Written belief system

[Youkilledkenny]

Let's assume God exists for this discussion.
Currently, within Christianity, there's a lot of personal revelation. In other words, people claim God convicts them of certain things as being negative (smoking, drinking, etc)
If this is true - that God communicates with people on an individual level where one thing may be bad for one person but not the other - why is a written belief system (aka the bible) even necessary?
If God is real and has this ability, couldn't He tell everyone that stealing/lies/lust/murder/etc is wrong? Why did it need written down?
Many alien shows/movies and abductees relay that they were communicated to via telepathy (of sorts) so why couldn't God do this as well?
What's the need to have a belief system (aka DO this DON'T do that) need to be written down, translated and edited for thousand of years?!?

[Hamsaka]

Let's assume God exists for this discussion.
Currently, within Christianity, there's a lot of personal revelation. In other words, people claim God convicts them of certain things as being negative (smoking, drinking, etc)
If this is true - that God communicates with people on an individual level where one thing may be bad for one person but not the other - why is a written belief system (aka the bible) even necessary?
If God is real and has this ability, couldn't He tell everyone that stealing/lies/lust/murder/etc is wrong? Why did it need written down?
Many alien shows/movies and abductees relay that they were communicated to via telepathy (of sorts) so why couldn't God do this as well?
What's the need to have a belief system (aka DO this DON'T do that) need to be written down, translated and edited for thousand of years?!?

Catnip nailed a significant piece of the 'why' in her first paragraph. The books of the Bible were not written with the actual Bible in mind.

Why the stories were written down in the first place seems like a very important thing to have a solid grasp on the context in which the writings occurred. What was their intended purpose? I doubt they were written for the edification of regular old tribespeople back in the day.

What we moderns 'use' the Bible for is our own invention, a re-invention as it were, one that has been re-invented over and over again, according to the purposes of those who utilized them. I imagine the written scriptures were so valuable they weren't willy-nilly unrolled for general tribal consumption, not that anyone could read them (except the scribes).

Unless the believer has put time into the study of the historical context the scriptures were written in, they seem to be treated as reverse anachronisms, as if the Hebrew people or even the Christians (at first) sat in pews and received sermons. It blows my mind how modern Christians (the fundamentalist sects, primarily) just assume the way the worship is the way Christians have always worshiped.

My sister (still in recovery from evangelical Christianity) took a required religion class when she went back to college. She chose 'The History of the Church in America'. She claims what she learned in this class (at a Lutheran university no less) dealt her faith a death blow. She had NO idea about church history and was never once taught about it. The history of the church as she understood it was a 2000 year long Christian triumph. They regarded the 'early' Christian church as if it were yesterday, and pretty much was the same today except for the lions . It's as though most in-the-pew Christians, just regular folks accepting what they are told, don't know the church(es) were established by human beings in very mundane and non-holy ways.

[JoeyKnothead]

From the OP:

...
What's the need to have a belief system (aka DO this DON'T do that) need to be written down, translated and edited for thousand of years?!?

'Cause long as there's humans around, someone's gonna find a way to fit their thumb on the scale, such that we need ever more accurate scales.

God ain't wrong for writin' it down, he's wrong for expectin' us to understand it all.

[Youkilledkenny]

[Replying to post 7 by ttruscott]

Do you think GOD uses a digital cell phone to call up an angel for a job?

I wonder what his rate plan would be?!?

But HE is a GOD who hides HIMself so only those who desire HIS heaven under HIS rules will find HIM

What a TERRIBLE thing for a loving creature/thing to do! I wonder what those who honestly search for Him yet never find him would say to this?

With such proof, no one would act naturally from their own desires.

That's not true based on the fact of how people - HIS followers - act from time to time. But that's a subject for another topic I suppose

[Youkilledkenny]

[Replying to post 10 by 1213]

It is possible to think that conscience is the voice of God.

Absolutely. Just as it's possible to think it's the voice of YOU, or the guy across the street, or an alien creature or your dog.

And some people that don’t like the sound try to suppress it and replace it with voice that they like.

As evidence by the many sects of the same religion

I don’t think Bible is because it would be necessary. I think it is because people wanted to tell what happened at one point of time.

Perhaps. But why write it down when God can tell the story better than anyone else?

[Youkilledkenny]

[Replying to post 11 by Hamsaka]

The books of the Bible were not written with the actual Bible in mind.

I think I addressed that already - if not lemme know as it is early lol

Post BBCode URL - Right click and save to clipboard to use later in post Post 11: Wed Feb 10, 2016 10:26 pm Re: Written belief system Reply with quote Reply Report this post to Moderator/Admin.
Youkilledkenny wrote:

Let's assume God exists for this discussion.
Currently, within Christianity, there's a lot of personal revelation. In other words, people claim God convicts them of certain things as being negative (smoking, drinking, etc)
If this is true - that God communicates with people on an individual level where one thing may be bad for one person but not the other - why is a written belief system (aka the bible) even necessary?
If God is real and has this ability, couldn't He tell everyone that stealing/lies/lust/murder/etc is wrong? Why did it need written down?
Many alien shows/movies and abductees relay that they were communicated to via telepathy (of sorts) so why couldn't God do this as well?
What's the need to have a belief system (aka DO this DON'T do that) need to be written down, translated and edited for thousand of years?!?


Catnip nailed a significant piece of the 'why' in her first paragraph. The books of the Bible were not written with the actual Bible in mind.

Why the stories were written down in the first place seems like a very important thing to have a solid grasp on the context in which the writings occurred.

Perhaps with science, but when everyone knows how stories change from one person to the next and how one person can understand the same thing different than another, it seems a very poor way to introduce and replicate a story or thought accurately with such a subject that can't be verified. Let me rephrase: for PEOPLE it might be a decent method, but for a GOD...? Seems a lackluster way of portraying a story

It's as though most in-the-pew Christians, just regular folks accepting what they are told, don't know the church(es) were established by human beings in very mundane and non-holy ways.

I've learned a lot of the 'real church' and 'real christianity' from others and things not taught in any church and very few history classes. Which makes, to me, the Bible even less potent

[Youkilledkenny]

From the OP:

...
What's the need to have a belief system (aka DO this DON'T do that) need to be written down, translated and edited for thousand of years?!?

'Cause long as there's humans around, someone's gonna find a way to fit their thumb on the scale, such that we need ever more accurate scales.

God ain't wrong for writin' it down, he's wrong for expectin' us to understand it all.

Interesting concept. If God's wrong about any one thing, no matter how small, the whole 'God concept' fails in total to me.
But then again, I don't take things on faith too lightly

[ttruscott]

But HE is a GOD who hides HIMself so only those who desire HIS heaven under HIS rules will find HIM

.
What a TERRIBLE thing for a loving creature/thing to do! I wonder what those who honestly search for Him yet never find him would say to this?

Wow - HE only wants to marry those who want to marry HIM! And you call that TERRIBLE? The people HE hides from are the people who have already chosen to never marry HIM nor accept a heaven under HIS rules so HE lets them go...too nasty for words eh? Emotionally based debate seldom gets very far...being all ad hominem and all.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 1 by Youkilledkenny]

Yes, of course God could telepathecally and individually communicate information to people but there are at lease a couple of logical reasons why He would choose not to.

- The vast amount of information. Think about the amount of information contained in the bible. Can you imagine memorizing the thousands of verses perfectly? Unless he were also going to miraculously inhanse their imperfect memories for the rest of their lives, indiviuals would STILL have to write the informaiton down, so they can have recall and references. So you'd end up with written informaion in the long run.

- Unity. If God doesn't want religious disunity each persons "telepathic" mesage would essentially be the same as the next persons. It might begin "Dear Jane" and the next person "Dear Bob" but the next lines "You'll probably need a pen and paper for this... okay, I'll start at the beginning: In the beginning, I made the heavens and the earth...." will be the same for everyone. Wouldn't it be more logical to produce one book copied for 6 billion instead of 6 billion different books that essentially have the same message?

- Power Corrupts. With the bible God was very careful of the character of the men he chose, they often had little or nothing to gain and sometimes paid a high price, sometimes the ultimate price for their work. Not all humans are of such high moral calibre however, who's to say if it were a fact that each individual had direct revelation from God there wouldn't in the billions of direct révélations be someone corrupt who claimed their own message was "Make me King and give me Angela Joli as a concubline".

- Faith. The bible says God is looking for people of faith. A direct revelation to everyone would eliminate the need for faith (since you would be speaking or at least hearing from the spirit realm). Sure there wouldn't be any atheists but there also wouldn't be the basis for judging the quality of heart that God is looking for ie. as Jesus said "Happy are those that did not see yet believed".

CONCLUSION God has chosen the written word to convey a vast amount of information to a large number of humans over a long period of time. Doing so protects the central message from corruption, favors religious unity in sincere people and avoid needless duplication.




RELATED POSTS

Why would God choose to communicate via the written word?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 08#p766608

Why didn't God just write the bible Himself?
viewtopic.php?p=1106952#p1106952

Why didn't Jesus write the bible?
viewtopic.php?p=1106949#p1106949

Why use humans to produce the bible?
viewtopic.php?p=1107005#p1107005

Would God's use of human "secretaries" to write the bible not have corrupted it from its start?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 83#p833783

To learn more please go to other posts related to...

THE BIBLE , AUTHORSHIP/TRANSMISSION and ... RISK OF CORRUPTION

[bluethread]

So, it appears that many on this thread think that constitutional government is a bad thing.

[oldbadger]

Let's assume God exists for this discussion.
Currently, within Christianity, there's a lot of personal revelation. In other words, people claim God convicts them of certain things as being negative (smoking, drinking, etc)

Hello......
I just don't know where Christians would get the 'no smoking, drinking' thing from.
Jesus loved to drink with his friends, and would sometimes be drunk. He didn't think it mattered and never commented about it.
What the spin-doctors added later is just that..... spin.

If this is true - that God communicates with people on an individual level where one thing may be bad for one person but not the other - why is a written belief system (aka the bible) even necessary?

Do you agree with written legislation and written syllabi for education?


I can't answer your later questions.....