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So, what kind of loot do these demons drop? I've been farming for that epic sword I want and not having any luck, should I try Christian demons instead?

yellowfever wrote:
I've got a question that I hopefully present well. All posters except one are saying this guy is crazy. But if that's the case shouldn't all religious people be considered crazy. I mean this guy is just talking about the evil version of God/angels. The bible has the devil/daemons in it. So If a person believes in god/angels don't they kinda have to believe in the devil/daemons. After all its all in the same book.

This is a valid point. The primary reason we don't say that all religious people are crazy is social rules about being polite to people. It's ok to say whatever you like about minority religious groups that are "weird enough" to be considered acceptable targets, but you'd better not be rude to the majority. So even if you can make the argument that mainstream beliefs are just as unreasonable or irrational you're risking a ban for a rule #1 violation if you call anyone crazy over it.

Also, for the word "crazy" to have any meaning it has to involve more than holding an irrational belief. The line should be drawn at whether or not a particular irrational belief has a negative effect on a person's life and/or meaningfully impairs their ability to function. A person with a vague sense of "angels sometimes protect us" might post "praise Jesus!" on a news story about a person surviving a horrible accident, but they're probably going to function just fine in everyday life. The guy in the OP is letting their irrational belief have much more of an impact on their life, to the point of arguably destroying their professional qualifications. There's pretty clearly a difference between the two situations, and calling them both "crazy" just makes it a meaningless label.

 Orlanth wrote:
There is evidence, you just prefer not to accept it because it involves God.

No, we reject it because your so-called evidence is complete garbage. All you've been able to come up with is a few anecdotes for things that haven't been demonstrated under controlled conditions, and stating the obvious that a lot of people really believe in god. None of this is at all persuasive unless you already believe in your particular brand of Christianity and want to "prove" to yourself that you're right.

There is a whole internets worth of such testimonies.

Ever hear the saying "the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'"?

I ignore the invisible unicorn, first because it likely either isn't relevant or doesn't exist because if it did there would be myriad testimonies of its existance.

There are myriad testimonies of the unicorn's existence. I've seen lots of them, so many lives changed by the invisible unicorn. I can give you thousands of pages of testimonies if you'd like, but I know you'll reject them because they're about a different god.

No I dont because you dont have billions of people believing in religions which include as a core tenet of their beliefs that unicorns exist. Wheras Judaism, Christinaity and Islam all point to the existance of demons as core, not fringe, theology.
You don't get it . Believing in demonic influence is as commonplace a belief as any other which causes millions to goto a church, mosque or synagogue every week.
So its not the same as unicorns in your closet.

How popular a belief is has nothing to do with how reasonable it is. Belief in demons is no more reasonable than belief in the sock-drawer unicorn, and pointing out how many billions of people believe in demons just means that billions of people are wrong.

By what right t you write off billions of religious people as mentally ill.

By the right of "they believe in something that is factually wrong and completely absurd". Talking about how rude it is to call them "mentally ill" doesn't prove that their beliefs are reasonable, it just demonstrates that in our society we don't like it when you criticize someone's religion too strongly.

 Orlanth wrote:
I could expect you to say that. You don't believe in God and therefore all evidence for God is garbage because you daren't consider the possibility of it being anything else.
That isn't a rational argument and you draw that conclusion before even looking at or for evidence. Which shows how devoid of logic and reason your response is.

IOW: "UR SO BIASED YOU HATE GOD". No matter how many times you repeat it that doesn't make your evidence any better. I have considered the possibility of god (and even wanted there to be a god) and found the pro-god argument severely lacking. I don't reject your evidence because I refuse to accept the idea of god, I reject it because it's terrible "evidence" for anything. It fails to live up to the standards of evidence we'd apply to other subjects, and it's only persuasive if you already believe in your particular brand of Christianity.

Consider homeopathy in comparison. The supposed mechanism behind it is incoherent nonsense, and it has failed miserably in controlled trials. When we dismiss isolated anecdotes of "this water totally healed me guys, spend all of your money on it!" with "show me the successful controlled trials" very few people would think it would be reasonable to argue that we're just biased and afraid to admit that homeopathy works. Most people would recognize the obvious: that the pro-homeopathy side has done a terrible job of proving their case and they need better evidence before belief in homeopathy is a reasonable thing. But somehow, when it comes to god, the standards change completely and this garbage evidence must be accepted or you're biased against religion.

Sure. I can play that game. What history has your religion, where are its adherents, where is the history of belief or hold texts, where are the testimonies. Show me this and I will not disrespect your unicorn or laugh at a doctor who chooses to believe in unicorns and call for his career to be terminated.

You can play that game, but a game is all it will ever be. Arguing "BUT I HAVE SO MUCH HISTORY" will never be a credible argument. People have believed a lot of absurd things in the past: that the sun revolves around the earth, that the white race is inherently superior to all others, etc. And when they were demonstrated to be wrong no amount of "where is your history of belief" was a successful counter to the criticism. We just accepted that lots of people had been wrong for a long time. And eventually the same will happen with religion.

Billions of people can be wrong as most of the religions are mutually exclusive you can be assured of that. But you aren't the judge as to whether they are.

Why am I not the judge? Because I disagree with your opinion?

Have you heard of the revised calendar for ancient middle east history. Back until about twenty years ago there was a huge gap in the timeline of middle eastern ancient history. This was because one important source was always dismissed, the Old Testament. However when the Hittite and Egyptian sources were combined with the Bible timeline it actually made better sense.
Historians were forced to conclude there was three hundred year dark age in which no recorded text survives despite adjacent copies of texts from before and after that time. When they got over their dogma of not using Biblical sources as historical sources the timeline was 'repaired' without the three hundred year gap and the history of the ancient middle east made sense.
Here s one example of scholars itself using the Bible as a historical source, after a period of discarding it as a source and finding it better it the evidence that science was finding.

{citation needed}

Could you give some more information on this? Searching for "revised middle east calendar" turns up nothing, and the only ~300 year "gap" in history that comes up is some fringe theory that mainstream historians don't take seriously at all.

Also, there's a huge difference between using the bible as a historical source and believing all of its religious claims. For example, let's say that 2000 years from now historians know that 9/11 happened and resulted in major changes in society but the year is no longer known. Then some historian finds a (fiction) novel from 2016 that talks about 9/11 happening in 2001. It has provided useful historical information because even works of fiction often incorporate facts about the real world to make a more appealing story, but that doesn't mean that the historians of 4016 should seriously consider that novel's claims about how Peregrine, chosen warrior of god, defended his nation from the alien tyrants that had been manipulating the Trump campaign when Clinton's victory forced them to resort to conquest by force. Any sensible historian would say "nope, that claim of Peregrine incinerating an alien space battleship with his laser vision is not at all plausible" even though the novel did get the date of 9/11 right.

You can give your own testimony but the changed life must be witnessed properly over time for any validity to be placed by a claim.

And this is what I mean about garbage evidence. A "changed life" isn't evidence for the truth of your religion, just like the happy marriage you have after you stubbornly believe that your spouse is faithful doesn't change the fact that they're cheating on you. It is entirely possible to have positive results from believing a lie, so no amount of "believing in this changed my life" is credible evidence that the belief is true.

 Orlanth wrote:
Faith is not mutually exclusive with evidence. You can believe because of what you know or what you presume.

No. The definition of faith: strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

{same old already addressed claims about how you evidence isn't garbage}

Nope, it's still garbage. No matter how many times you post the same old "evidence", ignoring all of the people explaining why it isn't compelling evidence at all, it will still be just as worthless.

However in law evidence such as this can send a man to prison. i.e testimony has validity.

Testimony also has the least validity of all evidence, and a case built on such fallible evidence and nothing else is an incredibly weak one. And, unlike the way you treat testimony that supports your religious beliefs, in court it is treated with extreme skepticism. Any half-competent lawyer is going to push very hard on the difference between what a witness believes they know/saw/etc and what they can justifiably say they know/saw/etc.

Where do you get the doctrine that the Bible it has been heavily altered. Other than wishful thinking and handwaves.

How about scholars at a Christian university working on understanding how the bible has changed? You can't give the "wishful thinking by atheists" excuse for that one.

 Orlanth wrote:
Your argument would be better received if you werent so consistently poisonous about belief in God. You have every right not to believe, less right to ridicule people who do, or just handwave discourse away without ever giving reasoning as to why.

You have very consitently said the evidence is rubbish. You have never articulated why it s rubbish. Partly beause that would involve looking at the evidence, and you prefer to dismiss it a priori.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Don't do this. Also, I have articulated why your evidence is rubbish, you just don't like the answer.

Most forms of Christianity is against homeopathy, but the reasons vary. Homeopathy derives and presumed power from potentisation. Solutions are diluted to an extent that you could replace the original mixture with radiactive waste dilute it directly and end up with something potable. As each stage dilutes the solution by approx 99%, and there are normally up to about thirty stages of dilution. Potentisation is a faith based process, as despite the extemely heavy levels of dilution a solution that is purportedly stronger as it becomes more dilute.
Chemically it makes no sense, theologically the options are open, it can make perfect sense, as the potentisation is a personal process. Practitioners are instructed not to just diluted and that doesnt work, it is beleived by homeopathy practioners there is an impartation during the shaking which should be by hand. It is similar in some ways to spiritism, this is why most churches have little to do with homeopathy, as it only makes any sense if it involves spiritual processes, and ones that are as far as we are aware not of God.

You're completely missing the point here. I'm not arguing that homeopathy is valid, or that Christianity supports homeopathy. I'm pointing out the fact that the kind of "evidence" you keep trying to provide in support of your religion is the same kind of "evidence" that we throw out as obvious garbage when it comes to homeopathy. You're trying to set a much more generous standard for what counts as evidence for your own religion.

it has already happened. in China there are brutal persecutions of the church justified on the grounds that man has outgrown religion.
The Chinee authorities found a phenomenon they couldnt undestsand though. The more Christians they imprisoned and brutalised the faster the church grew.

No, that's not what I'm talking about at all. Religion will not end because the state oppresses it and ends it by force, nor do I support that. Religion will end when people say "you know, this is pretty silly" and stop believing.

And of course the church grew under persecution, that's what happens when you make martyrs out of people and inspire sympathy for their position. That, of course, does not mean that the beliefs of the church are true.

Because you gave your verdict before seeing any of the evidence.

I saw your so-called evidence. And I've seen lots of similar so-called evidence in the past. Do not confuse my being completely unimpressed with your weak efforts to justify your religion with being ignorant of what you are claiming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_(Rohl)

And here's a nice quote from that:

Egyptologists have not adopted the New Chronology, continuing to employ the standard chronology in mainstream academic and popular publications.

Your supposed victory for bible-based history is actually nothing more than a fringe theory that is not taken seriously by mainstream historians.

This is true, but the corroboration throws cold water on the popular assumption by critics that the Bible must be just a book to fairy tales with zero basis in fact.

Please don't make straw man arguments. Nobody is claiming that the bible contains no truth at all. Even other books of fairy tales (which everyone, including the authors, understands are fairy tales) often include some elements of the real world in the stories. What people are actually arguing is that the parts of the bible that are relevant to theology (IOW, not the random background events/places that have little to do with the story of Jesus) have little or no basis in fact.

Your example isn't a good analogy for a 'changed life'. A cheating wife who returns to her husband contrite and never cheating again and seeking forgiveness is a changed life analogy. In fact its a Biblical one and the very example is used several ties in the Old and New Testaments.

It isn't intended to be a direct analogy for a "changed life". It's simply illustrating the point that sincere belief in something, even sincere belief that allows you to change your life, does not mean that the thing you believe in is true.

 Orlanth wrote:
You mean its rubbish because its rubbish. You posted no reasons.

Going to resort to outright lying, I see. I've posted reasons why your so-called evidence is garbage, you've just chosen to ignore them for some reason. But I'll post them again, just to be clear. All of your evidence falls into one of four categories:

1) Using confirmation bias to turn anecdotes into "data". You post an anecdote or two about random cases where "god healed someone", but you can't come up with any examples of divine healing happening in controlled tests (the standard for proof of effectiveness of any other claim in the medical profession). It's pretty obvious that what you (and your fellow believers) are doing is taking the few "successes" (misdiagnosed patients, lucky outliers, etc) out of all the countless people who are prayed for and calling it proof of god, while ignoring all the cases where "god" did absolutely nothing and whatever cancer/disease/etc the person had reached its typical conclusion. IOW, you're doing the medical equivalent of looking at a plane crash where 99 of the 100 people on the plane were killed and citing the lone survivor as proof of god.

2) Testimony from people that consists of nothing more than "I believe in god". As I pointed out with the cheating spouse analogy the mere fact that belief in something was good for a person does not mean that the belief is true. So all of your examples of people saying "god changed my life" are proof that a lot of people believe in god's ability to change lives, they aren't proof that those people are correct in their beliefs.

3) Vague statements about "I felt god's presence". How do we know that the person is correct about encountering a divine being? How do we know that this being, if it exists at all, is the Christian God and not another god (or even Satan trying to trick believers)? Like the testimony about changing lives this is very strong proof that people believe in a personal relationship with god, it isn't evidence that they are correct.

4) Fringe theories of history that are not taken seriously by mainstream historians. Sorry, but all of that stuff about bible prophecies and alternate timelines is just garbage. The experts in the field have already thrown it out and only a few religious groups believe it is at all credible.

So, there's some reasons. Whether or not I specifically listed one of your pieces of "evidence" it all falls into one of those categories.

Homeopathy is not a good parallel to religion in general.

No, of course it isn't, but that isn't the point. The point is about standards of evidence. When people provide anecdotes about homeopathy "working" we dismiss them as garbage and expect successes in controlled trials (where homeopathy inevitably fails) before considering it valid. But when your religion provides anecdotes about prayer "working" to heal people you consider it true by default instead of applying the same standard of proof that homeopathy has to face. Your so-called evidence would be garbage if it were presented as proof for anything other than a religion that you already believe in.

You don't understand why China is a good example of your error.

No, I simply reject the fact that China has anything to do with what I'm talking about. Ending a religion by government force and religion naturally fading away as people stop believing are two entirely different things. And, like it or not, religion is declining right now. The only question is whether this decline will stop at some point as the true faithful refuse to abandon their religions, or if it will continue on until believers are a small minority at most.

The trouble with wikipedia is that it a collage of data. Read the next line.

"By contrast, other Egyptologists recognise the value of Rohl's work in challenging the bases of the Egyptian chronological framework."

IOW, the standard "wikipedia neutrality policy" disclaimer that is typical in articles about fringe theories. "Some people believe", etc. When you actually search for anything on this theory you find virtually nothing from mainstream historical sources. Page after page of search results are all explicitly Christian churches and religious groups.

Actually atheists have been trying to say that a lot.

Please stop making blatant straw man arguments. "Some atheists" may say that the bible contains literally nothing that is true, but there are stupid people in pretty much any group. The majority of atheists with even a token knowledge of the methods of history will tell you that the bible is a valid historical source, just like any work of fiction. You can't trust the information in a work of fiction to necessarily be true, but background information in a story is often based on real events and even an entirely fictional work will still tell you quite a bit about the culture that wrote it.

They say that too. Which is why I can point out and say that Biblical prophecy promise the return of Israel, i.e. the religious stuff, not the David was King history stuff. this was accomplished with the rebuilding of Jerusalem, but the nation did not return, add in the sevenfold curse to the remain time and you come to a certain exact date in 1948....

Could you provide some examples of mainstream historians accepting and commenting on the "prophecy" of Israel being founded in 1948? Because, based on a quick search, all of the claims seem to come from fringe Christian "end times" groups.

 Orlanth wrote:
Before I challenge your four assumptions I will ask you to not cross the line and accuse me of lying.

I'll stop accusing you of lying when you stop lying. You claimed that I have not said why I dismiss your claims when I clearly have (and I'm pretty sure we've even argued about those reasons for dismissing your claims). That is a lie.

Or, I suppose maybe you made a careless mistake and didn't bother to read or remember the posts you're arguing with. If you'd like to apologize for claiming that I haven't provided any reasons then I'll drop the accusation of lying.

On correction those were not anecdotes, because a large number of original sources are mulltiply sourced, this doesn't make them anecdotes. And there are plural of those.

No part of the definition of "anecdote" requires that it be told by a single person. Your stories are anecdotes because they are unreliable stories of isolated incidents told without independent verification.

Irrelevant. So long as lives are changed and there is corroboration of that, which a community can provide by knowing the person over time, then there is no reason to consider the cause to be baseless. However that is exactly what you do, you make definitive statement to say that the testimonies are 'bullgak', when results can be quantified. Furthermore you claim this is the case for all of them.

And here you're completely missing the point. You have provided evidence that belief in Christianity can change lives. You have NOT provided evidence that Christianity is true. As I keep telling you belief in a false thing can have positive effects. You have to provide a lot more than people saying "I believe that god changed my life" for the claim that god changes lives to be credible.

However no action is takes without multiple independent sourcing.

Oh really? How do you provide "multiple independent sourcing" for a claim like yours about seeing a demon:

I only actually ever seen one once and only because I was allowed to do so by God.
The demon, one it knew I had seen it immediately fled and didn't leave treasure behind.

Do Christians have secret brain-recording technology that allows multiple independent sources for something like this?

How about people who woke up in morgues after being pronounced dead and having claim to have seen Jesus and been returned.

Most likely they were "pronounced dead" before being actually "dead". Death is not a single point in time, it's a process of the body failing and shutting down. And if a person experiences something like this it's quite likely that their interpretation of the events will follow the "Christian near death experience" story that is common in our culture. I strongly suspect that if you look at these cases they involved people who were dying gradually, not from some catastrophic destruction of the body. You probably aren't going to be able to post any examples of, say, someone having their body blown apart from a direct hit from a tank shell miraculously waking up in the morgue and saying "hey, that Jesus guy is kind of neat".

The real question here is how do you deal with the experiences of people who had near-death experiences but claimed to encounter some other religion's god?

People being healed of yet incurable diseases.

Likely either an incorrect diagnosis or they're the lucky 0.0001% that managed to fight off the disease. I'll just point out that you only have occasional isolated examples, not a consistent pattern of prayer curing people with "incurable" diseases that can be demonstrated in controlled trials (the usual standard for proving the effectiveness of a new treatment). If you take 1000 people with these diseases and pray for them at least 999 of them will probably die as expected. All you're really doing is the equivalent of looking at a plane crash where 99 of the 100 passengers died and saying "wow, what a miracle, isn't god great?". It's not persuasive at all unless you're starting from a position of "I want to believe that my god can do this".

Find me any, even just one event that was predicted to the day centres ahead of its time by any secular means. We cant even do medium term weather predictions because chaos maths gets in the way.
Yet the restoration of Israel more than just stops a butterfly effect.

Find me any bible prediction that was made in clear terms before the event happened. The "art" of bible prophecy is entirely in taking real-world events and finding ways, no matter how convoluted, to match them to something in the bible. Nobody in 1940 was saying "on May 14th 1948 Israel will be founded", they only decided that the founding of Israel on that date fit with some "prophecy" once it had already happened and they knew what real event they needed to interpret the text to refer to.

PS: Christians can't even agree on whether this "prophecy" is true or not: http://www.bible.ca/premillennialism-rapture-replacement-theology-supersessionism-three-promises-abraham-fulfilled-israel-god-land-joshua-solomon.htm

Thank you for the evidence of how far off the mark you are. So they are 'all explicitly religious sources'. All of them? Right. Let's see.

Yes, let's look at these sources. From a google search for "new chronology Rohl":

1) The wikipedia article.
2) A Christian group that thinks Rohl is garbage.
3) A site that isn't saying "yay Jesus" everywhere, but openly wants to confirm the truth of the bible.
4) Lamb and Lion Ministries. Enough said.
5) A forum thread discussing the subject. Not really a "source" of any kind.
6) Rohl's own blog. Not an independent source.
7) An academic journal about the new chronology. I'll grant you this one, one secular source.
8) An atheist (apparently) site explaining why Rohl is wrong.
9) A conservapedia article. Garbage AND religious.
10) A Christian vs. Muslim debate site taking the Christian side.
11) An article from the Christian journal "Bible and Spade" that actually seems to be critical of Rohl (the complete article is not available unless you pay for it).
12) A brief mention of Rohl in the comments on some unrelated blog post. Not a source.
13) A site attempting to prove the events of the bible.
14) A critic of Rohl who isn't happy that he doesn't believe that the bible is the word of god.
15) Amazon link to buy Rohl's book. Not a source.
16) A Christian church that doesn't like Rohl.
17) Answers in ing Genesis. Enough said.
18) A search engine page quoting the wikipedia article.
19) A Christian opinion that Rohl is garbage and offers Christians nothing.
20) Quoting from "Bible and Spade" again.

Ugh. That was way too much work to win a silly internet debate, but there's the first two pages of search results. Perhaps "they're all Christian" was exaggerated a bit since there was a single (apparently) secular source in there but that's a lot of endorsements from Christian groups. And, honestly, when Answers in Genesis is saying good things about your ideas you should really start worrying.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hallq/2012/07/why-atheists-dont-think-the-bibl-is-historically-reliable/

Do you understand the difference between "the bible is not reliable" and "the bible contains nothing at all that is true"? From your own link:

So Paul’s (authentic) letters may be a good source of information about the early church as Paul knew it, if you take into account that Paul was taking a side in fights within the early church and that may have distorted his reporting.

There's an atheist saying that the bible can be a historical source. If even your supposed link to an atheist saying that nothing in the bible is true or a valid source says the exact opposite I think it's safe to say that whoever these atheists are they're a pretty irrelevant minority.

 Orlanth wrote:
Well the prediction was written in the Old Testament.

Except, as I already pointed out, it wasn't predicted then. Nobody in 1940 was saying "on May 14th 1948 Israel will be founded", they waited until after the events of May 14th 1948 to go back and look at the bible and see if there's any way to interpret something to mean "on May 14th 1948 Israel will be founded". And that's how it always works. The prophecies are never specific enough that people are reading them and making predictions that will indisputably be true or false once the event happens or doesn't happen, it's always interpreting something that already happened as somehow matching the prophecy.

So you will be able to show examples then. If its art you can do it, take a biblical prophesy and apply it to Obama. There are fringe cases on YouTube doing just that. But that is completely different.

No, because then you'll dismiss it as a "fringe case" like the examples you just dismissed. But the fact that people are, as you said, applying bible prophecies to Obama demonstrates that it can be done.

Good bit of handwaving. You had to dig through several pages to find them. I made no comment that religious people would not reference Rohl's work.
encountered your blantant denial saying that ALL the support was from

 Peregrine wrote:

Page after page of search results are all explicitly Christian churches and religious groups.

You didnt just 'make an exagerration' you deliberately handwaved away information you didnt want to agree exists.
Whether you lied or just made the handwave comments unthinkingly is not relevant.

No, what I said is correct. Once you filter out the search results that are either not sources at all (amazon links, etc) or opposed to Rohl and only look at the ones supporting Rohl's work you find that almost all of them are Christian groups. There's exactly one secular source in there, a journal that Rohl himself contributed to. All of the independent sources commenting on Rohl are either Christians or critical of his work. And included in those Christian supporters are Conservapedia and Answers in Genesis, two groups that rather well define "lunatic fringe". The absolute best that you can say is that I exaggerated a bit, but the substance of the comment remains true.

and Rohl himself is not part of any faith or religious group from what we know of him.

That's not the point. I'm not saying that Rohl's work is biased because of Jesus, I'm saying that Rohl's work is only taken seriously by Christian groups who like it for theological reasons. I doubt Rohl intended to appeal to fringe lunatics like Answers in Genesis or Conservapedia (a death sentence for the reputation of a serious scholar), he just proposed a theory that didn't work out very well with mainstream historians.

That wasn't presented to the thread for that purpose.

I don't care what the purpose of it is, all I care about is the content. You claimed personal experience of seeing a demon, I pointed out that this "evidence" is not reliable because you can't provide any confirmation outside of your own fallible memory. Obviously nobody is basing their entire theology on your single event.

 Orlanth wrote:
Again you have this backwards. It is a process of discovery not manufacture.

Yeah, because nobody has ever studied the bible before, we're constantly discovering new things to study. Nobody is manufacturing new words to match a real-world event, but the are applying a new interpretation to the existing words once they know what real-world event they want to make the prophecy refer to.

The calculations could have been made at any time.

Yes, exactly. The calculations could have been made at any time. The subject of the return of Israel is something that would be of interest to a lot of people, not just some obscure bit of trivia. Other countries with interests in the region would want to know that political changes are coming, Israel's enemies would want to know to prepare for war, religious people would want to know about an event of extreme theological importance, etc. And, as you said, this prophecy is quite specific about the dates. At any time over the past ~2000 years someone could have looked at the prophecy and said "yep, May 14th, 1948, Israel is coming". And nobody bothered to identify that date. Nobody cared at all about the "prophecy" until the modern nation of Israel was founded and people went back looking for anything that could "predict" that the date would be 1948.

You could apply that level of 'prediction' from a telephone directory. But people apply to to the Bible and make wild guesses because the Bible has a track record of providing the real thing, so fringe believers try their own hand at fitting the Bible. But you can tell the difference. The New Testament even helpfully warns believers that people with try this and that they should not be fooled.
The addition of mimicry doesn't invalidate the genuine works of Biblical numerology

Ah yes, the classic "no true Scotsman Christian prophet" argument. Any prophecy you like (preferably ones that are "accurate") is legitimate, anything you don't like (especially the ones that turn out to be obviously false) is "fringe believers". That sure makes it easy to have a 100% accuracy rate!

Again mainstream historians are often in support.

{citation needed}

I've posted the search results and none of them are independent mainstream sources. The closest thing to a mainstream source was the journal that Rohl himself contributed to, which doesn't really count as an independent source. Of the independent sources that approved of Rohl's work all of them were either individual Christians trying to prove the accuracy of the bible on their personal websites or Christian groups approving of how Rohl "proves" that the bible is true. And when both Conservapedia and Answers in Genesis (the very definition of "lunatic fringe") endorse a theory it's a pretty big red flag that it isn't legitimate.

Also some of th sites you found while religious are also scholarly, Christians are not exempt from historical study, nor should their contribution be questioned simply because they are also believers. It would be an unfair standard to place on a history of the middle east to be atheists or agnostics only.

Of course it wouldn't be fair. But that's not what I said. The issue is not that the people are Christians, it's that they're working from a Christian perspective where the goal is to prove that Christianity is correct. A secular mainstream historian who happens to be Christian in their private life can be perfectly qualified to comment on the history of the middle east. Answers in Genesis is not.

ne can even take an example in gaming. Remember Warhammer Ancient Battles?
The supplement chariot Wars covered army lists for the ancient middle east. There is a nice two page coverage of the New Chronology there on pages 5 and 6

Is this supposed to be a joke? A miniatures game rulebook is the level of "evidence" you're willing to claim?


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 Orlanth wrote:
If you wat to say the prophesy was cherry picked, How, its pretty much the only cherry of its type. We know then Jerusalem fell to the day, we know when some Jews returned to rebuild the temple to the day. We dont know when David was born, or Moses, or when the Israelites entered th Holy land. We do know that the multiplier for Biblical disobedience is a sevenfold, there s no other multiplier, andwe now know that if you use the sevenfold curse to the tally of days you get to the exact day in 1948 that Israel was founded.

Even your own source says that we don't know the date to the exact day, that we can, at best, get the correct year from the prophecy and estimate that the day is within the plausible range. Did you think that we're all just sinful atheists who hate god and would refuse to read your link and catch this fact?

 Orlanth wrote:
This was explained earlier. Biblical prophesy, especially end Times stuff but also events such as these are sealed. there are several references to sealed prophesy. It means that even though the calculation is simple, it isn't done beforehand because God does want people to.

How are they sealed? The words are right there on the page (and, as you've argued, no interpretation is required to understand them, you just add up the numbers).

Possibly for the reasons given above, people could act on them.

But I thought god was omnipotent and could make perfectly accurate prophecies? Wouldn't god have seen any attempt to act on the prophecies and accounted for it in making the original prophecy? Or are you admitting that god is fallible and can only predict the future under certain conditions?

Citation was given, the examples I used to prove that you completely incorrect in claiming th supportwas 'entirely' from Cghristian groups.

Are you really going to be this dishonest? I posted the first two pages of search results, all of the sources that support Rohl's work but aren't affiliated with Rohl himself are Christians who like it for religious reasons. But now you're getting away from the original point and into nitpicking whether "entirely" is a bit exaggerated or not. Your original claim was that Rohl's work forced historians to accept the truth of the bible in resolving a historical question. This has been proved false in several ways:

1) Rohl's work is not widely accepted by mainstream historians. Whether or not there are a small number of secular historians who agree with him the majority of his support comes from religious groups who like the theory for religious reasons. And among his supporters are Conservapedia and Answers in Genesis, two giant red flags for "this is a fringe theory".

2) Opposition to his work is not limited to atheists who dislike the bible. I provided you with links to Christians arguing that his work is garbage, so you can't use the "they refuse to accept that the bible could be true" argument.

3) Opposition to his work is not based on "it comes from the bible", it's based on specific objections to historical arguments that he makes.

It isn't evidence per se, it's an example of Rohls work being used. Also why it is a miniaures game book the pages are concerning only with a timeline of events, and Nigel Stillman chose to use he New Chronology and explained why.

The point is that miniatures gaming rulebooks are not held to the same kind of standards for historical accuracy as, say, peer-reviewed academic journals. An author of a game rulebook is free to use something because it sounds cool, because they don't do enough research to get it right, etc. Citing a rulebook as an example of support for Rohl's work is really getting desperate.

Biblical tradition points to the start date being the month of Nisan of the correct year. Archeological sources do not contest this date. The count back takes you sright to that time.

So now we've come from "predicted to the day" to "archeological sources don't contradict the date". I really don't see why you have to be dishonest about this when your own sources say that the prophecy doesn't predict the date down to the exact day. Is "predicted the exact year thousands of years before it happened" such an underwhelming accomplishment that you have to exaggerate it and make it sound more impressive?

 Orlanth wrote:
God's will. his i evidenced by the fact that the plain text prophecy did indeed remain overlooked,

But how is god's will enacted? How does god prevent someone from reading the words that are clearly written on the page? Saying "it's god's will" is just handwaving away the criticism without supplying a plausible answer.

What? You mean God would have to label all the intervening in events in the passage. The Bible is big enough.

No, I mean that when "god" says "Israel will be reborn in X years" god should be able to foresee any human attempts to alter the outcome of the prophecy and already have accounted for them in specifying X years instead of Y or Z years. If human actions can interfere with the outcome of a prophecy then god is a pretty limited prophet.

As stated there are secular historians who support Rohl, others . This is a flat fact and there is no evidence shown to claim tis is a minority,
Usage by Christian groups does not invalidate the theories.

I provided the evidence: the search results for "new chronology Rohl". If you search for mainstream theories that are accepted by mainstream historians you'll have no trouble finding peer-reviewed academic journal articles, mainstream historical websites, etc, all prominently in the top search results. And they should certainly rank higher than garbage like Conservapedia and Answers in Genesis. Whoever these secular historians who support Rohl are they aren't important enough to appear in search results for his theory. And that's a sign that you're talking about a fringe theory.

Not relevant what the motive i for those who disagree with Rohl. Some people look for historical excuses

Of course the motive is relevant! Your whole point was that secular (atheist) historians refused to acknowledge biblical information in creating the timeline of Egypt, until Rohl forced them to. Take away the "atheists are biased but even the atheists had to admit the bible was right" part and you're left with an irrelevant argument over some obscure bit of history.

It was listed because this is a gaming site so the topic could be of interest.
Also the timeline was lifted from other sources not Nigel Stilmans own work.
Not 'desperate', just a relevant topical example.

The fact that this is a gaming site does not make a miniatures gaming rulebook a legitimate source of historical information. Give me the peer-reviewed journal articles (from mainstream academic journals that are not affiliated with Rohl) endorsing Rohl's claims, or concede that your best sources are Conservapedia and some miniatures game.

Same thing. Jeffrey's calculations use the passover, which can always be predicted to the day as it is related to the lunar solar year, and can be calculable for every year in history to the day.
Archeological sources don't contradict the traditional theory that cycles of this nature begin at passover. Non-Biblical sources don't provide a date for Cyrus' proclamation or the exact date the rebuilding started.

No, it's not at all the same. The statements "Orlanth is proven to be a murderer" and "there is no evidence disproving that Orlanth is a murderer" are two very different things! And even your own source admits that the prophecy does NOT give the exact date, but you can make some assumptions and plausibly narrow it down to around the right part of the year. IOW, what your own source actually interprets the prophecy as is "Israel will be reborn in 1948 around mid-May-ish".

There is no logic to claim that 1948 is 500 years too soon, or a thousand, or any number. The given total fits the pattern for the sevenfold punishment directly according to Levitical law.

Of course there is logic to claim that, and insaniak even provided you with the logic. You simply assume that the sevenfold punishment multiplied the entire punishment of waiting for Israel to be reborn, not merely the fraction after a certain date. IOW, you're in prison for a 10-year sentence, and 5 years into your sentence you get it multiplied by 7. You are arguing that you now have 35 years remaining (multiplying your remaining time by 7), but an alternative interpretation is that you have 65 years remaining (multiplying the entire 10-year sentence by 7, of which you have served 5 years). Both are potential interpretations of the sevenfold punishment.

Now the problem you have is that, according to you, god prevents a prophecy from being understood until after the event has happened. So if the restoration of Israel has not yet happened (arguing that the modern state of "Israel" is not the one promised in the bible) then god will prevent anyone from understanding that Israel really won't be restored for another 500 years. You will go on believing the incorrect belief that the prophecy has been fulfilled, and only 500 years from now will anyone be able to look back and say "wow, that Orlanth guy was so wrong in 2016". From your point of view there is no way to tell if your belief about the prophecy is correct or not, because god may be hiding information from you. Your confidence in your beliefs should be undermined by your other beliefs, and you are not justified in saying that the prophecy has been fulfilled.

 Orlanth wrote:
This doesn't make sense only if you approach this from the prior assumption that God doesn't exist, or is impotent.

And here's the fatal problem with what you're saying. You're attempting to provide evidence for god by making an argument that assumes that god exists. It's like I said before, "evidence" like this is the kind of thing that is only persuasive if you already believe in your particular brand of Christianity and want to reassure yourself that there are good reasons to continue believing. It's not convincing at all to someone who doesn't already share your religion when you dismiss criticism of your evidence for god with "it all makes sense if you just assume that god exists".

You're also creating a rather significant problem with making your beliefs immune to disproof. By arguing that god "seals" any prophecy that hasn't occurred yet you create a situation where it is impossible for anything to ever be evidence that god and biblical prophecy are false. If you can find real-world events to match a prophecy then you treat it as proof that god exists. If you can't find real-world events to match a prophecy then you claim that god is keeping you from understanding it properly, so the prediction hasn't failed. That should be a giant red flag!

Ok, I understand your point better now. God likely has intervened numerous times on this issue, after all the point of such a prophesy is to show that God is watchful.

Events occurring over X years don't get shifted to Y or Z, because Y or Z is not the proper Biblical timeframe. Instead human decisions are steered to ensure X occurs. God is not Eldrad, He isnt just interested in the result, He is interested in the result at the proper time.
I would be perfectly happy if God just arranged things in order and allowed them to come to pass, but God likes to do things different. God allows fixed passes of over events over time, which occur in patterns, the Prophesies of Daniel heavily feature this theology. Why He wants to do this is not for me to say, and I honestly don't know. God is God.

But your argument was that god has to keep prophecy "sealed" because otherwise people would try to act on it. And you haven't addressed this at all. Why should god care if people try to act on a prophecy before it is time? God has already foreseen their attempts to act on the prophecy and accounted for them. Your beliefs don't even make sense internally.

Answers in Genesis probably get more traffic than studies into Rohl's work at a top university, link priority is no an indication of style of content.

Nope. In fact, it's pretty easy to prove that this theory is wrong. If you search for "evolution" (you know, the primary subject of Answers in Genesis) you won't even find AiG on the first 10 pages of search results. And in the first search results you'll find plenty of mainstream sources supporting the theory of evolution. If garbage sites like Conservapedia and Answers in Genesis are getting more links than any mainstream sources then it's a pretty strong hint that you're looking at a fringe theory with little support or discussion outside of the fringe.

But, in any case, you're free to provide those sources I asked for: articles supporting Rohl's work in peer-reviewed academic journals not affiliated with Rohl.

Rohl's work is certainly relevant, because prior to Rohl and some scholars like him the Bible was excluded from the canon of historical sources for ancient history. Motives for doing so varied.

This is not true at all. The bible hasn't been excluded as a source of historical information, that's simply an absurd claim to make. Historians have treated the bible as an unreliable source (because it is), but that's not at all the same as rejecting it entirely. And Rohl didn't change anything. The rejection of his work has nothing to do with his use of biblical sources, it's about factual errors that people have found in his work.

Taken from recovered sources , this would be the case, and even a prediction to a season or a year would be impressive. However Jeffrey notes that events of this time, then ordained by God usually occur at Passover, as that is the time for beginnings. It was why Jesus was crucified on passover. If passover theology is applied, and we can calculate passover for any year we wish because we have an accurate lunar calender model, then a candidate day can be given. Given the candidate day, the prophesy was found to be day precise.

And this is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. The prophecy didn't say "on May 14th", people saw that the actual date was May 14th and came up with the "important stuff happens on Passover" theory to make it fit with the prophecy. This is not impressive when it happens after you already know what date you need to make the prophecy "predict". And, while I know you'll just make the same "it was sealed" handwaving excuse, nobody prior to 1948 was claiming the May 14th date for the return of Israel.

 Orlanth wrote:
But you just cant let go. Religious belief, including atheism, has always been an emotive issue, and always will be.

That's not how it works. Atheism isn't an "emotive issue" just because people care about it, just like no amount of arguing with someone about the fact that 1+1=2 will make basic math an "emotive issue". Don't confuse caring enough about a subject to argue about it with a lack of clear evidence-based reasons to hold a particular belief about it.

Again there is plenty of evidence to support religion. Those who don't like the evidence therefore manufacture excuses to claim it is not evidence. It has been a running theme. It is just a mental cushion that enables you to pretend you are purely scientifically open minded and look at both sides of an argument impartially. People aren't like that in real life and religion is a real life issue, not a theoretical one.

No, people dismiss your so-called evidence because it is absolute garbage. We've been over this before, none of the things you've posted are at all convincing to anyone who isn't already Christian and looking for excuses to continue believing. It's not that we hate god and refuse to listen, it's that we've listened to the best you can provide and found it severely lacking.

The trouble is it is UNTHINKABLE to some that Dr Gallagher could be anything other than a quack. Literally UNTHINKABLE, because their conditioning doesn't permit the subject matter to be thought through, even though it is a mainstream theology of the the worlds largest religion. Defend it, and others turn up on Dakka and surprise, surprise, it is UNTHINKABLE to them too.

There you go again, insisting that anyone who disagrees with you must be incapable of THINKING because of their "conditioning". We don't disagree with Dr. Gallagher because it's UNTHINKABLE and we can't even conceive of him being right, we disagree with him because we don't see any credible evidence that he's right.

The numerous calls for Dr Gallagher to no longer be allowed to practice due to a conflict with you belief systems should be a warning that perhaps the atheist zeitgeist is no as open minded and inquisitive as it thinks it is.

Being open-minded does not mean allowing any random fraud to sell whatever "treatment" they want. We have standards for this kind of thing for very good reasons. We'd say the same things about a doctor selling fraudulent "cancer treatments" on the side, even if there were no confirmed reports of their scam interfering with their other work.

 Orlanth wrote:
You cannot honestly ethically dismiss a premise as lacking evidence without checking for the evidence.

Why do you keep saying this? Atheists have looked at the evidence. The problem is not that we're all ignorant of this amazing evidence you have, it's that your evidence is garbage. You have yet to offer anything more than the same old unconvincing "evidence" that religious people have been bringing up for as long as there have been arguments about religion. We've looked at the evidence for your god, and we've found it lacking.

Also the bar for accepting evidence is often set artificially high.

No, it's set in a pretty reasonable place. In fact, it's set in a place that you agree with pretty strongly when it comes to other religions. When other religions make claims with evidence like the kind you present for your religion you don't find it convincing, you continue to be a Christian.

Evidence is out there, I will take one example of a deep thinker who would have preferred the evidence to point elsewhere:

“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?"

CS Lewis, Surprised by Joy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

Self appointed people of "reason", who have turned up one after another and wanted Dr Gallagher to have his career ended, because he expressed a belief in something they don't agree with. That is morally incompatible with rational free thought, but fully in agreement with dogmatic fanaticism.

Only because you bizarrely define "rational free thought" as "never criticize anyone and never dare to suggest that there be consequences for a belief". If Dr. Gallagher had, instead, loudly proclaimed his support for the beliefs of the Nazis and endorsed their eugenics ideas would it still be "dogmatic fanaticism" to suggest that he be fired? Or is it only "dogmatic fanaticism" when people are criticizing something that you really want to be true?

 Iron_Captain wrote:
And there is nothing wrong with solipsism.

There's plenty wrong with it. It's a dead-end position. It doesn't help at all in understanding anything, it's just an excuse to stop thinking about a subject because none of it matters. And it very often turns into absurd "both sides are just as bad" arguments where the solipsist's pet fringe theories are just as valid as the mainstream consensus, because if we can't know anything then how can you say that they're wrong?

 Orlanth wrote:
Those are religious beliefs.
People who don;t believe in God want to be called as not having religious beliefs so that when the problems of the worlds religious beliefs are criticised they can claim to e above or immune. However history shows us the atheistic politics is as dangerous and as bloody as the politics attached to any religion.

Atheism is a religion in the same way that "bald" is a hair color. It's a position about things related to religion, but there are no atheist churches, no unifying atheist beliefs besides "I don't believe in god(s)", no atheist rituals, etc.

It is hotly contested because it challenges some peoples faith in having no God.

Not really. It's hotly contested because it's a "prophecy" interpreted only after everyone knew that May 14th 1948 was the date they needed to make the prophecy fit. Despite how simple the prophecy is (just add up the days) nobody in 1940 was predicting that date, and you have to resort to "god did it" handwaving to dismiss that problem.

Well it is impossible under medical science to be brain dead that long at normal temperatures and return with faculties intact. there s a lot of medicine behind that, brain cells decay very rapidly when there is no oxygen to feed them.

Could you provide a link to this case, from secular sources with details on exactly what happened, how the fact that he was "brain dead" was discovered, etc? There is a whole lot of medicine behind the fact that brain cells decay with no oxygen, but that doesn't rule out things like "brain dead" being reported inaccurately. Nor does a quick search for this information look very impressive, as it seems to be another story that is only endorsed by explicitly Christian sources.

He received what was likely to be a very high does from the number of stings.

Key word: LIKELY to be a very high dose. Let's say there's a 99% fatality rate with that kind of sting. That still leaves one survivor every ~100 stings, simply by chance alone. This is why proof of medical "miracles" needs to be in the form of controlled trials, not occasional anecdotes. It's very easy to take the occasional lucky survivor and interpret it as "god did it". It's much harder to demonstrate a consistent record of divine intervention being successful at a higher rate than secular medical treatment.

Well McCormick did meet God.

Important question here: do you consider the near-death experiences by people who claim to have met non-Christian gods to be proof of those gods? If not, why do you consider the same experience to be proof of your god?

Your comment relies on the dogma that a supernatural cause of someones ills is a flat impossibility,this is fine as a person belief, but you impose that on others.

No, it relies on the fact that supernatural causes of ills are unproven speculation at best. The evidence for them is somewhere between "unconvincing garbage" and "nonexistent". Until supernatural causes are demonstrated in controlled trials (the standard of evidence used by everything else in medicine) considering them in "treatment" is quackery, nothing more. And endorsing quackery is a pretty big red flag about a doctor's professional credentials.

So many people want a piece of me, I don't live on the forum.
Also not answering comments is not a 'convenience', that is rather loaded. Like you expect to find dishonesty and will assume it.

Alright, I'll assume that you're an honest person. Please admit defeat on your claim that historians refused to accept the bible as a historical source prior to Rohl forcing them to acknowledge it, based on the indisputable fact that one of Rohl's most prominent critics (and a mainstream historian) is a devout Christian who explicitly endorses the use of the bible as a historical source. Since you are an honest person with a busy schedule this failure to acknowledge this defeat was clearly a mistake, and you should have no problem correcting the omission.

 insaniak wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
..., but there are no atheist churches,

Not actually true.

Well, not technically true. There are a small number of atheist "churches", but they're pretty rare and not very popular.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
I don't think I am really following you anymore. Firstly, existance or non-existance of a deity is unprovable through scientific inquiry, as it is by definition an unprovable claim.

This is not true at all. The existence of a deity is something that could in theory be proved. For example, notice how Orlanth makes claims about provable things over and over again: miracle healing, the reasonableness of belief in demons and exorcism as a cure, speaking in tongues, etc. What is actually true is that the existence of a deity hasn't been proven. That's because the arguments in favor of the existence of a deity have all failed badly, not because the concept is somehow immune to discussions of proof.

Solipsism is not at all a dead end. In fact, it often serves as the beginning of a philosophical theory or argument. It is a perfectly valid and logical philosophical position.

It absolutely is a dead end because once you say "we can't know anything" there's no further discussion to be had. Any attempt to argue that a position is right or wrong can be met with "you can't prove that", and no conclusion can ever be reached. It's an eternal hell of agreeing to disagree.

And of course the inescapable truth here is that nobody is actually a solipsist in everyday life. If I ask you what you had for breakfast this morning you don't respond with "I don't know, I can't prove anything about the external world". You don't remain agnostic about the claim that Peregrine is the one true god and you should give Peregrine all of your money or be tortured in hell for eternity (if you disagree, I take paypal). You look at the evidence and come to solid conclusions on those positions, and you don't waste any time on "but you can't be 100% sure, only 99.9999999999999999%". There is no reason to treat religion any differently. We should apply the same standards for proof that we use with other "{thing} exists" claims, ignore any "you can't prove beyond any possible 0.000000000000001% doubt" arguments, and accept that "we're pretty sure about this" is close enough. And once we do that we have to conclude that there is no credible evidence for the existence of any god(s), therefore atheism is the only reasonable conclusion.

 Orlanth wrote:
It has a doctrines, fanatics, unifying organisations, preachers, 'saints', a faith based eschatology of sorts - a world without faith in God; there is a form of low church, even ritual, both relating to the atheist state/party system, it is an official faith system for several regimes - all unpleasant ones,

Only because you use incredibly broad definitions for those things. By your definitions having a favorite football team is a "religious choice". There are doctrines (football strategy and analysis), fanatics (fans), unifying organizations (lots), preachers (experts on the team), saints (legendary players with retired numbers in the hall of fame), a faith based eschatology of sorts (this year we win the super bowl!), there a form of low church, even ritual (dressing up in team colors on game days, etc). The only thing missing is making it an official faith system for unpleasant dictatorships, but there are plenty of religions that aren't official faith systems in any dictatorships.

Nothing was 'made to fit' it is a straight up calculation. It is also a straight up multiplier. If someone wanted to fit 1949 as the answer they would have needed to add a whole lot of junk because when you multiply a large number by seven you get gaps.

If it's so easy and obvious then people should have figured it out before 1948. You'll of course handwave this problem away with "god sealed the prophecy" as if that means anything, but the obvious answer here is that the prophecy doesn't clearly refer to 1948 and nobody figured it out until after 1948 because they didn't know what date they needed to interpret the prophecy to refer to.

Ian McCormack. Do a google on him. I have discussed him with you on another thread.

I did a google search on him. Secular sources are missing, as are details on the medical side of the event. And his own website claims some kind of conspiracy to withhold his medical records and prevent him from talking to the doctors who were present, which rather conveniently leaves his account as the only available one.

And of course if you look at his account you see a key flaw in the story: when he was "revived" the doctor was looking for signs of life. That's something you do when you aren't 100% sure that a person is dead, it's completely incompatible with your claim that he was "brain dead" and coming back from that point was impossible. The obvious interpretation of the events is that he was stung severely and almost died, but never reached the point of brain death. The doctors considered his survival unlikely and thought he was probably dead, but hadn't quite given up and confirmed his death yet. It's a "you're lucky to be alive" case, not an example of coming back from death.

A story of this kind is normally endorsed explicity by Christian sources is not indicative of a lack of authenticity. You have seen what happens when people in secular medicine say they believe in a story. Taking example Dr Gallagher and calls to end his career.

It's not indicative of a lack of authenticity when Christian sources endorse it. It is indicative of a lack of authenticity when only Christian sources endorse it.

And no, you don't get to handwave away this problem with "secular medicine can't endorse it or they get fired". That's yet another example of you making your beliefs immune to being disproved. If a secular doctor endorses a miracle story it's proof of god. If a secular doctor says "no, this isn't credible" then they're just afraid of losing their job, it doesn't mean their opinion about the story is valid. So nothing that doctor says is allowed to be evidence against your god. This should be a huge red flag.

It certainly exists and is heavily documented. It remains unproven because that is the way God wants it. It is flatly rejected by some because that is how they want it.

Do you not see how this is a contradiction? Evidence for god exists and god sends people (like Ian McCormack) back to be an example and lead others to god, but god simultaneously doesn't want there to be proof of god. That makes no sense at all! But the real situation here is pretty obvious: you're happy to claim evidence as proof of god, and the "god wants it to be unproven" excuse only comes up when people point out flaws in your evidence. It's an excuse to handwave away criticism, not a consistent theory about god.

Source please on your critic.

Also the old chronology long rejected the Biblical source for aligning the timeline, and resulted in the three hundred year dark age gap to make sense. Rohl and others showed that including the Bible as a historical source gave a more plausible timeline. It was not implied that Biblical archeology didn't occur in separation, but a rejection of the Bible was a factor as to why the old chronology persisted as long as it did. Rohl opened a door, there are several variants because ancient sources from across the middle east understandably do not all agree and there are gaps in the timeline.

A source was provided earlier. Kenneth Kitchen is the guy who came up with the generally-accepted chronology that Rohl was trying to disprove. He is a mainstream historian and respected in the field. He is a strong critic of Rohl. He is also a devout Christian who openly endorses the use of the bible as a historical source and writes articles promoting the idea. Your idea of Rohl bringing the bible to atheist historians is laughably wrong.

It is a common excuse: 'there is no evidence', really how would you know. Do you know all? There is no calculation or equation which comes up with the solution God = 0, so there is no scientific premise to dismiss evidence as it emerges, and some of the evidence is quite profound.

How do you know there is no evidence that Peregrine is god and will burn you in eternity if you don't immediately send Peregrine all of your money (Peregrine takes paypal)? Do you know all? Better send Peregrine all that money just to be sure.

The truth here is that atheists do look at the evidence, and even look at new evidence as it emerges. But that evidence is inevitably weak and unconvincing at best, and almost always yet another repetition of the same old evidence that has been presented countless times before. At some point, even if you're open to the possibility of new evidence appearing, you have to conclude "there is no evidence". It's what we do with everything besides religion, so why should your preferred god have a special snowflake exception to the rule?