote on this." He said he had seen God's hindquarters because God flashed through the sky, showing his back quarters to the old man.

The reasonable reaction is to say: "Rubbish." If we read these reports in the present age should we deduce
(a) Moses was mad? (b) Moses was a liar? (c) Moses was favoured by God?

Any of these answers can be chosen, but what would influence our choice?

The question contains the logical (and legal) fallacy of assuming facts that are not in evidence.

The question, being a question, assumes no facts. If you think that Moses did not exist, that's an answer. If you think we have no evidence to suppose Moses was mad, that's an answer. If you simply want to use the phrase logical fallacy, then fair enough, but it's wrongly applied. Check your list of fallacies and come back with a specific title.

I believe that the reliance on facts not in evidence is considered to be a form of argument from ignorance.

[marco]

I believe that the reliance on facts not in evidence is considered to be a form of argument from ignorance.

You do? I believe that mind reading is an art enjoyed by very few and I am not in that number, H.s. There may be profound truth behind what you say, but I might as well be hearing the Delphic Oracle.
There is no argument, so far. If you feel you have insufficient information - not facts - about Moses then there is no requirement for you to compromise yourself by arguing from ignorance. Thanks nonetheless for your laconic observation.

[liamconnor]

To your defense, true satire is very hard to achieve as a debater. G.K. Chesterton was very gifted at it; and for some time I attempted to follow in his footsteps until it became abundantly clear that his footprint was ridiculously too big for my own.

Well we must pick ourselves up and keep trying, as Bruce did. I am gratified that I fall short of Chesterton in my ability to communicate; God forbid I should come close. Thanks for explaining the differences between sarcasm and satire. The OP is "Was Moses insane?" and I am struggling to see how a digression about my ineffective use of satire advances that discussion.

I think it is important to know how one comes across to people. That is all. Now back to it..

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 35 by Mithrae]

Hey Mithrae

Super quick interruption, then I'll happily keep watching the Marco v Mithrae with much enjoyment.

I'm almost completely certain you don't accept any of the story you two are arguing about as having actually occurred, picking of nits aside.

Am I mistaken?

Not quite. The Documentary Hypothesis of sources for the Pentateuch has its critics, but even we amateurs can see suggestions of the J and E sources in for example the two creation stories, seeming dual traditions like both Abraham and Isaac passing their wives off as sisters and attracting proposals from a foreign kings, and especially the confused tradition of whether Israel spent four generations or four centuries in Egypt (Genesis 16 and Exodus 6, if memory serves). If these two sources represent traditions of the southern and northern kingdoms respectively, that would imply a common origin sometime before 1000 BCE, which doesn't sound very reliable.

But there's three events from the period around 1700-1500 BCE which provide interesting comparisons to the biblical story: The expulsion of the Semitic Hyksos from Egypt, which sounds a little like an inverted version of the Israelites' escape from bondage; the Thera volcanic eruption, which one theory suggests could have had consequences as far as Egypt providing a basis for at least some of the plague stories; and the destruction or abandonment of many of Canaan's Middle Bronze II cities, including Jericho with archaeological evidence of collapsed walls. All of these are dated within about 200 years of each other if memory serves, though are difficult to align precisely with a biblical chronology. But knowing how sketchy our knowledge of history even from Roman times can be, and how easily bronze age dates can sometimes be disputed by a century or two, it's actually possible that much of the outline of the Exodus story was preserved through the centuries better than we might expect. (Though the absence of evidence for over a million people wandering the Sinai Peninsula for forty years may still be problematic.)

But apparently this was a topic intended for nothing more than personal feelings, and indeed personal feelings about something other than the actual biblical story. I imagine that if a student of English literature (even one who herself was not a great fan of the trilogy) saw someone criticising The Lord of the Rings at length, explaining with great verbal ingenuity and apparent personal conviction that Sauron is just a preschool bully afraid to leave his home and the Fellowship were playing hide and seek with the Nazgul, they might feel similarly compelled to point out how little value such infantile characterizations hold.

[imhereforyou]

[Replying to post 1 by marco]


Assuming the bible isn't true, all the people who wrote and believed the stories as written are insane to some degree (or on some great herb).
At best, you have a God that can't be understood and you're at his mercy no matter which testament you choose to follow (the old grumpy, vengeful guy from the old testament or the happy happy joy joy guy from the new testament).

Believing in the bible stories as is takes a bit of insanity and a dash of needy-ness, not to mention a splash of ignorance of things known and a drop of ignoring the world in which we live.

[H.sapiens]

I believe that the reliance on facts not in evidence is considered to be a form of argument from ignorance.

You do? I believe that mind reading is an art enjoyed by very few and I am not in that number, H.s. There may be profound truth behind what you say, but I might as well be hearing the Delphic Oracle.
There is no argument, so far. If you feel you have insufficient information - not facts - about Moses then there is no requirement for you to compromise yourself by arguing from ignorance. Thanks nonetheless for your laconic observation.

Wiki: Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence") is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true.

"It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false" is that not the case when one assumes facts not in evidence?

In any case, the real issue is the reasonableness of debating the sanity of an apparently mythical person. Ask yourself, "where are the burials, the kitchen middens, the fire pits that two million refugees would have left after traipsing about for forty years in a rather confined geographic region."

[marco]

Wiki: Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence") is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true.

Well I haven't used anything approaching argumentum ad ignorantiam. The objection you have is with my entertaining Moses as a real character, when we don't know. I agree he might well be a fiction, as others have said. I think perhaps he is. However, we have some details of the play in which he features and we can use these to discuss his portrayal and possible insanity.

In any case, the real issue is the reasonableness of debating the sanity of an apparently mythical person. Ask yourself, "where are the burials, the kitchen middens, the fire pits that two million refugees would have left after traipsing about for forty years in a rather confined geographic region."

We can discuss the madness of Macbeth, a character in a play, as many have done since Shakespeare introduced him. Or we can wonder if Hamlet sank into madness as he contemplated his new step-father. Like you, I don't see these biblical shadows and their jealous god as realities. But many do, and the Bible offers material for comment. Researchers dutifully spend vast gulfs of time picking up shards of pottery, looking for the odd inscription and piecing together a story, but without finding God's fingerprint or the signature of Moses. As you say, there is ignorance.


Anyway, Hs, I'm afraid the Moses in the play is all we've got to work with.

[marco]

Assuming the bible isn't true, all the people who wrote and believed the stories as written are insane to some degree (or on some great herb).

That's another matter. People who created Yahweh were offering a rival god to their enemies, and bringing their people in line. No madness there. Elijah cleverly got Yahweh to burn his sacrificed bull while Baal did nothing. Many buckets of inflammable liquid were poured over Elijah's offering (it looked like water) and that trick worked. Moses may have been even more resourceful.

Even if Moses is a fiction, we can discuss whether the character was mad or crafty or whatever.

[Elijah John]

'.....which makes me wonder why you so frequently stoop to that level?

....... but seeming disingenuous as well. ?

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[Willum]

[Replying to post 26 by Willum]

Quote:
So again, Moses does not fit well from the modernist perspective within any of the categories listed.

How can you say this?

With the same ease you can say that Rome fabricated Jesus and then forgot they fabricated him and so punished his adherents.

The only way, you could say I said this, is if you don't understand there were no Christians before Jesus, and as a historian are engaging in the sin of anachronism to justify an illogical belief.

Objectively he easily had delusions about God.

What we call begging the question.

No, we call that not making assumptions up front. If you or anyone came down from a mountain with a Apple Tablet and word from God, we'd call you, initially, objectively, delusional.

He had fits of violence.

You above all members here need to provide actual references. I see zero incidents where Moses' frustration and behavior was not quite normal.

We don't have a great deal of examples to choose from given our source is the OT. However, these few instances, FROM the OT must be some of the most important. Murder of another man, breaking the Commandments, forcing people to eat golden calf, etc.. As to my source... why must I constantly quote the Bible to justify things I would expect those even unfamiliar with the art, to know?

His behavior (such a smashing the 10 commandments) was irrational.

This is ridiculous. I have sometimes felt the urge to throw my phone across the room on grounds as trivial as an airline giving me the runaround. I cannot take your arguments seriously.

And that is you acting rationally? I merely ask for our perspective into your perspective.
That being said, a telephone is one thing, do you normally throw crosses, watches, wedding rings, or fine china around? No,because they are valuable - irreplaceable.
Under what circumstances would Moses not find the tablets valuable?
If he made them himself.
If he realized he'd made an error in construction, and needed an excuse to make another...
He knew, for some other reason, they were valueless.

So, such as it is, from the few examples we can glean from the OT, we find that Moses acted in accordance with what would be a mental condition requiring medication. These observations from the OT are positive observations.

To refute them, stronger counter-arguments must be put forward, or acknowledge that the OT, under scrutiny was founded by a madman.