ron - i'll just refer quickly back to something i said early on in this thread - of the fact that before the jewish people even got into the land of Israel and settled it, the prophecies of the kick-out from that land was prophesied. pretty heavy a prophecy for folks to make up - and dangerous too, because if you give that prophecy and it doesn't come true, folks won't "buy into your religion" IF you were a human being making up these scriptures. However, humans didn't write it G-d did and therefore G-d was able to promise that we would be kicked out, which we were. There are, throughout the scriptures promises and prophecies that "happened" to come true. Not the encoded ones. Plainly written ones, able to be interpreted in only one way - at its face value.
if you and i were to decide on this thread to make up some sort of religion, we would have to come up with a "revelation". Now you and I might come up with some story that both of us get down pat and share it with others. So say, for discussion's sake, that we decide that on this BS: Monsey thread, live chickens came scooting out of our computer and pecked us on our nose, we can work out the details and start selling it to people and tell people that the chickens told us to spread world peace, etc. However, if we ask that everyone who even glances at this thread verify the story, it becomes more problematic, because we then have to make sure that a wider range of folks will say the same story about how many chickens pecked and how they clucked to us. Now, if you are saying that three million folks saw and said the same thing, it gets quite complicated to say it was something that human beings wrote and got folks to believe. Revelation at Mt. Sinai had millions of folks. That is why all the major religions concur it happened. Moslem, Christain, Jews and many others believe it happened. Why such strong belief among folks who often don't agree? cuz it is hard to argue the fact that millions of folks say it happened, that they were there and concur on what they saw and what they heard. Kinda like Holocaust denial. I, for one, know the Holocaust happened because my parents, and hundreds of folks who I spoke to, went through it and concur on the details, on the event, on the fact that it happened.
There are other things (we can do this all day) such as that in the Scriptures it lists the animals that have cloven hooves and don't chew their cud and vice versa. Remember, this was supposedly made up by humans before the flourishing of science and internet access to encyclopediac knowledge. Since the scriptures were written, there has never been found an animal, not even in the wilds of the Amazon, that has cloven hooves and doesn't chew its cud or vice versa that is NOT on the list that is in scriptures. So the human beings who "wrote" the scriptures must be great zooligist and must have traveled far and wide to know that their list would never be able to be refuted.
and on and on...we can do this for day...
ah, but religion demands of us...and that we are scared of...so we find every way to wiggle out of having to see the truth.
my father always says, those who say they don't believe are like those in new york who walk out of their homes to their parked car and see a ticket. Automatic reaction "I don't believe it" with a slap to their forehead. Do they not "believe" they got the ticket, as they stand there with the offending paper in their hand? They believe -they just don't want to deal with the fine.