quote:
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?
{Topic moved from "Great Debate" to "Faith and Beliefs" forum - Adminnemooseus}
[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 01-06-2003]
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.