What would happen to your religious lives if, hypothetically, all history were voided or made inaccessible to you or somehow falsified beyond hope? In other words, imagine that due to some strange reasons, the details of which are irrelevant, you have to live your lives without having any knowledge passed down from God through any historical events whatsoever. What would you do? Would it be possible for you to lead religious lives, and if so, by what authority would you do so? In other words, can you discover the spiritual truth for yourselves without dependence on historical sources, or would you be lost if such historical sources were simply unavailable or unreliable? [Myth of Hindu Sameness]
That was a question Rajiv Malhotra asked a room full of attorneys in New Jersey and they were stumped. Does this mean that Abrahamic religions are dependent on historical episodes and would be meaningless without them?
On November 18, 2008, PBS is premiering a 2 hour program titled The Bible’s Buried Secrets which “vividly recounts the saga of the ancient Israelites and digs deeply into both the Bible and the history of the Israelites through the archeological artifacts they left behind.” The program tries to find out who wrote the Hebrew Bible and if there is any historical basis to Moses, Abraham, Exodus, and King David.
The findings of the program are not going to make a lot of people happy
But the film challenges long-held beliefs. Abraham, Sarah and their offspring probably didn’t exist, Meyers said.
“These stories are unlikely to represent real historical events, but rather there’s some kernel of ancient experience in there which has survived and which helps give identity to the people at the time the Bible finally took shape centuries and centuries later,” Meyers said.
There’s no archaeological evidence of the Exodus, either, Meyers said. “It doesn’t mean that there’s no kernel of truth to it,” she said.
Apsell said she found it “extremely shocking” to learn that monotheism was a process that took hundreds of years.[Orlando Sentinel – “Bible’s Buried Secrets” from PBS’ ]
Already online petitions are up calling for an end public funding for PBS.
Interesting. btw, have u come across Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism? He postulated Moses was an Aten priest who led some of his followers out of Egypt. Haven’t read the book. Came across the link on wiki.
Today I was listening to KQED on the car radio. They were playing a track form a movie about a guy interviewing the Democratic senator and asking him if he believes in talking snake which corrupted Adams head.
For that matter everyone knows that incidents and characters in Ramayana and Mahabaratha are something very difficult to believe that it is possible to have in modern days.
But still the second most populous country believes in them and pray for them daily. 🙂
Dotindagalaxy: Let people believe in whatever they want. That part is fine.
The problem is when theology is used in public education. A Christian as faith may believe that God created man, but when creationism is taught in public schools there is a problem. In India, science education is secular whereas in United States, in the year 2008, they want to teach creationism.
Ranjith,
No, have not read it yet. Added to the bucketlist.