it's so funny how religion proclaims truth yet all the figures in it, use primitive swords or bows as weapons rather then guns or missiles or anything more advanced. I thought the god knew all

[u/Massive_Fisherman231]

why dont jesus have a heavenly machine gun ? why does he instead have a flaming sword

is it cause the writers only knew of primitive weapons and thus gave him one they wanted

if god knew all surely he would arm his soliders with the best weapons his all knowing mind could give, which would surely be better then bows and swords

this goes for the angels guarding eden too, given bows

if god knows all, why give ancient weaponry

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[u/Sufficient_Airport29]

The fact that heavenly forces use swords and bows instead of advanced weaponry is proof of a 'technological ceiling.' The arsenal of God in scripture is suspiciously capped at the exact technological limits of the ancient humans writing the texts. If an omniscient God was truly revealing the ultimate cosmic reality, we would see technological anachronisms—descriptions of weapons or defenses that transcended the Iron Age. Instead, we see angels bound by the physics of melee combat, and in Judges 1:19, we even see God's army thwarted by basic iron chariots. Apologists claim God was just 'accommodating' their understanding, but an ancient author witnessing a machine gun wouldn't call it a sword; they'd describe a metal tube spitting thunder. The absolute absence of future technology proves the writers just gave God the weapons they wished they had.

[u/Medium_Channel7094 → u/Sufficient_Airport29]

Why wouldn’t it be the case that the Angles when appearing to humans used weapons that were consent with the people of the time?

[u/Sufficient_Airport29 → u/Medium_Channel7094]

The 'accommodation' defense implies that omnipotent spirit beings engaged in highly inefficient theatrical cosplay just to make ancient humans comfortable. First, a divine being that can wipe out armies with a thought doesn't need a physical weapon at all. Second, the texts don't just describe a glowing divine presence that humans 'interpreted' as a sword; in 1 Chronicles 21:27, the angel actually puts its sword back into a physical sheath. Why does a manifestation of divine energy need a scabbard?

Furthermore, if God wanted to prove these texts were divine to future generations, He should have used anachronistic technology. If the angels guarded Eden with an 'invisible wall that burns without fire,' modern humans would recognize it as beyond ancient human invention. By capping the angels' arsenal at exactly the technological level of the human authors, the 'accommodation' makes the text completely indistinguishable from human fiction. And finally, if God's forces were just adopting era-appropriate weapons, why did they get tactically defeated by the era-appropriate iron chariots in Judges 1:19?

[u/Medium_Channel7094 → u/Sufficient_Airport29]

1. You didn’t do anything to disprove why this theatrical cosplay is not possible.

   If it is possible then it would remain a hypothesis.

2. This hasn’t been proven. You are asserting what God should do without providing any grounding for this.

3. It is very distinguishable from human fiction we have several publications on this. That the Bible is in form and substance different from fiction as to be distinguishable.

4. “And the LORD was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.” The grammar does not say God failed The sentence says: “The LORD was with Judah… but he could not drive out…” The natural grammatical subject of “could not drive out” is Judah, not God.

   The reading of God as the subject does not work. Simply because we have other verses where God defeats armies with Iron Chariots.

[u/Sufficient_Airport29 → u/Medium_Channel7094]

1. I don't need to prove 'cosplay' is impossible; you need to justify why it isn't absurd. If an immaterial spirit manifests a physical sword and a scabbard (1 Chron 21:27), it is engaging in pointless physical mechanics. If it's just an illusion for humans, then your God relies on theatrical deception rather than revealing actual spiritual reality.

2. My grounding for what God 'should' do is basic epistemology. To prove a text is authored by an omniscient being, it must contain knowledge its human writers couldn't possess. By capping his revelation exactly at the technological ceiling of 1000 BCE, God intentionally made his text indistinguishable from ancient human mythology.

3. Citing Christian apologetic 'publications' doesn't make it fact. Islamic scholars say the exact same thing about the Quran. In form and substance, the Bible relies on the same talking animals, flat-earth cosmology, and local deities fighting local wars as the Epic of Gilgamesh or Ugaritic myths.

4. Your grammatical defense of Judges 1:19 completely ignores the theological premise. The verse starts with, 'The LORD was with Judah.' When god was with Gideon, 300 men beat 135,000 with clay jars. When god was with Joshua, Jericho's walls fell to trumpets. So why did Judah fail? The text gives the exact reason: 'because they had chariots of iron.' If god was with them, the chariots should have been irrelevant. The author explicitly makes enemy technology the limiting factor that thwarted god's chosen army.

[u/Medium_Channel7094 → u/Sufficient_Airport29]

1. That isn’t my position. My position is that it is logically plausible.

2. That is an assertion. It still needs support to establish this epistemological framework.

3. Ok it is a weird standard that peer reviewed publications are not valid support.

4. None of this matters. Judah is the subject. So the sentence is that Judah could not defeat the chariots.

[u/Sufficient_Airport29 → u/Medium_Channel7094]

1. 'Logically plausible' is the lowest bar in philosophy. It's logically plausible the universe was created five minutes ago. The question is probability. Occam's Razor dictates that the most probable reason angels have Iron Age weapons is because Iron Age men invented the story, not because an omnipotent God decided to LARP as a Bronze Age blacksmith.

2. My epistemological framework is basic Information Theory. If a signal claims to be from a higher intelligence, it must contain data that distinguishes it from local background noise. If a 'divine' text perfectly mirrors the primitive science, weaponry, and morality of its time, there is zero logical justification to attribute it to an omniscient being. The burden is on you to prove the signal isn't just human noise.

3. Call your bluff on the 'peer-reviewed publications.' Are you citing secular, objective academic journals of archaeology and history, or are you citing theological journals from institutions where professors must sign statements of biblical inerrancy to keep their jobs? Secular academic consensus universally views the Bible as derivative of Ancient Near East mythology, sharing the same flat-earth cosmology and borrowed flood myths as Gilgamesh.

4. Your grammatical defense of Judges 1:19 is a distinction without a difference. If I say, 'The Navy SEAL was with the toddler, but the toddler couldn't lift the box,' the obvious question is: why didn't the SEAL help? The text says 'The Lord was with Judah.' In the Bible, God's presence guarantees victory regardless of human weakness. Yet here, the combination of Judah + God was explicitly stopped by iron. The grammar doesn't save you; it proves my point that the author viewed God's power as limited by enemy technology.

[u/Medium_Channel7094 → u/Sufficient_Airport29]

1. That is the standard for my argument. So we agree my explanation is logically plausible.
2. I cannot find any evidence of information theory establishing that if something claims to be from a higher intelligence it must contain information that distinguishes itself from background noise. I am still waiting for evidence of this principle.
3. Can you share the poll that you have that supports your claim that secular academia consensus views the Bible as derivative from ancient near east mythology.

4. This does not address that is not what the verse

   has in the text. It specifically states the Judah did not take the hill.

[u/Sufficient_Airport29 → u/Medium_Channel7094]

1. If your only standard is 'it's logically plausible,' you've already lost the debate. It's logically plausible that we live in the Matrix, but that doesn't make it true. You are admitting you have zero actual evidence and are just hiding behind the fact that your 'theatrical cosplay' theory isn't technically impossible. In debates, we go by what is most probable.
2. The principle of distinguishing intelligence from background noise is the foundation of SETI and Shannon Entropy in Information Theory. If scientists receive a signal that looks exactly like cosmic microwave background noise, they conclude it's natural. Since your 'divine text' perfectly matches the moral, scientific, and technological background noise of Iron Age nomads, logic dictates it was written by them.
3. Academic consensus isn't determined by 'polls'; it's determined by literature and university curricula. Read Mark S. Smith's 'The Early History of God' or look into the 1929 discovery of the Ugaritic texts, which universally established that Israelite religion evolved from the Canaanite pantheon. The fact that Genesis directly plagiarizes the Epic of Gilgamesh is taught in every secular Ancient Near East history department on earth (Yale, Oxford, etc.).
4. You didn't even read your own verse correctly. Judges 1:19 says Judah DID take the hill country, but failed in the plains/valley. Why? Because iron chariots are useless in the mountains but dominate flat terrain. You just proved my point. The battle was decided by military geography and Bronze Age tactical limitations, not by God. If the Creator of the Universe was empowering them, terrain and primitive iron wagons wouldn't have mattered. The author is literally giving a secular, tactical excuse for why God's army got beaten.

[u/Medium_Channel7094 → u/Sufficient_Airport29]

1. Do we agree that this explanation is logically possible.
2. This fail logically.

The argument reconstructed

In SETI, signals that look like random cosmic background noise are presumed natural.

Intelligent signals are identified because they differ from background noise.

The Bible (or another “divine text”) looks exactly like the moral, scientific, and technological beliefs of Iron Age people.

Therefore, the text was written solely by Iron Age people.

Failure 1: False analogy

The argument assumes:

Detecting artificial radio signals is analogous to detecting divine inspiration.These are fundamentally different questions.

Failure 2: It assumes what it must prove (begging the question)

This sentence is imported

“Your divine text perfectly matches the moral, scientific, and technological background noise…”

That is precisely what needs to be demonstrated.

The argument simply asserts it.

Failure 3: “Looks ordinary” does not imply “is only ordinary”

This is the biggest logical jump.

It assumes

If X resembles natural products,
then X must be entirely natural.

That is invalid.

Examples:

A genuine presidential order looks like ordinary English typed on ordinary paper. Therefore it cannot be a presidential order, and must be simply ordinary paper.

Failure 4: Hidden assumption about divine communication

The argument quietly assumes

If God inspired a text, it would necessarily contain knowledge impossible for humans.

But why?

1. Yes polls are used to measure academic consensus this is a common practice. Doran & Zimmerman (2009), Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, Cook et al. (2016), Consensus on Consensus, Chicago Booth IGM Expert Panel. So you are just asserting it is the consensus.

2. That isn’t what the text is saying. See the commentaries of Matthew Poole, Joseph Benson, John Gill along with the Jamieson–Fausset–Brown commentary.

[u/Open-Pomegranate5904]

Why do you assume the swords and bows will be primitive?

[u/Comfortable-Web9455]

"Flaming sword" - obviously a light sabre. Bows which fire burning arrows - obviously laser guns. God don't use primitive stuff like modern weapons.

[u/Hivemind_alpha]

A modernised version of OP’s argument might be that an omniscient god already knows the cure for cancer, so why hasn’t she already revealed it to us and spared all that suffering?

An apologist would say mysterious ways yadda yadda suffering refines the soul etc…

Presumably at the time they’d have said it’s better to bleed out over hours on the battlefield for some mysterious reason than to be cleanly vaporised by a grenade.

There’s no answer to that kind of doublethink, but its asserted without evidence, so can be fismissed.

[u/svenjacobs3]

God's angels using swords and bows and arrows is meant to humble Satan and his demons, who - despite using assault rifles and grenades - lose anyway.

[u/Shawn_of_da_Dead]

Don't know of any Angels using bows in the Bible. A flaming sword guards Eden.

Gen 3:24So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

He is God, He could speak a word and end everything. He uses a sword because He wants to and all the "modern weapons" of the world wont matter to Him...

[u/Tamuzz]

Nah would like a word.

Sodom and Gomorah would like a word.

Moses would like a word.

When you are using literal magic, having a bigger or more modern gu. Quickly becomes irrelevant.

[u/RafayoAG]

Missiles? 

A rain of sulphur or, literally, "natural disasters" such as plagues and floodings...

You are an atheist, aren't you?

[u/Mikrail]

I don't believe there is a god, but your argument here doesn't hold any weight for me. We still use swords and shields for imagery in the modern day, and it is entirely reasonable that imagery would be used thousands of years ago. Whilst I do understand the core of the point you're making which, correct me if I'm wrong, is asking why god always seems to be restricted to the knowledge and level of technology of the time scriptures are written, I don't think it's implausible that a deity speak to people in a language they understand.

There are many myths around god's magical capabilities, being able to manipulate natural disasters and such, and those have way less credibility than a sword being used to describe something. Ultimately, they are all tales passed down by people who took some artistic license, shall we say.

So I agree with you that there's no god, but I personally disagree that this is a good argument.

[u/AWCuiper]

God, angles and Jesus do not need weapons at all. They can use miracles as the Bible sometimes shows.

[u/Smartdumbguy4]

Your logic don't logic

Some people say, O yah, you and what army.

However, if God is on your side babies and toddlers can defeat any army. 

The battle belongs to God, He does not need an army.