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The Word of God on the Tongue of Man?

 
 
Aphoric
 
Reply Tue 28 Oct, 2008 05:55 pm
Alright, I simply cannot come to terms with this ideology. As a Christian, I believe that man is flawed in many ways, one of them being awareness and understanding. I have been taught, and fully agree with the idea that as man, I will never be able to understand a perfect being such as God. What I don't understand is how such a limited creature could possibly write the Bible that is the 100% accurate word of God.

The first thing any learned Christian will tell me is, "Well it was divinely inspired by God." I have come to understand this as meaning that God gave us the words, and we then went and wrote it somewhere. My problems with that idea is this: How can man, in all of his limitedness and ignorance, possibly hope to understand the word/message of God? Moreover, how can man as imperfect as we possibly reproduce that message with 100% accuracy? Some people can't even accurately take my order at Burger King!

Now, I don't want to hear anyone say anything about God literally taking man's hand and making him write the words as he wanted it. God would not strip man of his free will and physically write the words for him. Free will is the only thing that makes existence meaningful, and without it religion doesn't work. Although in Ur's omnipotence Ur could negate our free will at any point, but a loving wholly good God would not.

What I am basically trying to say is how can man in all of his limitedness possibly understand the word of God, so well in fact that he reproduced it with 100% accuracy?

I posit that while the actual text is not 100% accurate, the Message of Love is in there and is 100% accurate. God did this on purpose: Religion/a relationship with God is NOT about simply having a perfect book where we can go look everything up and live by like mindless slaves. God wants us to THINK, to SEARCH, to DECIDE for OURSELVES what God's message is to us (which I believe is different for everyone at different times of their lives). I believe in a God that is Love and a God that is Truth, and while we will never understand those values completely, we must always work, and think, and search, and try to understand it as best we can. This constitutes progress. With a 100% accurate Bible, progress would be impossible.

Thoughts?
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VideCorSpoon
 
  1  
Reply Tue 28 Oct, 2008 06:23 pm
@Aphoric,
0 Replies
 
Aphoric
 
  1  
Reply Tue 28 Oct, 2008 08:44 pm
@Aphoric,
First off, by calling myself a Christian because I believe that Love and Truth (and possibly others that I'm not yet aware of) have an objective value, but that humans, in our Imperfectness cannot understand that value objectively. We can only try to understand it as best we can, and provide others with our own translations of what these values mean. That is God.

I <3 that excerpt from Descartes. On a side note, I've studied the 4 arguments that prove the existence of God and they're all b/s. Most major theologians agree that God will not allow us to prove he exists, because faith is an important component to religion.

wrd about free will though. This is why I just can't understand determinism, because I define the reason for our existence as being the potential of free will. If I am to believe in a God that is Love, my God would never negate my free will.

If God can't do that then man is to bumble on about the Bible in his imperfect, ignorant ways.
0 Replies
 
jgweed
 
  1  
Reply Wed 29 Oct, 2008 10:34 am
@Aphoric,
There are as many different viewpoints about how one is to understand the Bible as the word of god as there are different sects in Christianity. Some sects found themselves in a very strict view that each word should be taken literally, others that it is a guide towards understanding matters of faith and morals and that these can be taught by allegory.
Literalism seems to involve its believers in all sorts of problems, from accepting modern science to extreme interpretations made to excuse the words from making unacceptable or contradictory statements. In doing so, they ignore the human participation in the writing,in the establishing of the canon, and in arriving at an interpretation (translation).
The other tendency, which seems more agreeable and less fraught with intellectual problems, is to accept the human and sometimes limited perspective of much of the Bible, and to concentrate on its communication of religious truths. It is also to understand that these truths involve individual effort, made in freedom and in "fear and trembling" before they become meaningful to the existence of the Selfhood.
Khethil
 
  1  
Reply Wed 29 Oct, 2008 12:56 pm
@Aphoric,
Aphoric wrote:
What I am basically trying to say is how can man in all of his limitedness possibly understand the word of God, so well in fact that he reproduced it with 100% accuracy?


Good, honest question. Here's another perspective.

It will be continually difficult to rationalize and understand these teachings; increasingly so as one's mind becomes liberated and expands. Thus, I believe, is why we have the phrase: Leap of Faith.

It's also why, again as I believe, it's so fashionable to take all such teachings and couch them with "Well, not *really*...", and "... it depends on how you see it!", "... we can't know" and the like. Descend, we do, into a relativistic, theological murkiness in which there is nothing substantive - nothing believable on which to hold; just vague notions and loose correlations while logic, empiricism (and other rational knowledge systems) we live with, and rely on every day, get tossed aside. As I grew, I found it more and more insulting to the human spirit. But that's just my opinion; and there's a good chance I'm wrong.

Don't get me wrong, there are many good lessons to be drawn from much of mythology. Perhaps, one's best bet is to decide what they *do* believe, and take the best of what religious teachings have to offer. After a thorough and critical examination, if something doesn't pass one's "gut" check, it's probably bunk

Thanks and Good luck, I hope you find an answer Smile
Aphoric
 
  1  
Reply Thu 30 Oct, 2008 06:18 pm
@jgweed,
jgweed;29994 wrote:
There are as many different viewpoints about how one is to understand the Bible as the word of god as there are different sects in Christianity. Some sects found themselves in a very strict view that each word should be taken literally, others that it is a guide towards understanding matters of faith and morals and that these can be taught by allegory.
Literalism seems to involve its believers in all sorts of problems, from accepting modern science to extreme interpretations made to excuse the words from making unacceptable or contradictory statements. In doing so, they ignore the human participation in the writing,in the establishing of the canon, and in arriving at an interpretation (translation).
The other tendency, which seems more agreeable and less fraught with intellectual problems, is to accept the human and sometimes limited perspective of much of the Bible, and to concentrate on its communication of religious truths. It is also to understand that these truths involve individual effort, made in freedom and in "fear and trembling" before they become meaningful to the existence of the Selfhood.


I wanna start my own freaking sect!!! that'd be pimpstuh:whoa-dude:

But seriously, the cool thing about all these different sects is that they show how humanity advances towards a goal from different backgrounds, aspects, and interpretation. It's all subjective, in how you determine God's will n whatnot. They're all different interpretation, but hardly any are better than the rest on an objective scale.

I like the different aspects, I believe they give me a better picture.
0 Replies
 
Aphoric
 
  1  
Reply Thu 30 Oct, 2008 06:21 pm
@Khethil,
Khethil;30040 wrote:
Good, honest question. Here's another perspective.

It will be continually difficult to rationalize and understand these teachings; increasingly so as one's mind becomes liberated and expands. Thus, I believe, is why we have the phrase: Leap of Faith.

It's also why, again as I believe, it's so fashionable to take all such teachings and couch them with "Well, not *really*...", and "... it depends on how you see it!", "... we can't know" and the like. Descend, we do, into a relativistic, theological murkiness in which there is nothing substantive - nothing believable on which to hold; just vague notions and loose correlations while logic, empiricism (and other rational knowledge systems) we live with, and rely on every day, get tossed aside. As I grew, I found it more and more insulting to the human spirit. But that's just my opinion; and there's a good chance I'm wrong.

Don't get me wrong, there are many good lessons to be drawn from much of mythology. Perhaps, one's best bet is to decide what they *do* believe, and take the best of what religious teachings have to offer. After a thorough and critical examination, if something doesn't pass one's "gut" check, it's probably bunk

Thanks and Good luck, I hope you find an answer Smile


this is very interesting. As far as insulting the human spirit: I find it is insulting to the human spirit to hold on to the immediate idea and not striving to know its self. I also think if we don't strive to know God in a (limited) rational sense, then we let God slip away from us. This is the tragedy of ignorance, or what other people refer to as "Satan"
Khethil
 
  1  
Reply Fri 31 Oct, 2008 06:09 am
@Aphoric,
Aphoric wrote:
this is very interesting. As far as insulting the human spirit: I find it is insulting to the human spirit to hold on to the immediate idea and not striving to know its self. I also think if we don't strive to know God in a (limited) rational sense, then we let God slip away from us. This is the tragedy of ignorance, or what other people refer to as "Satan"


Your points (and retort) are well taken.

For my part, I prefer to couch what I believe, as just that: What I don't know, but believe. Similarly, what I can reasonably know (through the tools that can reasonably dispense such knowledge) as just that: What I can reasonably know.

But I need to be careful here, so as not to insult the heart of someone I don't know. Given how strongly I feel, I want to state it clearly - yet how can such a diametrically-opposed viewpoint be stated in such a way as to not degrade or insult another? Maybe it can't be. But I'll not further derail this good line of discussion.

So thanks for your response - nicely put!
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