Originally posted Saturday, March 26, 5:47 PM. Updated. MOUNT EBAL, ISRAEL. The oldest occurrence of the name of God, in the letters YHWH, appears to have been found that may force archaeologists to accept the existence of the cult of YHWH possibly as far back as less than a century after the Exodus, some time after 1500 B.C.E., nearly 800 years prior to their previous estimates. The 2 cm x 2 cm folded-lead “curse tablet” (or defixio) amulet was found by Dr. Scott Stripling and his team at Joshua's altar on Mount Ebal in a mound of archaeological debris that was originally dry-sifted between 1983-1989. This find confirms Deuteronomy 11:29 which indicates that Mount Ebal is a place of curses. A Times of Israel article by Amanda Borschel-Dan says that Haifa University Prof. Gershon Galil assisted [with Stripling] in deciphering the hidden internal text of the folded lead tablet using [multi-spectral] scans carried out in Prague at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The ...

There are many fallacies in claiming that God does not exist. One of these is the claim that God only exists in the gaps in science. Is this true? Inversely, are atheists immune to filling the gaps with the unfounded claim that God does not exist? It is true that many religious people have used “God of the gaps” excuses for not exploring further, but only because they feared the retaliation of their church, not because they genuinely felt they were not allowed to go further by God. Being religious does not automatically mean that the person is going to ever resort to a God of the gaps excuse. I have yet to hear of a single modern example of this from religious scientists because churches are no longer allowed to torture people and burn them at the stake. Burden of Proof Applies Both Ways Atheists certainly are not immune to this fallacy. The very claim that “evolution did it” is itself a “God of the gaps” argument that gets used by evolution communicators ad nauseum. The fact that th...