Re: OT, and religeous

>>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.
>
>
>
Of course this is bias. Is it easier for someone who speaks a modern
dialect of Arabic to learn Classical Arabic, or someone who speaks a
completely unrelated language?

>>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.
>
>
>
Asserting that God created the universe isn't the same as asserting that
god is either all knowing or all powerful. Since the concensus seems to
be that the universe is finite, God could just be very powerful and very
knowledgeable rather than truly omnipotent and omniscient. Also, God
could just not care about humanity at all. Thus you can assert divine
creation without saying that God has given us commandments, bibles, etc.

>>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
>
>
>
I'm afraid I'm not convinced by these arguments really. :) People on the
religeous right quote the bible to determine right and wrong, eg as
proof that homosexuality is a sin, so if we accept that the bible is
something like a novel that's just a guide through giving ideas rather
than representing truth directly, then we must also throw out the window
any claim to making moral judgements based upon it as many religeous
people do. Doing so would be equivalent from taking away from a poem
about say a train crash the moral that "trains always crash", which is
clearly completely mad.

>>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.
>
>
But my point was if God didn't choose to distribute the universal truth
in all localities ie languages (since the localities aren't equivalent
and it's difficult to impossible to move between them perfectly for
human beings) then he is clearly biased towards one or certain
linguistic/ethic groups so claims that "God is fair" or "God is just" go
out the window.

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