Human Lies or Gods Word (Books making claims)

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Originally posted by yzend1:
If I stumble across a book that claims to be the word of God, how do I know if it really is God's Word or Human Lies?

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{Topic moved from "Great Debate" to "Faith and Beliefs" forum - Adminnemooseus}

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[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 01-06-2003]

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You cannot know the difference, unless one makes
some assumptions about what form a book written
by God would take as opposed to one written by man.One might be that since God is all-knowing (an assumption)
that all details within a book written by him would be
accurate, and not found to be false by later investigations
of man.On the other hand one would expect a book written by man to
contain interpretations consistent with beliefs & knowledge
contempory with the time of writing.Similarly one would expect to find prejudices of man reflected
in the treatment of events and peoples in a book written
by man. Such prejudices should not be found in a book
written by God since God would put forward only the truth (assumption).However, it largely depends on which God is supposed to have
written the work which assumptions will hold to help
make that decision. A work written by Ares (or any other
Greek God) may well be riddled with the same sorts of
prejudices and mis-representations as a book written
by man since the Greek gods were notoriously fickle.

No. Prediction isn't sufficient ... even an incredibly
unambiguous, specifically detailed prediction (and I've
never seen one of those).Primordial Egg pointed out potential alternate explanations
for most 'God definitely did that.' interpretations.It would be easier to focuss on things that would indicate
the hand of man ... since we are much better acquainted (sp?)
with man and his workings.The biggest indicators to this would be::i) Bias toward one culture over another
ii)Explanations of events consistent with knowledge contempory with
the date of writing.

Coherence and internal consistency are also present
in good fiction.

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Originally posted by Primordial Egg:

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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.

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And thats before having to develop some way (which I can't think of) of distinguishing God from a sufficiently advanced intelligence.

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PE

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In my opinion, since we cannot know the nature of any supposed
god or advanced intelligence that we should look at the
question from the other angle.We know a fair bit about man (apologies for the non-pc usage
) so we should focuss on what would we expect to find in
a book written by man.Then when presented with any text we could consider how
likely it is to be the work of man.

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Originally posted by Coragyps:

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Originally posted by yzend1:
Have you ever come across books that you thought were not the work of man?

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I have. Both Frankenstein and the Peter Rabbit series were written by women.

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I already apologised for the non-pc usage of 'man'

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Originally posted by yzend1:
Have you ever come across books that you thought were not the work of man?

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Not yet ... how about you?

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Originally posted by yzend1:

How did so many people get into the situation of believing certain books were the word of God? Were the 'originals' forced, Were their descendants brainwashed at childhood, or was it just fear, or were they hoping for an afterlife so much they deceived themselves? And why do they go on believing? Surely they should just accept the fact that they should be Agnostic since there is no proof that any book contains the word of GOD. (perhaps this should be a new topic.)

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I agree that all books I have encountered are consistent with
what I would expect of human authors.My opinion (for what its worth) is that religion is largely
politically motivated (not belief in god(s), but organised
religions). It is a means of controlling the masses by suggesting
that there are powers at work which can punish the unrighteous
it is possible to 'put the fear of god' into people and
help maintain stability.Politically speaking, religion has often been used as a justification
for wars and other atrocities.In large part, yes, people who follow particular religions have
been 'brainwashed' into it by the culture into which the were
born. Not deliberately, but since all of the attitudes around
them from birth have been founded in one religous world-view or
another this subtly colours the child's forming world-view.Most people do not start to question this world view until
teenage years, and even then it appears to be related to both
educational background, and the depth of cultural indoctrination
within their community.