OK, I'll give you a point on the last bit. At least in the mythology we're fed in grade school, yes, gods were small and petty. Frankly, and this is just my opinion, if whatever Divine Force that's running the universe is really like that, then I'd have a harder time honoring it. To me, those aren't god(s), those are just people with superpowers. And if I'm going to worship anything, it's not going to be another human being who is just as failable as I.
On the other hand, another thing to remember is the books in the Bible? They were written long after the original events, so of course the author, God-inspired or not, is going to want to paint God as knowing more than mere people in order to convince other people that this Jehovah fellow is worth worshiping. So they make him out to be not only all-knowing, but all-powerful, too, and making the people seem to be silly and without free will -- i.e., all the times the Bible says something like "God sent his prophets to warn his people, blah blah, but God hardened the hearts of the people so that they would not hear."
God didn't write a single word down. Neither, for that matter, did Jesus. The words and actions attributed to them were written down anywhere from 30 to 2000-3000 years after the fact. Human oral tradition and human memory are terribly fragile things. Even if those who wrote the stories down were "inspired" by God, got the words directly from Him...do you really think "God" is going to say "Yeah, I tried to convince them to follow me, but they liked other gods better. So I beat them up like a schoolyard bully because I couldn't handle rejection"? No way.
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Date: 2003-09-08 11:19 am (UTC)On the other hand, another thing to remember is the books in the Bible? They were written long after the original events, so of course the author, God-inspired or not, is going to want to paint God as knowing more than mere people in order to convince other people that this Jehovah fellow is worth worshiping. So they make him out to be not only all-knowing, but all-powerful, too, and making the people seem to be silly and without free will -- i.e., all the times the Bible says something like "God sent his prophets to warn his people, blah blah, but God hardened the hearts of the people so that they would not hear."
God didn't write a single word down. Neither, for that matter, did Jesus. The words and actions attributed to them were written down anywhere from 30 to 2000-3000 years after the fact. Human oral tradition and human memory are terribly fragile things. Even if those who wrote the stories down were "inspired" by God, got the words directly from Him...do you really think "God" is going to say "Yeah, I tried to convince them to follow me, but they liked other gods better. So I beat them up like a schoolyard bully because I couldn't handle rejection"? No way.