Re: OT, and religeous

Chris Bates scripsit:

> I suppose you could argue that god has a preferred language, but this
> seems unlikely since if he did we would surely all speak it.
The Muslim view seems to be that the Quran, down to its very letters,
is logically prior to the creation of the world, and that God
pre-designed the world so that the Arabs would speak Arabic and
write with the Arabic alphabet so that when Muhammad received the
Quran he would understand it and be able to write it.  Consequently,
for full understanding of the Quran one must learn Classical Arabic
in its written form.  This does not mean that other languages are not
also divine creations indirectly, merely that God chooses to express
himself, in matters of religion, in Arabic.

> b) God isn't in fact all loving and fair but biased towards one
> particular ethic/linguistic group
That would be sound only if you think that needing to learn Classical
Arabic constitutes a bias.  Even Arabs have to learn it; nobody *speaks*
it natively.

> c) God wasn't involved in any way, through Jesus, apostles, or anyone
> else, in creating any bible or mythology on the planet
No religion that asserts divine creation can consistently assert this.
If God designed the universe and has foreknowledge of what happens in
it, then he knew that (say) Elmer T. Hickinbotham would write the
_Book of Eldritch Miracles_ in 1922, which became the foundation of
the world religions of the 25th century.  Indeed, God as Hickinbotham's
creator is ultimately responsible for all of Hickinbotham's actions.

> d) God is very different from the way he is portrayed in the Bible,
> Quran etc, and has been involved in the creation of numerous
> contradictory bibles and mythologies for purposes unknown ie he has
> purposefully lied on a massive scale to his creations
There is an equivoque here which I've been hinting at above, but this
is the best place to point it out.  Statements cannot simply be divided
into truth and lies: in particular, the works of poets and playwrights
and novelists are not true of the Real World, but can't usefully be
called lies either; indeed, it is a commonplace of literary criticism
that the purpose of poetry (choosing that as a cover term for the
other literary activities) is to tell the truth.  Similarly, it is a
commonplace of scriptural criticism that its truth is more like the
truth of poetry than the truth of technical manuals.  The texture of
the world's scriptures is metaphorical, whether or not the technical
device of verse is used (and most scriptures comprise both verse and
prose, at least after the invention of prose).

"The artist says what cannot be said in words, and the writer does
this *with words*."  --Ursula K. Le Guin

"Faith, it is said, can remove mountains; but even the most realistic
landscape painter may choose to remove a mountain from his painting
to improve the balance of the composition."  --Northrop Frye, paraphrased
from memory

> e) God was involved in the creation of the Bible, but has been
> misunderstood or misrepresented, ie the original was something that was
> universally applicable.
Poetry (broadly) is at once universally applicable and entirely local.
The best of it is the more applicable as it is the more local.  This
is paradoxical, but the whole subject is paradoxical.

--
In politics, obedience and support      John Cowan <jcowan@...>
are the same thing.  --Hannah Arendt    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

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