jackrabbit

All my early life, before I got out of the jeebus business, I heard over and over again that the bible is "inspired of god". If so, it didn't help the authors much. Their level of knowledge doesn't seem different from that of a random goatherder of that era.

You would think that someone "inspired of god" would know the actual orientation of the earth and the sun. So he wouldn't claim that the sun stopped in the sky, but that the earth stopped rotating.

Admittedly, he may have been playing to his audience, who wouldn't have understood about the earth's rotation.

But on the other hand, if the bible explicitly and precisely mentioned something that wouldn't be known for centuries, that would be a powerful argument for belief. Or the "inspired" writers could have actually taught people about such things instead of just preaching, and mankind would have known about the true nature of the world centuries earlier.

Or maybe the writers were just as ignorant as anybody else.

There is nothing in the bible that indicates that the writers knew that the earth was not flat and that the earth revolved around the sun.

One biblical site used Isaiah 40:22 as proof they knew about the roundness of the earth.

But "circle" (as opposed to globe) sounds ambiguous to me. By circle, the author could have simply meant that the flat earth was circular like a beer coaster rather than square or some irregular shape. I dunno, maybe they didn't have a word for globe. But he could also have actually meant circle, i.e. the two-dimensional (flat) earth.

The curtain and tent business is suspicious too. In other words, the heavens are directly above where you are standing. There is no indication he knows that they continue beyond the horizon in all directions, until they meet on the other side of the earth.

The other major thing is geography. The only locations mentioned by the bible are in the middle east. Now of course the historical stuff would be in the middle east, because that's where it supposedly happened.

But what about the prophesies? Theoretically someone "inspired of god" (and making prophesies millenia in advance) would know about mankind being spread all over the earth and would know about locales in other continents. Since everyone on earth is a target for x-ianity, why not spread out a little, involve the whole planet in the gag?

If armageddon had been prophesied to take place in Atlanta, which wouldn't exist for another 1845 years, that would impress the shit out of me and I would climb onto the Jeebus Express. But no, it takes place in some humdrum local town that any retard of the era would have heard of. And of course the prophesies go on and on about Israel and Jerusalem.

In today's world, the middle east would probably be ignored by everybody but the armageddonists if not for the oil.

So basically, the "inspired" writers had knowledge of science and geography no different from anybody else of the era.

jackrabbit

No responses?

Clarice O'C

I think that "inspired" means something like revealing the god's message in truth.

Toto

This has veered far away from BCH. Should I move it to GRD or split off the off topic posts?

jackrabbit

I would prefer a split. I want to get back to the main topic in this thread. I had some more thoughts about it.

jackrabbit

Yeah, but it implies that goody-poo was directly involved in what they wrote in some way, and I am trying to figure out what that really means. People can be "inspired" about things, but that doesn't necessarily mean that their conclusions are better than anyone else's or that what they say is correct.

Just what is meant by "inspired of god"? I would think that it means that the person has received additional knowledge not available to ordinary men. As I argue in the OP, this does not appear to be the case.

Does it mean "obsession", i.e. the inspiree must write this shit no matter what and it is up to him to gather the information? Perhaps. That's harder to prove or disprove. People are obsessed about all kinds of crazy things for no apparent reason.

Did goddy-poo just use the inspired person as a dictation machine and essentially write the scripture his own self? This is the least likely scenario as it would imply he didn't know how his own universe worked (the "circle of the earth" shit).

Was goddy-poo a cosmic proofreader in the background, ensuring that whatever they wrote was Truth? I am guessing that this might be what most believe. So why didn't GP correct the "circle of the earth" thing, or at least make things less ambiguous? One of the biggest problems with religion is the ambiguity, where the same passage can be interpreted 40 different ways, all of them contradictory. Does he want people to learn this shit or not? Or is solving puzzles the whole point?

So what does "inspired of god" mean, really? Inspired how to do what?

Toto

Extended discussion of charity, morality, homosexuality split of here and will shortly be in MFP

Clarice O'C

I guess the authors had 'faith' in the goddy-poo and, apparently, they thought they knew all about 'him' so they wrote about that and their experiences with him in light of thinking that they knew him.