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Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2022 8:36 pm
by aardvarkarmy
From Moses to Jesus to Muhammed to Joseph Smith to David Koresh, the most universal characteristic of most religions large and small is that the presumed deity ALWAYS communicates with a single person, when they are alone - often a person with obvious flaws and/or with huge question marks surrounding their past – then relies on that one single person to get the ball rolling for the entire planet.

Corollary question:

From the shamans of animistic religions, to the temple priests who intentionally omitted vowels in the Hebrew texts so others could not read them (resulting, by the way, in the hysterically funny mistranslation that resulted in millions of Christians calling god by a name that does not exist), to modern mainstream Christians who think years of theology and seminary study will crack through the obscurities and ambiguities of those texts…

Why does pretty much every religion have a “priestly class” whose job is to tell the rest of us poor ignorant peons what our respective gods want us to do?

(…and why does the “what our god wants us to do” pretty much always roll around to contributing large shares of our income to the betterment of those same priestly classes?)

Are we blessed/cursed with a deity who has an elegant sense of subtlety?

Or – as in “The Invention of Lying” – have a few sharp folks through history figured out a pretty clever way to get what they want from others?

Asking for a friend

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2022 5:21 am
by Fluminator
Most religions (at least Jews/Christians/Muslims/Mormons) believe in a holy book where people can get their communications from God. No priestly class needed to read those books.

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2022 8:40 am
by Octavious
Priests are like lawyers. There's nothing to stop you from doing the work yourself, but at the end of the day they provide a useful shortcut. And, also like lawyers, they have a tenancy to use fancy language that's hard to understand and a lot of them are crooks.

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2022 9:08 am
by PRINCE WILLIAM
There is one other thing, for most of history, the majority of people couldn't read and had no education at all. They needed someone to read to them and explain the scriptures and God's will.

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2022 12:17 pm
by Jamiet99uk
Fluminator wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 5:21 am
Most religions (at least Jews/Christians/Muslims/Mormons) believe in a holy book where people can get their communications from God. No priestly class needed to read those books.
Fluminator, you believe in God, yet you also believe that all the holy books are wrong. So how does this help us?

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2022 1:28 pm
by aardvarkarmy
Fluminator wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 5:21 am
Most religions (at least Jews/Christians/Muslims/Mormons) believe in a holy book where people can get their communications from God. No priestly class needed to read those books.
There are MANY apocryphal books, both old and new testament. The priestly class decides which books you read, even which books you have access to

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2022 1:30 pm
by aardvarkarmy
Octavious wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 8:40 am
Priests are like lawyers. There's nothing to stop you from doing the work yourself, but at the end of the day they provide a useful shortcut. And, also like lawyers, they have a tenancy to use fancy language that's hard to understand and a lot of them are crooks.
Well, this seems closely related to the "god whispering" problem - if a god has important truths to reveal and important rules to be followed, why should it be necessary to study extensively in a "law library" to discern those truths?

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2022 1:32 pm
by aardvarkarmy
PRINCE WILLIAM wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 9:08 am
There is one other thing, for most of history, the majority of people couldn't read and had no education at all. They needed someone to read to them and explain the scriptures and God's will.
one would think that an omniscient god would have known that 99% of people couldn't read.... so why did he choose to reveal his important truths through books?

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2022 1:57 pm
by JECE
Fluminator wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 5:21 am
Most religions (at least Jews/Christians/Muslims/Mormons) believe in a holy book where people can get their communications from God. No priestly class needed to read those books.
Somebody doesn't know their history. For most of history, the Christian priestly class absolutey did hide the bible from the flock. Mormons still do that with their most controversial teachings.

And I'm not even talking about how these holy books were exclusively available in dead "liturgical languages" (Latin, Coptic, Classical Arabic, Sanskrit, Koine Greek, etc.), which is a whole other barrier.

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2022 2:18 pm
by aardvarkarmy
JECE wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 1:57 pm
Fluminator wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 5:21 am
Most religions (at least Jews/Christians/Muslims/Mormons) believe in a holy book where people can get their communications from God. No priestly class needed to read those books.
Somebody doesn't know their history. For most of history, the Christian priestly class absolutey did hide the bible from the flock. Mormons still do that with their most controversial teachings.

And I'm not even talking about how these holy books were exclusively available in dead "liturgical languages" (Latin, Coptic, Classical Arabic, Sanskrit, Koine Greek, etc.), which is a whole other barrier.
Indeed - for 1500 years the books were COMPLETELY controlled by the priestly class, who decided which books the scribes would copy, what changes/edits to make, and where and how the books would be used

Interestingly, the sudden availability of the books to the public, thanks to the invention of the printing press, coincided more-or-less precisely with the protestant reformation... and the sudden proliferation of literally thousands of different sects and denominations.

It seems that once people read the books for themselves, the "truths" therein are anything but clear and self-evident. To the contrary, the myriad ambiguities and contradictions are open to nearly infinite interpretations.

And hence, we now have 10,000 different variants of "cafeteria" religion - each one latching onto a few verses as the "most important" and conveniently discarding anything that doesn't fit their worldview as "not to be taken literally" or "to be understood in historical context" or whatever

If the presumed deity chose to make revelations via those books, it was a complete disaster

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2022 5:54 pm
by Doom427
Fluminator wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 5:21 am
Most religions (at least Jews/Christians/Muslims/Mormons) believe in a holy book where people can get their communications from God. No priestly class needed to read those books.
I know we're all picking on this, but also

How many people outside the priestly class could read books period?

Literacy has not been universal from the beginning of Time!!!

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2022 1:14 am
by Fluminator
Lol I wasn't aware aardvarkarmy was asking about how to get religious knowledge 500+ years ago. My bad

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2022 1:47 am
by aardvarkarmy
Fluminator wrote:
Mon Nov 21, 2022 1:14 am
Lol I wasn't aware aardvarkarmy was asking about how to get religious knowledge 500+ years ago. My bad
Clever diversionary one-liner.

But - with the partial exception of Mormonism - EVERY religion being discussed in this thread (and pretty much all the other religion-topic threads) are derived from holy books and traditions that range from 1300 to 2000 to 3400 years ago. Bronze age and Iron age stuff.

So, yeah, how that information came into our modern hands is actually the ENTIRE crux of the issue

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2022 4:12 am
by JRoz
I don't know how you can say that Jesus communicated with a single person alone. Jesus's ministry was extremely public, often preaching to thousands of people at the same time.

The short/simple reason why God often spoke to a single priest at any given time in the Old Testament is because priests acted as a mediator between God and His people.

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2022 4:18 am
by JECE
Fluminator wrote:
Mon Nov 21, 2022 1:14 am
Lol I wasn't aware aardvarkarmy was asking about how to get religious knowledge 500+ years ago. My bad
Until just half a century ago Catholic mass was celebrated exclusively in Latin.

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2022 4:47 am
by Bonatogether
these religion threads are stupid

it's just the same 4 or 5 people just going around chest thumping about how their position is self-evidently right and the other side is closed-minded and not listening to them for like 90 posts

why dont yall do something productive with your day? take a walk or look at a flower or do anything worthwhile

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2022 5:35 am
by Fluminator
Jamiet99uk wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 12:17 pm
Fluminator wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 5:21 am
Most religions (at least Jews/Christians/Muslims/Mormons) believe in a holy book where people can get their communications from God. No priestly class needed to read those books.
Fluminator, you believe in God, yet you also believe that all the holy books are wrong. So how does this help us?
I don't think they're all 100% wrong. There's good stuff in all of them. (Some more than others admittedly)

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2022 5:36 am
by Fluminator
aardvarkarmy wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 1:28 pm
Fluminator wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 5:21 am
Most religions (at least Jews/Christians/Muslims/Mormons) believe in a holy book where people can get their communications from God. No priestly class needed to read those books.
There are MANY apocryphal books, both old and new testament. The priestly class decides which books you read, even which books you have access to
That's weird, because I've got compilations of many of the apocryphal books in my library and have read them, so they aren't doing a very good job keeping me access from them?
(Book of Enoch is the best one btw)

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2022 5:39 am
by Fluminator
JECE wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 1:57 pm
Fluminator wrote:
Sun Nov 20, 2022 5:21 am
Most religions (at least Jews/Christians/Muslims/Mormons) believe in a holy book where people can get their communications from God. No priestly class needed to read those books.
Somebody doesn't know their history. For most of history, the Christian priestly class absolutey did hide the bible from the flock. Mormons still do that with their most controversial teachings.

And I'm not even talking about how these holy books were exclusively available in dead "liturgical languages" (Latin, Coptic, Classical Arabic, Sanskrit, Koine Greek, etc.), which is a whole other barrier.
Fuck off, I guarantee I've read more about religious history than you. I literally have 1000s of pages worth of religious history in my library. You are not worth talking to.
If you read the opening post you'd realize that has nothing to do with his question. The bible wasn't even written in Latin originally if you want to change the time period to something new.

Re: Why does god always whisper?

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2022 5:41 am
by Fluminator
aardvarkarmy wrote:
Mon Nov 21, 2022 1:47 am
Fluminator wrote:
Mon Nov 21, 2022 1:14 am
Lol I wasn't aware aardvarkarmy was asking about how to get religious knowledge 500+ years ago. My bad
Clever diversionary one-liner.

But - with the partial exception of Mormonism - EVERY religion being discussed in this thread (and pretty much all the other religion-topic threads) are derived from holy books and traditions that range from 1300 to 2000 to 3400 years ago. Bronze age and Iron age stuff.

So, yeah, how that information came into our modern hands is actually the ENTIRE crux of the issue
Islam/Christianity/Judaism, when they were written down they were all pretty readily available and read orally all the time (so your point about - books are bad durr - doesn't really hold either).