What a genuine word of God would look like
If a God ever did reveal himself/herself to humanity, the revelation would:
Be clearly, lucidly written; no conflicting interpretations, no confusion as to what is intended
Have no internal contradictions
Have no contradictions to genuine scientific knowledge
Have sensible commands like: Dont enslave. Dont execute women for being "witches"
Not have silly stories, for example, about taking serpents and donkeys
Have been universally available to all human beings since the first human being walked the Earth
Is anyone aware of a scripture that satisfies these conditions?
Be clearly, lucidly written; no conflicting interpretations, no confusion as to what is intended
Have no internal contradictions
Have no contradictions to genuine scientific knowledge
Have sensible commands like: Dont enslave. Dont execute women for being "witches"
Not have silly stories, for example, about taking serpents and donkeys
Have been universally available to all human beings since the first human being walked the Earth
Is anyone aware of a scripture that satisfies these conditions?
Comments (67)
Previously, the next best and oldest candidate, I suspect, has always been
Either way, "revelation" without dogma or commandments, without chosen people or the damned, without martyrs or magical thinking. Just what Plato metaphorically called "the Form of the Good" universal, ancient light. :fire:
Nebula : The choices were him or a tree.
:snicker:
It could only be as clear and lucid as those to whom it is addressed.
A funny and revealing story from Genesis:
God clearly tells Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge. We are not told what Adam tells Eve, but we do know what she tells the serpent. From God to Adam to Eve there are significant changes in what was said to have been said. In addition to Eve's changes, the serpent ads another layer of interpretation.
Nothingness. If he would exist I would imagine him as the pure representation of silence and emptiness. As much as we tend to understand death.
:up: E.g. the Democritean void (à la vacuum energy).
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/507756
Surely any technically competent god could make a personal appearance in front of all of us at the same time and tell us its story in every language required, including sign language for the deaf and street speak for da kool kidz! Surely it would also have some explaining to do to at least the dolphins, chimps, and ape's etc. Hollywood's (Bruce/Evan almighty)suggestion of god depicted as Morgan Freeman would work for me.
A scripture? in these modern electronic times!
:clap: :100:
Why stop there? A god could surely just implant complete knowledge in all human minds, without the need for any long-form narrative. :wink:
Yes.
But Christians do say God has written the moral code in our hearts. Great. But when they are asked what the God-written moral code says about capital punishment, stem cell research, etc., etc, they don't agree. God seems to have a problem communicating clearly.
Mainly Protestant evangelicals. And you're right - Christians have no objective basis for morality. All they have is the subjective preferences of this or that interpretation of what they imagine a god, they think they understand, may or may not want...
Yep, I have often wondered why humans have to learn how to speak, read, write etc and LEARN about god posits. How come we don't know about god from birth?
Did god teach Adam these things or did he just have such knowledge from when he was made?
Could Adam speak to Eve as soon as he was created? then why cant we? or is that Eve and Lilith's fault as well?
What happens during heart transplants? Is the code the same in every heart, what about the future of heart replacement such as described below:
[b]Patients with late stage heart failure may be able to receive a heart transplant, in which the heart from a deceased donor is used to replace their diseased heart. Unfortunately, the demand for new hearts greatly outweighs the number of hearts available for transplantation. This is why we need synthetic hearts that are able to permanently replace a diseased heart. This technology is still being developed, but it is hoped by many that such devices will one day become available.
The first artificial heart transplant took place in 1969. The device, developed by Texas Heart Institute founder Dr. Domingo Liotta, was implanted in a 47-year-old patient with severe heart failure, allowing them to live for nearly three days until a human heart became available. Current synthetic hearts are made from titanium and/or plastic, which can be made from biocompatible materials, meaning that it is chemically inert and is less likely to be rejected by the bodys immune system. This is an advantage over a real human heart transplant, in which the recipients immune system must be suppressed in order to avoid transplant rejection. Unfortunately, this is where the advantages of a synthetic heart end.[/b]
What do the Christians think of this man in 1969 and his organic morally void heartless 3 days and how come hearts can be rejected if they have gods code written on them what stupid games is this god playing?
The big question for me is why is it that god/s are never known directly? All we have is people telling stories, or old books that say a thing. No god ever shows up, except in the stories. Highly suspicious, don't you think. :fire: - And no, that's not a burning bush.
Notions of order and chaos are human constructions and likely based on the neurocognitive system. Order, like time and space, are probably a neurally generated matrix of gestalts that allow us to make sense of things. No need to reach for the heavens just yet.
That's one of the politest ways of saying 'if you take the bible as literal truth then you are rather backwards, a bit like the Taliban,' that I have read. You should get extra moderator points for that!
These are some of the reasons why I am an atheist Tom!
But surely the evidence from science suggests the Universe is chaos - order -chaos.
So does the god you perceive exists in chaos as well as order?
Yes, order is an obvious attribute of traditional theism. No argument there. But we wouldn't be good skeptics if we didn't try to unpack that notion. Plus philosophy in certain guises would question the very notion of humans being able to determine just what counts as order or chaos outside of our limited perspectival capacities. You can find conceptual room for god in almost any discussion if you wish, since god is so often applied like Du Pont's Big Gap Filler.
Silence.
Paul Simon knew:
[i]"The Sound Of Silence"
Hello, darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a streetlamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
"Fools," said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence."[/i]
You are right. But you have to keep in mind that for theists God already exists. I mean, they are not opened to debate about the existence or meaning of such concept.
??? ?????
(Ati sundar: Glorious/most beautiful).
Accounts of God having answered prayers is total hogwash! That however doesn't mean we stop praying.
Wise words. Who will watch over my family after I'm gone?
You have the freedom to engage in this kind of personal conceptualisation. To me, it seems that you are just employing a 'god of the gaps' approach. If we don't fully understand the how and why something works or/and exists then some people have a need to throw god posits at it. There is as much 'conceptual room' for pixies as there is for god. Both posits seem to be equal in plausibility (or lack of) and evidence (or lack of). I think this tendency is probably part of 'the essence' of being human as opposed to the essence of any god. Many humans simply cannot handle the status of 'unknown,' it seems to constantly niggle and frustrate and something like god is used as a small misshaped sticking plaster over a gaping hole in our knowledge.
For many people this seems to offer some relief from constantly niggling frustrations. I could deal with that on a person to person basis but when organised religion tries to preach god fables as irrefutable truth and dares to spout threats towards nonbelievers and actually tries to influence social and political policy with theistic guidance, then they have stepped way over the line and must be pushed back behind that line.
Quoting unenlightened
This is correct but I would go further, getting rid of god as a scapegoat (which is its main utility by humans) would help humans face their responsibilities.
I was watching a news story about a holocaust survivor who had decided to speak about her experience to young people on-line. The interviewer asked her how she dealt with thoughts of 'god' when thinking about what she went through. She said that Yom Kippur was coming up and she had great difficulty with the part that asks participants to ask god for forgiveness for sins. She said she keeps thinking that god should ask for her forgiveness. I think this is wrong. All humans, Germans, Japanese, British, Ancient Romans and Greeks, etc have treated other humans just like some Germans treated Jews, Gypsies etc or how some Japanese treated prisoners of war, or even how some union or confederates treated prisoners during their civil war. There are such guilty people in all era's of history and in every country.
NONE OF IT WAS DOWN TO GOD(s)! It was all down to our behaviour! The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem!
The humans who are still here. Once they have got their act together of course. Until then, your concerns are justified but we will get there a lot quicker if we get rid of money, private land ownership, exclusive governmental control over military, countries, theistic influence over politics and/or politicians etc, etc.
The fact that the list is still quite long shows how much there is to do. Maybe the anti-life people could get off their misanthropic butts and help out a little more. That would help!
This, some would say, is building castles in the air, a mere pipe dream. I'm an optimist though so, yeah!
I understand this apathy, when facing tasks/changes which seem insurmountable BUT, an old comparator is what kind of general responses do you think you would have got from people if you lived 500 years ago and you looked up at the moon and said 'one day, I think men will walk on the surface of the moon?'
Addition: Maybe we were just born too soon to benefit from such needed change. It took 2022 years to get from the short, even more traumatic human life experience of the days in which the Christian fables are set, to the 'improved' state we are now in for most humans today. I think we need at least the same duration again, perhaps much, much more. Just a few more seconds in the cosmic calendar.
If god were a machine maybe he could provide some exact mechanistic explanation of himself.
If god is Being, on the other hand, then I think when he allegedly said "I Am That I Am", that that was a sufficiently simple and clear explanation.
The Hindus boiled it down to one sound/syllable: Om
There is a saying: A word to the wise is sufficient.
Talk is cheap. Theory and praxis are two enitrely different worlds and most of the bridges between 'em have collapsed so many times that we need to rethink whether this is even possible.
However, this sorry state of affairs may be just a symptom of the real illness - bad thinking! I'm hopeful though! After all, we've made it this far and our present condition is definitely an improvement if we ignore perverse effects. G'day.
I like Oz speak. I definitely prefer "Bonza!" to the fanatical Japanese scream of "Banzai," during there infamous futile bayonet charges in WW 2. I think most of them got shot. The Banzai charge was a rather unsuccessful war strategy. (sorry @javi2541997)
You are wrong, but I respect your opinion as much as I respect all the integrity of Japanese soldiers defending the honour of Hirohito
Non intellego! (I hope I got that right).
I know I cant change you mind regarding the Banzai charge but would you agree that it is not highly respected or valued with military strategists. I have read a couple of books written by those involved in the hell of war, such as one I have just completed, The personal memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. Even in those days of facing only musket fire and early cannon fire (in comparison with the much more lethal weapons of WW 2). The bayonet charge was mostly unsuccessful.
Look at the disaster of 'Pickets charge' at Gettysburg! The rebel yell was equally and probably more impressive (imo) than screaming a word like banzai, which is not much better than the traditional 'CHARGE!' Anyway I digress again so I shall type no more on the topic in this thread.
What does it mean, this Banzai?
G'day is an Australian greeting. Australia is often called OZ, hence my use of 'OZ speak.' Bonza is another Australian slang word used to exclaim that something is good.
Banzai was just something Japanese soldiers shouted when charging allied soldiers during WW2.
They were fanatical charges where the Japanese mostly got slaughtered in large numbers. Sometimes it was their final charge rather than surrender. Google says that in Japanese, the literal translation is '10 thousand years.'
You're late to the party.
"Maimonides held that God so far exceeds our capacity to have knowledge of the divine nature that we are severely limited in how we are able to describe or comprehend God. Even substance cannot be predicated of God in the sense with which we use the word to express knowledge of entities in the created order. In the terms of Maimonides negative theology, we would not describe God as the most powerful, all-knowing, incorruptible substance at the top of a hierarchy of substances. That is a positive conception."
https://iep.utm.edu/maimonid/#:~:text=Maimonides%20held%20that%20God%20so,entities%20in%20the%20created%20order.
In order to be credible, it would need to be in line with scientific theories, specifically, the Theory of Evolution. That is, it would need to be a narrative full of killing, raping, and pillaging; life would need to be presented as a struggle for survival; full of might makes right. IOW, exactly the way mainstream theologies do. As such, the Bible is an excellent contender for being The Genuine Word of God.
Nah. I imagine God as a Trumpista.
Look at the world: it's full of killing, raping, and pillaging. If God exists and has created the world, then he approves of all this killing, raping, and pillaging. It's how he wants things to be. Anything that proposes to tbe "the genuine word of God" needs to reflect that.
Quoting universeness
God, in his infinite wisdom and goodness, could have arranged for less bloody ways of humans acting on their free will. But he didn't.
Well the theists always use the same argument in that context: God is not guilty of human's free will. :rofl:
Quoting 180 Proof
That's ironically escapist when it comes from people who have a combative, authoritarian attitude toward people; but when it comes to God, they turn to putty. Even Job had more fighting spirit!
Enter the evolutionary survival of the fittest.
The story goes that this is precisely what he did, but some people are just wicked and don't love God.
Quoting Tom Storm
Because you're not good enough, you're not qualified to see and hear God directly.
What about earthquakes, drought, famine, disease, childhood cancer, etc.?
Natural disasters which are suffered by people. Those catastrophes represent the randomly of life. Some experiences it and others don't.
Well, it couldn't, if it has no and never has experienced existence.
:eyes:
Dicens, advena fui in terra aliena.
[Moses] :flower: :ok:
I always figured Moses was a Roman. Well, as much as he was a prince of Egypt, anyway.
Translation please.
All these points are plausible and make sense. But they refer to 1) a "rational" God and 2) a God that think as humans think. Yet, such a God may not exist. We must never forget that God is created by Man and not the other way around. What God does and can do is based on what we have imagined for him that he does and can do. We cannot ask later, if he can or should do things that are not expected from him to do.
I create a superhero, say Superman. I give him cartain powers and abilities (super strength and speed, enhanced leaping, super senses etc.). It makes no sense to ask whether he can also become invisible or expect such a thing from him.
"[Moses] said, I have been a stranger in a strange land."
Moses is supposed to be Israelite. But yes, according to the period of his existence he was Egyptian.
Moses' Hebrew mother, Jochebed, secretly hid him when Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed in order to reduce the population of the Israelites. Through Pharaoh's daughter (identified as Queen Bithia in the Midrash), the child was adopted as a foundling from the Nile and grew up with the Egyptian royal family
Kinda like how Einstein couldn't accept action at a distance - it was "spooky" to him. It just didn't make sense to his humongous brain. He wasn't alone though; Newton famously replied "hypothesis non fingo" which in modern terms translates to "I haven't the foggiest". Sounds better in Latin don't it?
By the way merci beaucoup for the translation.
Yes. One take away from the lack of a scripture (as described in the OP) is that God as often conceived may not exist.
Right. And when we are talking about the concept of God, must also take into consideration that he is conceived differently among different religions.
Can't delete, alas.