Patterns of Evidence: The Red Sea Miracle

I really did see this movie in the theater. And I came into the theater as an atheist looking for answers regarding what could be confirmed to be supernatural.

I was annoyed after the movie aired to hear Ken Hamm and other Biblical literalists essentially say that atheists weren't interested in evaluating theistic claims and that atheists couldn't specify any contradictions in the Bible. They essentially claimed that no atheist would watch their video that I was watching, and they said that all atheists do is assert that religious people are wrong without an explanation. They also added a claim that a deeper evaluation into the Bible will make more people Christians.

I can't speak for all Christians or Atheists. But I've found that a lot of atheists who are former Christians actually know the Bible quite well. And that many Christians don't know how to address the biggest issues I see in the Bible when I point them out.

I became an atheist after growing up with a religious upbringing. At some point I deciding to evaluate the best arguments for the Bible's account being true and virtuous AND the best arguments for the Bible's important claims not being true or virtuous. For me the latter won. And to this day I'm still willing to hear more arguments for or against the Bible or any religion.

I decided to put my religious beliefs to the test and put faith in the idea that a virtuous God who is worth worshipping and believing would make his presence and admirable qualities detectable and discernible from other potential negative messages.

In some ways the makers of the film seem to have had a similar optimism. But they only decide to evaluate the various pathways to get to their intended conclusion of their religions narratives overall being correct. They discuss the merits of the Egyptian or Hebrew crossing story. Which they describe as small miracle versus a big miracle. They never seem to evaluate the seemingly most probable explanation to me. Which is that all the supernatural claims are errors or fabrications. Or the issue of distinguishing the supernatural from something with is natural and not understood yet. There is also an issue where even if something could be confirmed to have been a supernatural miracle, it doesn't seem that we know yet how or who to potentially identify as the one responsible for the miracle happening.

The makers of the film also never seem to see the circular error in using what the Bible says as a justification for following what the Bible says. In the end, the best the researchers could hope is that the Middle East region could find things which would be consist with the Exodus story. It seems that nothing will ever be able to demonstrate that everything supernatural in the Bible is correct because it's in the Bible next to descriptions of real things we can identify in the real world.

Like a lot of people who spend much of their spent addressing issues with supernatural proclamations, I work to operate as a skeptic first, then a humanist, and then an agnostic-atheist. (Yes agnostic and atheist aren't mutually exclusive. It's possible to both not-know and not-believe in any gods)

I actively value the exercise of

1. accepting a position without a burden of proof. (or a null position)

2. of apportioning my beliefs to the evidence rather than the other way around, and

3. having consist and clarifying usages for words like evidence.

The makers of this movie did not demonstrate a strong interest in any of these principles. And failing at the third principle is particularly disheartening given that the title of their project emphasizes evidence playing a big part in the project.

The creators of this movie seem to live in a paradoxical mindset of both recognizing that evidence is central to effectively determining what's truth. But also fail to use a consistent definition for evidence to demonstrate a reliable pathway to getting at the truth with the evidence they provide. If it can even be called evidence.

Methodological-naturalists (scientists actually using the scientific method) recognize that consistency and clarity is important for making's one case or allowing their peers to point-out one's flaws so the workers can collectively get closer to the truth and toss-aside errors or distractions.

Some clear flaws in the movie from my perspective, (a certain point I started taking notes) were the following:

When they talk about evidence and patterns. But typically provided anecdotes, opinions and hypothetical extrapolations. The plural of anecdote is not data. Or at least not reliable data. To be fair, the film does not assert that they have all the details figured-out. But they never explore the possibility of the entire Exodus story being predominantly wrong. It's sort of like someone investigating an unsolved murder from 3,000 years ago by exploring the evidence for the murderers being fairies or aliens.

At one point when their evaluation of the Exodus story was seeming too mystifying to have actually happened, someone mentioned a belief in miracles happening over and over again to account for any confusion. If that isn't a confusing and meaningless non-explanation-explanation, I don't know what is. I sadly laughed out loud at that point of the film. No actual skeptic would allow something so vacuous of content to make the final cut unless they were also going to address all the issue with using the supernatural as an go-to excuse for anything.

The movie assumes that people watching the movie are mostly familiar with the Exodus story, and that they believe the Old Testament book was originally accurate, or at meant to be accurate. Even if certain components of the book today have become unclear due to millennia of coping and retranslating the story, the makers of the movie assume that it was originally accurate. And it seems that they don't need evidence for that belief. Which raises the question of: "If you don't need evidence for that belief, why do you feel you need evidence for other religious beliefs?"

I'm personally unwilling to claim to know that the Exodus story was written with some intentional deception and heightened dramatization. But I think it likely was. A lot of the story seems completely insane, the more I've thought about it. Here are 3 examples of the insane moments:

1. The story literally has moments where the Egyptians have lesser gods or lesser magic (remember the sticks-to-snakes battle). I thought the God of Abraham was the only real God. Not the best God of many? If both sticks were concocted by the one real God (as some claim) why isn't that point made clear in the book. And wouldn't it send a clearer message of the one real God's power and intentions to only allow the Israelites to have any magic at all? 2. Near the end of the story, the Israelites are supposed to turn against the God who saved them when Moses goes off to get the 10 commandments. And this is shortly after being rescued by a God who parted a sea for them. This seems ridiculous to me. 3. I next don't understand why God hardened the Pharaohs heart after Pharaoh agrees to let them go free. It seems God is showing off. I thought the point of the 10 plagues was to convince Pharaoh to set the Israelites free. And that's what God got from the plagues. It seems like hardening Pharaoh's heart after they depart was an unrealistic plot decision for a fictional story for the purposes of inserting more action and drama and appeal to the narrative. Also, hardening Pharaoh's heart seems to be a contradiction to God's later claim of being a God for all people. The same can be applied to the book of exodus describing his problem can own people as slaves.

I personally don't pretend to know what did or didn't happen. But I certainly no longer begin with the assumption that a small or big miracle Exodus happened. Just because something is stated as a miracle in a holy book doesn't mean that we understand what it miracle is now or that people then knew what a miracle was then. And that's assuming that they really did see what the holy book is describing.

I also wonder why Moses in the story has to kill rather than reason with the Egyptian guard whipping the slave? This seems especially odd given that God is supposed to have foresight and know that not killing will be one of the 10 commandments.

A common overall question that comes to mine is: If God is real, why put your good people in such a bad situation in the first place? And why not devise a more clear and final way of saving your people?

At one point someone in the movie talks about the point and importance of interpretation when grappling with the story. I wondered why so much of this supposed important story of the one real God is so much about interpretation and so little and actually determining and concluding what happened for good reasons with clear and indisputable evidence.

At one point someone talked about how the journey from Egypt was a for the importance of going to God. I thought the Christians belief was that God could be everywhere and anywhere at anytime?

One person said "God has various degrees of calling people." As a skeptic I wondered, How do this person know that?

And one least question I had: Why must God speak to Moses and Moses must speak to Aaron and then Arron can speak to Pharaoh. If God can harden Pharaoh's heart why is a telephone l-line necessary to communicate to pharaoh: "let the Israelites go?

What the movie had going for it? It had decent graphics and recreations. I believe that they are really trying to get a the truth. It would have been nice if they had involved a few skeptics of the exodus story to weigh-in. Especially if Ken Hamm was going to Straw-man all atheists in the after-movie discussion part.

Overall I give it a 2/10

And no, I haven't seen part 2 yet. It hasn't come out yet.