I'll take a crack at this. I was raised in a very Christian house and much bible reading went on. I have read the thing cover to cover more times than I'd like to admit.
1. What are your reasons for believing the authors were divinely inspired? (I'm not looking for definitive proof or anything, just your reason, so "because the bible says" is perfectly acceptable to me.)
Faith, pure and simple. Or if you like it better, because the paster/pope/preacher/my mother, says so. The Bible doesn't really say it's divinely inspired and it wasn't really assembled as a definitive collection of scripture until some time after the individual books were written.
2. What do you make of the fact that written language is a human invention?
I'm interested in what the Bible makes of it. In Genesis the answer it nothing. In fact up until Exodus, there's little if any reference to writing at all. The ten commandments (though not the ones traditionally referred to as the ten commandments) are written in stone, but most things aren't written at all. It is only around the time of the Babylonian captivity that scripture becomes a real part of the Hebrew religion. God begins at that point to talk in writing. And the writing is considered magical. It magically appears on walls. Scripture found in the temple proves the right way to worship. Prophets eat the written word to become enlightened and so on.
By the time of Jesus there was a body of Hebrew scripture much of which was translated into Greek for the benefit of Jews who no longer spoke Hebrew. Jesus refers to scripture for authority, though the OT was not yet codified when he was preaching. But Christians make no real effort to create Christian scripture for decades following Jesus' death. And the oldest parts of the NT, i.e. Paul's letters were not written with the intent of creating scripture.
3. Is there anybody that you know of who you would believe if they told you some stuff they wrote was the word of god, or divinely inspired? Why or why not?
No, not really. But it's clear people can be brought to believe that writings by their fellows are scripture. Exhibit A: Joseph Smith.
4. What role does time play in the believability of a claim that some written words are the word of god?
In the case of the Bible, it appears to be a major part of it. Belief in the authority of the NT was established rather slowly.
5. Do you think religion would exist if writing was never invented?
Why not? It did before writing and there are many unwritten religions which still exist. However, oral religions don't seem to have quite the same conversion power.
(May 29, 2015 at 9:56 pm)Exian Wrote: Lately, I've been very disinterested in anything to do with religion, which is probably why I've been so inactive with a majority of the discussions here. I just have a hard time taking it seriously. For me, the problem starts with man writing the bible; I can't get past that fact to lend myself to any other argument for the existence of a biblical god. Things only get slightly more fun with discussions on non-personal, I.D style gods, but not by much.
Now, I know that most Abrahamic theists believe that the authors were divinely inspired, but that's so fucking weak, so here are a few questions I'd like answered (yeah, this shit again):
1. What are your reasons for believing the authors were divinely inspired? (I'm not looking for definitive proof or anything, just your reason, so "because the bible says" is perfectly acceptable to me.)
Faith, pure and simple. Or if you like it better, because the paster/pope/preacher/my mother, says so. The Bible doesn't really say it's divinely inspired and it wasn't really assembled as a definitive collection of scripture until some time after the individual books were written.
2. What do you make of the fact that written language is a human invention?
I'm interested in what the Bible makes of it. In Genesis the answer it nothing. In fact up until Exodus, there's little if any reference to writing at all. The ten commandments (though not the ones traditionally referred to as the ten commandments) are written in stone, but most things aren't written at all. It is only around the time of the Babylonian captivity that scripture becomes a real part of the Hebrew religion. God begins at that point to talk in writing. And the writing is considered magical. It magically appears on walls. Scripture found in the temple proves the right way to worship. Prophets eat the written word to become enlightened and so on.
By the time of Jesus there was a body of Hebrew scripture much of which was translated into Greek for the benefit of Jews who no longer spoke Hebrew. Jesus refers to scripture for authority, though the OT was not yet codified when he was preaching. But Christians make no real effort to create Christian scripture for decades following Jesus' death. And the oldest parts of the NT, i.e. Paul's letters were not written with the intent of creating scripture.
3. Is there anybody that you know of who you would believe if they told you some stuff they wrote was the word of god, or divinely inspired? Why or why not?
No, not really. But it's clear people can be brought to believe that writings by their fellows are scripture. Exhibit A: Joseph Smith.
4. What role does time play in the believability of a claim that some written words are the word of god?
In the case of the Bible, it appears to be a major part of it. Belief in the authority of the NT was established rather slowly.
5. Do you think religion would exist if writing was never invented?
Why not? It did before writing and there are many unwritten religions which still exist. However, oral religions don't seem to have quite the same conversion power.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
