let's talk for a moment why prophets make no sense

[cambridge79]

i think the idea of prophets it's completely irreconcilable with the idea that god loves us equally and that he wanted to spread his word.

[note to readers: i will use Jesus as an example here but it would work exactly the same with all other prophets ]

It can be that their revelation was intended only to a very selected group of people ( like i assume Jews believe ) in wich case i can get their point and that's fine by me.

but if we assume that their message was intended for the whole world to hear, like for example christians and muslims tend to believe, i think the two things can't work togheter.
Let's take Jesus for example:

If his message was intended for the whole world why wouldn't god spawn a different Jesus ( feel free to call he/she with different names ) in every continent preaching the very same things?

Instead what happened was exactly the opposite.
He kept spawning prophets ( from Abrham to Muhammad ) all in a tiny region of the world ( where each one must have for sure had the opportunity to hear about the former teachings ) all saying things conflicting with each others so much that 3 different major religions all arised from the same area ( let's ignore for a moment that they also tried multiple time to wipe them out mutually during history ) while you would assume that the purpose of a god spreading his word would be to have the same religion spawn in different corners of the world at the same time.

The message of Jesus for example originated in middle east in the year 0.
Americans had to wait around 1492 years in total oblivious before the first american was brought the knowledge of such prophet. Australians had to wait up until 1770 before someone came to them telling "hey you know, there's this guy Jesus that is the son of god" 1770 years living a godless pagan life when the rest of the world already had the opportunity to hear about the lord. why would god keep them in the dark while the rest of the world could enjoy his message? that's a completely unefficient way of communicating.

I can only come up with three reasonable explanation for that, if you can come up with a fourth or more please do:
1 - such a revelation was intended only for the very group of people living in Jesus area of preaching, wich would deny that religions are intended for the whole world.
2 - God cared less about people like australians, or americans, Japanese, people living in pacific island and all the remotes places on earth, wich would deny the fact that he loves us all equally giving us same opportunity to achieve a good afterlife.
3 - Jesus can be a guide but you don't necessarely need to follow him to be a godly man, wich would deny the role religions claim to have.

 

[Quintessence]

I see you are still expecting a deity - and an omnimax deity no less - to think and behave like a modern, culturally westernized human.

What was that about not making sense?

 

[cambridge79]

I see you are still expecting a deity - and an omnimax deity no less - to think and behave like a modern, culturally westernized human.

What was that about not making sense?

no, i see i'm expecting a deity ( perfect and allknowing ) who created men to know and understand how his creation actually thinks and works.
If i make the hardware of a computer than i write down the software in the wrong way and they don't work togheter, it's me to blame for that, not the computer.

 

[LuisDantas]

I tend to agree. Then again, I don't think either revealed religion or theistic religion make much sense on their own, so...

 

[Quintessence]

no, i see i'm expecting a deity ( perfect and allknowing ) who created men to know and understand how his creation actually thinks and works.
If i make the hardware of a computer than i write down the software in the wrong way and they don't work togheter, it's me to blame for that, not the computer.

I get your point, but it's important to understand that the perception of it being "the wrong way" is your own assessment of the situation; a personal and very human judgement. It is, as said, expecting an omnimax deity to think and behave like a modern, culturally westernized human (or perhaps more specifically, to do what you would do). That just makes no sense to me. I might as well expect the local trees to start talking to me in English.

 

[Politesse]

It's not as though Jesus is necessarily inaccessible, though. A modern Christian living in Palestine has exactly as much contact with the living Christ as one living in New York, or Nairobi. To a Christian, he is fully and really present "wherever two or three are found"; to a non-Christian, he lived and died a long time ago in such a strange land, either way. The past is another country for all intents and purposes.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

There are so many things like this that one can present showing irrational, unexpected, and even "incomplete" (meaning that it falls short of the supposed/witnessed goals of God) behavior by the God of Abrahamic faiths that even believers of these faiths should accept God as irrational. And I would argue that they, in fact, do admit this. What else do the statements

"You can't know the mind of God."
"You presume to know better than God?"
"God works in mysterious ways."

mean? I feel it means that they understand and accept that God is sometimes not the most straight-forward or rational being. And no, He doesn't have to be those things by human standards - which is fine. But why follow a being who displays such erratic behavior as pertains to your welfare and the welfare of others? As you pointed out - leaving entire continents of people completely alone when eternal punishment is on the line? Would we elect and follow a politician or leader who we felt "worked in mysterious ways" like this? The answer is so obviously "no". So what that I hold God to a standard before I'll worship Him? So what? For a person to say they don't means they'll worship Him regardless what He does. Based on His past actions and behaviors I can really only say "good luck with that, you'll probably need it."

 

[Corthos]

To be fair, not ALL "prophets" fit the parameters you have set. Those are more of the Abrahamic variety. =)

 

[columbus]

I get your point, but it's important to understand that the perception of it being "the wrong way" is your own assessment of the situation; a personal and very human judgement.

The reason I don't consider you religious or a theist is that your beliefs are too excellent to go into those categories.
Tom

 

[Ouroboros]

Yeah. Prophets make no profit without cents.

 

[George-ananda]

1 - such a revelation was intended only for the very group of people living in Jesus area of preaching, wich would deny that religions are intended for the whole world.
2 - God cared less about people like australians, or americans, Japanese, people living in pacific island and all the remotes places on earth, wich would deny the fact that he loves us all equally giving us same opportunity to achieve a good afterlife.
3 - Jesus can be a guide but you don't necessarely need to follow him to be a godly man, wich would deny the role religions claim to have.

4 - Jesus was an advanced soul teaching the people in his area and time and the issue of the rest of the world was beyond the scope of his attention. Exclusivist doctrines are unfortunate man-made dogma.

 

[cambridge79]

As you pointed out - leaving entire continents of people completely alone when eternal punishment is on the line?

not to mention that the only chance they had to actually come in contact with "the gospels" was trough men bringing diseases that killed million of peoples in the new world.
therefore even if the people going to america weren't interested in gold and were there only to spread the word of god, you still would have had million of peoples dead due to bacteriological contamination.
is this the plan of god to spread his word worldwide? it feels, not only unefficient and unjust but also literally evil if not completely careless.

 

[Quintessence]

The reason I don't consider you religious or a theist is that your beliefs are too excellent to go into those categories.
Tom

Given that I identify as both of those things, perhaps you should accept that I'm both religious and a theist and revise your understanding of those terms?

On the plus side, this gives us an excellent example of one of the ways in which cognitive dissonance resolves itself: "where new information contradicts your model, deny that it exists or categorize it as something outside your model instead of updating your model." The scientist in me is twitching a bit right now.

 

[Katzpur]

i think the idea of prophets it's completely irreconcilable with the idea that god loves us equally and that he wanted to spread his word.

[note to readers: i will use Jesus as an example here but it would work exactly the same with all other prophets ]

It can be that their revelation was intended only to a very selected group of people ( like i assume Jews believe ) in wich case i can get their point and that's fine by me.

but if we assume that their message was intended for the whole world to hear, like for example christians and muslims tend to believe, i think the two things can't work togheter.
Let's take Jesus for example:

If his message was intended for the whole world why wouldn't god spawn a different Jesus ( feel free to call he/she with different names ) in every continent preaching the very same things?

Instead what happened was exactly the opposite.
He kept spawning prophets ( from Abrham to Muhammad ) all in a tiny region of the world ( where each one must have for sure had the opportunity to hear about the former teachings ) all saying things conflicting with each others so much that 3 different major religions all arised from the same area ( let's ignore for a moment that they also tried multiple time to wipe them out mutually during history ) while you would assume that the purpose of a god spreading his word would be to have the same religion spawn in different corners of the world at the same time.

The message of Jesus for example originated in middle east in the year 0.
Americans had to wait around 1492 years in total oblivious before the first american was brought the knowledge of such prophet. Australians had to wait up until 1770 before someone came to them telling "hey you know, there's this guy Jesus that is the son of god" 1770 years living a godless pagan life when the rest of the world already had the opportunity to hear about the lord. why would god keep them in the dark while the rest of the world could enjoy his message? that's a completely unefficient way of communicating.

I can only come up with three reasonable explanation for that, if you can come up with a fourth or more please do:
1 - such a revelation was intended only for the very group of people living in Jesus area of preaching, wich would deny that religions are intended for the whole world.
2 - God cared less about people like australians, or americans, Japanese, people living in pacific island and all the remotes places on earth, wich would deny the fact that he loves us all equally giving us same opportunity to achieve a good afterlife.
3 - Jesus can be a guide but you don't necessarely need to follow him to be a godly man, wich would deny the role religions claim to have.

Well, Mormonism teaches that Jesus actually did make a post-resurrection appearance to some of the inhabitants of the American continent. Of course, that's laughable to 99% of the world's population, but it does address your question of why his message would have been solely for the people of a small area in the Middle East.

 

[wizanda]

If his message was intended for the whole world why wouldn't god spawn a different messenger

Have you read the religions?

There are many with a similar prophetic line..... There will be a cleansing of the earth, and after an age of Godly Enlightenment.

Where there will be enlightened teachers, who have taken many forms to help mankind evolve.

These idolatrous ideas, that some messenger can ever get anyone favour, is where many of the problems come from....

Many of them taught a similar idea, that selflessness can lead to enlightenment.

 

[Jiddanand]

If prophets do failed occasionally, you failed permanently.

 

[cambridge79]

If prophets do failed occasionally, you failed permanently.

are we at the point where i should say "i'm the rubber you're the glue" or you have some deeper contribution to make to the discussion?

 

[cambridge79]

Have you read the religions?

There are many with a similar prophetic line..... There will be a cleansing of the earth, and after an age of Godly Enlightenment.

Where there will be enlightened teachers, who have taken many forms to help mankind evolve.

These idolatrous ideas, that some messenger can ever get anyone favour, is where many of the problems come from....

Many of them taught a similar idea, that selflessness can lead to enlightenment.

i think that to find a common shared purpose in all religions and gods around the world and troughout history is like telling that a giraffe, a crocodile and a mouse are basically the same animal because they all have 4 legs.
to focus on the minimal number of things in common and ignore all the differences that you can find feels not very honest way to present such theory.

 

[Ouroboros]

If prophets do failed occasionally, you failed permanently.

Unless I'm a prophet, and you just don't know it yet.

Imagine a God where everyone is her or his own prophet in their own lives? What a wonderful gift that would be from God. No need to listen to or obey fallible human voices, but only listen to your own heart. But that would require a God that actually was smart enough to realize the efficiency and accuracy of doing so. I guess, the God we have, isn't that smart to know the flaws with human interpreters and intermediators.

 

[muhammad_isa]

..is this the plan of god to spread his word worldwide? it feels, not only unefficient and unjust but also literally evil if not completely careless.

Almighty God has sent 10's of thousands of prophets to mankind worldwide..
The most recent, according to mainstream Abrahamic religion as we know, are John the Baptist, Jesus and Muhammad. [peace be with them]

It's not surprising that we find a large number of prophets in the locality of Jerusalem. It is where the Asian, African and European continents meet! Furthermore, the distribution of population was not as it is today with our new technologies .. there were more people in the regions more climatically suited to life.