God Did Not Write or Inspire the Bible

[Viva_Daddy]

35. As they original poster, I would like to weigh in.

Last edited Sun Mar 4, 2012, 04:59 PM - Edit history (1)

My purpose for writing the op was not to dispute whether or not believers accept divine inspiration for scripture but to point out that religious institutions and scripture tend to give “divine sanction” to the status-quo (i.e., the then current social and cultural norms). All “innovations” that have occurred in the history of religion have come from reformers like the OT prophets, Jesus, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, and the chief opponents of these reforms have been the religious establishments.

So it seems curious to me that scripture, which believers contend came from the all-knowing mind of God, has rarely been a source of ideas that we moderns would consider to be humanely enlightened models for civilization (other than preaching the values of justice and mercy). Instead, the Democratic values we Americans hold dear (like separation of Church and State, limited powers, checks and balances, representative government, etc.) have come from human social reformers.

And so, to my modern American-made mind, ideas of the thinkers of the Enlightenment such as Voltaire and Rousseau, and our Founding Fathers who were the students of the Enlightenment, have done more to advance human society than the ideas all the Gods of all the religious of the world.