Because the bible tells you so?

[Exian]

First of all, thanks for the Jurassic Park reference. I'm revving up for the new one

Glad you caught it! And more to the point, man found a way to simultaneously warn against graven images, and have them for their religion (gotta be able to compete, I guess). But I think when your head is swimming in the nuance of how these things come about, you can't see that you are acting against the same things you are teaching, like you can when you're on the outside. From the outside, most religions look the same.

Which makes me think, if writing never came about, and all Judaism and Christianity had to work with we're symbols and images, they wouldn't be so against it. But because they had an alternative method to spread ideas without the use of images, they were safe to ridicule the method. Complete speculation on my part.

So as far as it being the flavor of the month, that is a perfectly reasonable point. However for me, it is the fact that it is for hundreds of years from different writers it always stayed the same. Even the point robovalue made about god walking around in Genesis could be understood as just the Hebrew literary genre. The bible is full of metaphors that shouldn't be read literally. And the when you do look at christians in particular using items for worship, even the fact that many pray to angels more than they pray to god, is only proof that they're false christianity.

I assume you mean "false" as in "doesn't follow what the bible says", and not based on some extra-biblical ideal. To which I say- Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I'm not an authority on what makes someone a true believer.

But on to your point about the bible not changing, even though the authors were 100s of years apart, I would say that that is an intrinsic quality belonging to the written word. Definitely wouldn't be possible with the spoken word, or at least there would be no way to compare spoken words separated by time (duh, lol). In other words, I don't view that as a divine quality of the bible, but something made possible by writing things down. Even so, I'm sure there were many minor errors, and probably some major errors, as well as some intentioned changes.

Also, technically the bible changed with every new author. Actually, it probably wasn't "the bible" until much later. But again, this is a technicality, and not much towards our topic of discussion.

Thanks for the clarification on your second question... The bible is not what leads to salvation. Its having a relationship with god and loving him. Which includes worshipping him and following his commandments. Adam and Eve wouldn't have had a bible, neither would Noah, and so on. And as  One of Jehovah's Witnesses, I have never believed in a fiery hell. The bible doesn't teach it

But it is the only way to even be aware of the concept of the Jewish and Christian god. Which greatly increases your chances of heaven, I assume.

Adam and Eve, and Noah supposedly had direct contact with god. They wouldn't need the bible. What about the entire genus of Homo, some of which existed upwards of 2.5 million years ago? I would be so much more convinced of a god if humans without the capacity to invent writing and abstract thinking had a concept of the Jewish god. Seems highly suspect that the complexification of the story mirrors the complexification of ourselves and our culture. I would have no way to prove it, but I can speculate that humans were incapable of worshipping an abstract concept of a god as early as 10,000 years ago, when most religions were based on tangible images found in nature.

Thank you for your take, nica.