Human Lies or Gods Word (Books making claims)

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Originally posted by yzend1:
Lets try to make this more specific:-

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Apart from foretelling specific natural disasters what else would give it away that a book contained the word of God as opposed to human lies claiming to be the word of God.

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LIST OF WHAT WOULD GIVE IT AWAY

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1. Fortelling specific natural disasters

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Why would God tell us about a specific natural disaster and do nothing about it? It doesn't make alot of sense to me.

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2. Help, I've run out of ideas.

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Would foretelling specific natural disasters give it away? After all, the technology of a sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial intelligence would be indistinguishable to magic to us earthlings, so we'd have to discount this possibility first. (There is a corollary to this advanced by Michael Shermer, in that any sufficiently advanced intelligence (SAI) would be indistinguishable from God, which, if it holds (I think it does), implies that there is no way of telling whether any book is from God or from a potentially mischievious SAI).And in any event, I don't think that being able to predict, say, a hurricane is any indication of Godhood, else we'd all be meteorologists If we leave aside the SAI / God dilemma and aim for a book that could not possibly be written by a human being (including a future time traveller - but this might fall under SAI), then at the very least I would expect it to provide, in very clear terms, new technologies and ways of understanding the universe, which both agrees with and extends significantly the total sum of our existing knowledge.But thats just a first stab - it may flex upon cross-examination.PEeduted to add:PS At a very minimum, I would expect the book to be coherent and internally consistent.[This message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 01-08-2003]

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Originally posted by yzend1:
If someone wrote in 1000AD that on Friday 13th January 2004AD a comet was going to crash into Mars and blow it to bits, and it proved true, then, if this person also claimed to communicate directly with God, well, he'd probably have been right and this could be regarded as proof of GOD.

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Well no - you've missed my point completely. It could well be either:1) a sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial, lying about their relationship with God
2) a lucky guess
3) a future time traveller gone back to 1000.You probably need to read my post again - how do you distinguish SAI from God?PE

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Originally posted by Peter:
Coherence and internal consistency are also present
in good fiction.

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Agreed. Coherence and internal consistency would both be necessary for any book claiming to be from the G (as a minimum), but certainly not sufficient.And thats before having to develop some way (which I can't think of) of distinguishing God from a sufficiently advanced intelligence.PE

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Originally posted by yzend1:
Do you think my Roman Catholic Bible was written by/via an advanced alien or future-time travelling Human or is it Human Lies or is it the Word of God?

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The mind Boggles

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Will it be St peter at the marble gates or some alien or advanced human when I die?

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The Mind Boggles

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I suppose the question might be what good is faith in God which might only delay us on our road of using science to achieve immortality? Hence, It possible ain't some future human but a naughty rascal of an alien getting further and further ahead of us?

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How do we inform the world to wake up?.......Before it's too late to catch up?

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yzend1

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Your original question was asking how we could identify a book as being written by God and I responded with a few criteria plus the notion that I couldn't see any way of distinguishing God from a sufficiently advanced intelligence (SAI), or even a time-travelling human.You're now asking if I personally think the bible was written by an SAI?Personally, no. I think it was written by men. Were they deliberately lying? I don't see why not, although its difficult to authenticate either way. I gather Barbara Thiering has done a lot of good work in this regard - the bible may well have been written as a fulfilment of earlier Jewish messianic prophecies and certainly seems to contain stories already in the dead sea scrolls. Its an interesting topic. Maybe someone who knows more than I do about the topic can wade in here.....Then again, maybe it was written by a crafty alien? Seems to me to be a strange way to go about things if it was.Why all the fuss about immortality though? It'd be a nightmare - imagine all the endless re-runs of the Sound of Music you'd have to sit through.PE