The whole exodus narrative seems remote from Egypt - the Pharaoh is not named, none of the court or military leadership is named, no gods are named, none of the priests or wise men are named. The tapestry is pretty blank.
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Seems like every day I hear of a Christian denomination/sect Iâve never hear of before. âDissentarianâ? I Googled it, but nothing came up. What gives?
A little known Christian sect who cannot agree with anyone, even each other. 
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Trinitarianism is, by definition, monotheism, since it is the claim that there is one God and this one God exists in or as three persons. Itâs certainly possible to be an inconsistent or contradictory trinitarian and believe that each of those persons is by themself a god. However, there are many Trinity theories that are not polytheistic. For a summary of Trinity theories see: Trinity (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
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It could be worse â I hear the Dysenterians are particularly bad news. 
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You know, I promised myself I wasnât going to go there, but I had a feeling thatâs where it would end up eventually⌠
If Trinitarianism was âby definitionâ monotheism, then Jews and Muslims wouldnât call it heresy and idolatry. As Gertrude Stein famously wrote: âA rose, is a rose, is a roseâŚâ
Heads you win, tails I lose. First, I am wrong for using formal logic. Second, I am wrong for not using formal logic. Go figure.
Nope. I am using the definition that everyone uses which you apparently are not aware of.
Best laugh I have had today.
And there it is.
A good point, Ron. Yet itâs what we would expect if the account were written centuries after the event â as many Biblical scholars believe. The writer would have only the haziest idea of the structure of Egyptian society at the time, and might have lost all memory of names of particular Pharaohs. Itâs just the sort of situation in which popular legends of Egyptian wizardry could be drawn upon, where there was no prosaic knowledge of what actual Egypt was like to puncture the romantic balloon.
All right, letâs test this current claim of yours. Here is what you actually wrote, which started all this mess:
Examine how the word âimpliesâ is used above. It is used in the context of a formal logical argument. Your explanatory sentence indicates the formality:
If there is only one God, the commandment would have said so. (p implies q.) (from your 3rd sentence)
The commandment does not say so. (not q.) (from your 3rd sentence)
Therefore, there is not only one God. (not p) (matching your first sentence)
This is classic modus tollens. You were using âimpliesâ exactly as I thought you were.
You use similar reasoning, though less formally stated, regarding the Egyptian court passage:
Turned again into formal language, this is:
If the writer of the Egyptian court/snakes episode had believed that the Egyptian gods donât exist, he would have said so. (p implies q.)
The writer did not say so. (not q.)
Therefore, it is not true that the writer believed that the Egyptian gods donât exist. (not p.)
By implication, then, the writer believed that the Egyptian gods existed.
And later on, when you reinforce this idea with reference to the parallel you imagine with Aaron and his God, you say:
Note your choice of words â âmust haveâ come from a different God. Youâre expressing logical necessity, not a fuzzy maybe or a mere possibility.
Again, you were using âimplicationâ and âimpliesâ exactly as I do. Your attempt, at this late date, to weasel out of your original use of the words, is exposed once those original words are reviewed.
âSeems to indicateâ. Again, this is a massive hedge.
It indicates the formality that it makes a lot more sense to say that there are no other gods if that is in fact the case. There could be some reason why it wasnât described in such a fashion, but at first glance it seemed to be the perfect time to spell it out in no uncertain terms, and that wasnât done. For all of the Bible, the Ten Commandments are considered by many to be direct writings of God himself, so why be vague?
Thatâs the argument. It is as much an appeal to common sense as anything else, which is actually a fallacy in formal logic. But since you donât want me to use formal logic, that is until you do, then what is the issue here? You complain that I am misusing logic by taking a machine like approach, but when there is an appeal to common sense and hedging you complain that Iâm not using formal logic. Go figure.
False. It is an implication, which is âseems to indicateâ.
No, that is not the most common meaning of âimply.â
If you wanted to say âseems to indicateâ you should have said just that. In fact, if you had written any of the following:
âseems to indicateâ
âsuggestsâ
âseems to implyâ
I would not have objected, and we would not be having this discussion.
Further, even if you believe that âimplyâ can have a âsoftâ meaning, i.e., that it can mean no more than merely âsuggestâ, you surely were aware of the âhardâ meaning used in formal logic, and therefore, if you wanted to be absolutely certain of conveying your meaning, you should have chosen a word or phrase that people could not possibly mistake, rather than a word people might misunderstand. And given that the way I was arguing should have made it clear to you how I was reading âimpliesâ, you could have clarified your meaning much sooner. So the blame for the confusion (if indeed we are dealing here with a mere confusion, and not an outright error which you are retrospectively trying to gloss over) is still yours.
What I have written above and in the previous post or two should clear this up. At the time I said those things, I was not aware that you were appealing to âcommon senseâ; I thought, based on my understanding of how you used âimpliesâ, that you were using mechanical formal logic. So my remarks were entirely justified, given what I thought you meant. The statements of the Bible canât be read the way statements of Hume and Spinoza are read. Perhaps now you understand why I referred to those authorsâŚ
I think itâs now clear that we are still arguing over words and definitions, not substance. You have all but directly conceded that your interpretation of the commandment and of the court episode is not demonstrable, but only possible, and thatâs all I ever insisted on. So unless you have some genuinely new content to add to the discussion, let us end it.
That is how I used the word. If you want. just replace âseems to indicateâ for every instance of âimplyâ.
You are the one who was insisting that I not use formal logic, so you should have been reading it as the soft meaning from the beginning.
We are agreed.
I certainly agree that there are some polytheistic trinitarians. Social trinitarians are basically polytheists, because of their claim that each of the three âpersonsâ of God are actually separate selves. But Latin or one-self trinitarians believe that the three âpersonsâ are three modes of being in which God (who is one self) eternally and essentially exists.
There really is no monolithic view of âthe Trinity,â but rather many different Trinity theories, so itâs wrong to say (as some unitarians and atheists mistakenly do) that âThe Trinity is polytheismâ or âThe Trinity is contradictory.â Iâm not denying that some Trinity theories do imply polytheism, or are contradictory; thatâs certainly true. But again you should look here for the various theories of the Trinity: Trinity (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
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Do you find material like that enlightening? Personally I find it all rather wordy and endarkening. I do sort of like the siteâs âman taking a crapâ logo, though.
Show your work.
Remember that the âAge of Piscesâ is defined as the period during which the spring equinox has the planet aligned with Pisces, so any starting date not in March needs additional justification.
Iâd gladly have made an effort to give your term some other meaning, but your argument seemed such a textbook example of modus tollens that it was hard to imagine you had anything else in mind, until your recent clarification. Anyhow, since you now agree that your inference does not have demonstrative force, there is no need to carry on. In the meantime, you have perhaps picked up from my discussion some information of a philological and literary kind, and if so, it wasnât a total loss for you. Who knows? â the subject may now interest you enough to take some night courses in religion at a good secular university. âFriendly atheistâ science students have been known in the past to greatly enjoy their electives in religion, and you might enjoy such courses yourself.
I took a New Testament class in college a while back now. I did enjoy it. The professor took a very academic approach (i.e. âliberalâ) to the material that was quite different than what I was taught growing up in the church. For example, Jesus Christ was replaced by more neutral Jesus of Nazareth in our discussions and papers. The Synoptic Gospels were compared side by side in most cases.
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Again: Itâs not my work. I know some scholars disagree with that date. You are confusing the sign of Pisces, what modern horoscopes are based on, with the Age of Pisces. Signs last about a month, Ages over 2000 years or 1/12 of 25,772 years. After the sign of Pisces comes Aries. But the ages run backward. After the Age of Pisces comes the Age of Aquarius. Remember that song I think it was in âHairâ This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius sung by the Fifth Dimension.
No, Iâm not.
Since you havenât shown any work - yours or otherwise - thereâs no reason to believe you.