flamegrilled said-
zound made the best contribution by saying that "God CAN communicate with his 'pets' if he wants to." But this also presumes that such communication would be in our best interests. There is no particular reason to logically presume that.
And that's another valid point, since all of these theodocies don't operate individally, in serial (eg as a string), but in parallel (as a foundation); believers are facile at switching between them as needed, even understanding on an unconscious (or conscious) level which scriptures to go to, eg those that refer to humans as children are relying on a "benign neglect" concept or the pet/child analogy of the explanation being beyond the capabiity to understand, etc. Some believers DO rely on the inferior intellectual capabilities of humans vs spirit beings as a defense, but there's another one you've touched on, based not so much on the capability for humans to understand, but their NEED TO KNOW.
In case anyone hasn't noticed, the Bible explicitly and implicitly relies on military metaphors, where the foot soldier (human) has no right to automatically expect to be privy to top-secret strategies that are for the eyes of the commanders in the field, and their bosses in the Pentagon (the joint chiefs of staff, with each member representing their respective branch)! Above all of the forces sits the POTUS (CINC, commander in chief, AKA God), who gets the final say on ALL actions involving the military, and obviously has complete access to information which he uses to make decisions. What CINC says goes, and if the members of JCS cannot abide, they risk being canned by the POTUS. Foot soldiers on the battlefield don't expect to be 'in the loop', and the Bible is simply a guide for the foot soldier issued in boot camp to explain HOW to follow the orders they are given; believers don't expect the Bible to contain ALL explanations of why God operates as He does, since they have absolutely no need to know, and it's irrelevant to them doing their job, and well above their pay-grade and security clearance they hold since the military uses officers who are analysts who's entire duty it is to determine which information is made public, and which is kept a classified secret (and many here overlooked that thought by committed the fallacy of exclusion of others alternatives, AKA creating a false dichotomy, arguing that they should possess the knowledge of tactics, since the Bible is supposedly written by God as an instruction manual, mistakenly thinking it thus entitles us to ALL information).
The need for discrete disclosure of information IS the entire basis of the 'appeal to authority, except in the Bible, God is the biggest authority imaginable: the DIVINE authority. Heck, this is found in the story of Job, where the reader is given a 'birds-eye' view, with Satan making a challenge that Job is loyal to God only because he gained some enrichment.
(Satan was a member of Team Jehovah in Heaven (Elohim, a plural Hebrew term for God's Divine Counsel), an eye-brow raising detail that SHOULD give the modern-day believer a moment's pause, and spur them to learn WHY Satan was essentially a member of God's staff, carrying out operations in the name of God to test humans to see if they 'cut the mustard'!)
So Satan tests Job by killing his children (how's THAT for evil, authorized by God!), and God later appears in a whirlwind and proceeds to verbally strip Job down, with his "where were you?" series of questions, NOT answering Job's question directly explaining WHY God was the cause of Job's suffering despite Job knowing he was innocent, but brow-beating poor Job such that he sulked and shrunk back and wisely refused to curse God.
(BTW, if you don't know what the 'oath of innocence' is, you simply cannot understand the story of Job in any depth, since it's the premise driving the entire account. Read more at bookofjob.org. Robert Sutherland is a lawyer/OT scholar who is a theist, so I don't agree with his conclusion; however, the presence of oath itself in the account SHOULD reveal how the Bible relies on ancient concepts of justice that have long-ago been discarded.)
In rethinking the account of Job, I'm not so sure the addition of the narrative frame (i.e. the epilogue and prologue, where God's motivations are actually revealed to be a cynical bar-bet between God and Satan, but more broadly reflects the idea of God testing humans in their lives) are as damaging to the message delivered in the poetic core as I suspected ("God works in mysterious ways") since the narrative epilogue actually changes the message from "God works in mysterious ways" to "God works in mysterious ways, for which the individual has no NEED to know" since God COULD'VE told Job Satan was testing Job on God's behalf, but he didn't. So it actually is a subtle way to plant that suggestion to the reader, while reinforcing the point that humans have no RIGHT to know why things are happening to them.
Hence the whole account is premised as an appeal to Divine authority, and the structure fully BITE control-compliant, which is why so many fell for joining an all-volunteer theological armed force, armed only with a Bible.
Many believers accept this explanation, esp since they're told that accepting the questionable premises are a condition of their survival, since ALL hard-to-swallow beliefs are justified as an exercise to strengthen one's 'faith', the very trait which is REQUIRED for their survival! They have motivation to believe....
When examined from the viewpoint of Job, his children were killed to test JOB; nevertheless THEY are dead! Rather selfish POV the account is written from, and of course, the same parallel can be made by believers to 250k deaths they witnessed: they narcissistically view it as an opportunity to test and strengthen THEIR faith, to ensure THEIR salvation....
Adam
BTW, I'm describing how various theodicies operate in the minds of believers, so don't bother arguing to convince me; you're preaching to the choir. Believers had 3,000 yrs head-start to fine-tune and tweak the approach, and as pointed out in the most-recent video created by NonStamp Collector, MOST believers aren't even bothered one bit by contradictions which they manage to resolve via compartmentalization:
http :// www . youtube . com / watch ? v = 7gvv _ UM7CYg
I obviously am not baffled by the approach of balderbashery the Bible uses (AKA dazzling them with unfathomable BS, so as to intimidate), or I wouldn't be explaining it; I am describing the birds-eye-view of how such belief systems work AS A SYSTEM, and I wouldn't have been an atheist for the past half-decade of my life if I hadn't seen thru the age-old scam (at a point when many JWs were still knocking on my door, trying to "save me" when they were the ones in need of salvation from themselves)....
Adam