Written Revealed Word can’t possibly be True
The title makes a dangerously strong claim, but it is not just attention getting: I believe if you look carefully at the universe, and the properties that such a creator would need, one can conclude the following:
The flaws with written revealed word — like the Bible — are so great and so inherent that no super-intelligent being would ever use it. Beyond being unclear, it opens the door for fraud and false revealings.
If it makes no sense for a God to ever use written revealed word, then I have to conclude the bible is false.
To make my case, I will start with these assumptions
- God created the universe, decided on all the parameters, and made the big bang happen;
- God is maximally intelligent, as intelligent as anything can logically ever be;
- God has a message to give to all humans;
- The message is important so clarity and accuracy are primary.
Based on these assumptions, how would God communicate to us? Would he use the method of written revealed word, the method by which we receive the Bible? Here we consider the entire process of revealing the truth to some limited number of people (let me call them prophets) and then collect these into a work of art, and to use this (along with missionaries) to spread the word properly. The Bible is the written revealed word for Christianity. When I mention the bible, I mean the same for all cases of written revealed word.
Written revealed word is a particularly problematic means to communicate. Such a God will have many means of communication available, many of which have none of the flaws of written revealed word. We are asked to believe that God chosen to communicate to his people using written revealed word. Let’s take a hard look at what this says about the creator.
Prophets could Lie
We are to believe that God chooses one person to receive a message, and then that person relays the message on. The obvious problem is that there is no way to know whether the person actually received a message from God, or whether they were just making it up.
If your goal as a person is to persuade others to do your bidding, then there is a strong motivation lie and say it came from God. It gives the message unquestionable authority. Even simply asking whether the message is really from God can get one branded as a heretic just for asking the question.
Anyone can claims to be a prophet, and we know for a fact that some people make up a story and then say it is a message from God. There are thousands of thousands of supposed prophets over history, and they give conflicting messages. Some of them have to lying.
This is not to claim that the bible is a lie! Even if we assume that all the prophets in the bible were true and honest, God would still know that there will be other false prophets in the world, and that there is no way for a person to tell which message is really from God.
It God expects humans to believe a prophet, God would actually be helping the false prophets. Today we remind others that all email is not true: you must treat every email as suspect until you see other factors to confirm who it is from, and even then it is prone to mistakes. It ancient times, a king would never send a message and just assume the other would believe it, but instead the message was sealed and marked so that the receiver was assured of the message source. The prophet has no such mechanism to guarantee the authenticity for a message from God.
Words are not Clear
The message must be conveyed to the mind of the prophet, who must then express the message in the language that they know. Human languages are not perfect in expressing things. Metaphysical concepts are often very difficult to explain, and might be beyond the comprehension of the prophet. The prophet might or might not be able express the concepts clearly. Let’s assume that God helps choose the right words for that language, this still leaves another problem.
The message is for everyone, so it must somehow be translated. Humans all over the world speak thousands of different languages. Different languages express the same things differently. For a message to be understood, not on the words and syntax need translation, but also the cultural context is needed.
Lots of translators would be needed, and once again we will fall prey to dishonesty and bias. The translator might dishonestly change the word to suit what they need at that time. A ruler might cause a translation to be their particular message, instead of the one originally from God. Even if the translator is completely honest, the translation can suffer from subconscious bias. The translator might think that the message really means something different, and attempt to improve the message with some good advice of their own.
Scribes Make Mistakes
God chose a time 2000 to 2600 years ago to deliver the message. The only way to copy a written word was for a scribe to manually write out another manuscript. In every copy, there were always some number of errors. Many were unimportant and could be fixed by the next reader, but many occurred in such a way that permuted the meaning in an undetectable way. (You could of course compare two copies, but that is a lot of work in itself.)
We have many ancient copies of the bible, and we know they all vary from each other in sometimes small and sometimes large ways.
God would know the limitation of human scribes to simply copy the information. He would have to know that this important message would become distorted over time and over distance.
Error correcting mechanisms could have been employed. In fact, the mechanism that copies DNA has an error correcting mechanisms in it. The same people who claim that the bible is from God, also believe that life was designed by God. If God put error correcting mechanisms into DNA, why not also use the same for the bible?
Summarize
We are told that the bible is the written revealed truth, but there is no way to know:
- if the message received is authentic, or whether it was a simply made up
- if the concepts are accurately described in written language
- if the message was not changed over time by accumulation of mistakes
- if the translations to other languages are accurate
- if the bias of the people involves have not changed the message
God would know that there is no way for a human to avoid these flaws in communication. While this might have seemed like a really perfect solution for a bronze age herder, it is shown to be entirely insufficient in today, and I am sure future will show it even more so.
Better Options
First of all, the maximally intelligent being can probably come up with millions of much better ways that I can. If what I present here seems flawed, understand that I am not saying these are the best, they are just options that are better than revealed written word.
1. Simultaneous Revealing
Why not reveal the message to 100 people, and ask them all to write it down and compare? 100 people in 100 caves independently writing down the same thing eliminates the false prophet problem. There is no way 100 people would get exactly the same thing purely by chance.
2. Universal Revealing
Even better, why not simply reveal the message directly to every single human being? For a God to arrange a message to one person, certainly would not find it appreciably harder to just loop in every person on the planet. Everyone gets it, can write it down, they can compare notes. This mechanism can achieve 100% accuracy in delivery of the message.
3. Open Revealing
Instead of just having the message appear in the mind, maybe it should be something like a holographic projection of a person speaking the words of the message. Imagine this appeared at hundreds of places all over the world simultaneously. Again, any number of people could listen, write notes, compare, and be virtually assured that 100% of the message will be received.
I used the term “holographic” to bring up the standard Hollywood image of this sort of thing, but this could be done by a God by simply making dust float in the air in the outline of any shape desired, and the words are just vibrations in the air. This would best be done in a way that is impossible according to known laws of the universe., so that you can be sure it is not just another advanced alien civilization trying to manipulate you. Again, for a god doing something that should be impossible by nature would be a good way to make it clear the message is authentic.
4. Repeated Revealing
The message is to all humans, and not all are alive today. Such a mechanism should reappear, maybe every year at the exact same places all over the world. This way one does not have to worry about transcription errors. Future generations can watch the message as it actually is. People who were not around one year, might make a pilgrimage to see the oration. Or in the case of speaking to every person directly, it might be done yearly just to make sure you remember it correctly, and to introduce you people to the message for the first time. Repetition is an easy way to avoid all the kinds of flaws in revealed written word.
5. Universal Language
The messages could be translated by God into local languages, but that is not even necessary. If a message was being delivered every year, it could be in one language and for argument, let’s say it is Latin. If everyone on the planet received an indelible message in Latin every year, it would not be hard for everyone to learn enough of the language to understand the message. I know this seems far fetched, but languages are learned when people are exposed to them. This regular cadence of an important message in Latin would slow the evolution of all languages, and would likely become a lingua franca. Latin was the lingua franca in Europe where populations had disbursed and developed different ways of speaking, but a universal language like Latin was in fact learned by the academics so they could understand what was going on across the world.
6. Permanent Writing
There are a number of ways the message could be fixed and eternal so that everyone on the planet would have access to it at all times. For example, the stars could be moved to spell out the key points in the sky (in Latin of course). Not imaginary constellations, but actual writing in the sky. It is possible that alien technology might accomplish this, but much more likely to be authentically from God due to the extreme expense for little benefit of the aliens. Or it could be written in your DNA. Or in our bones. Or in a rainbow. It would not be hard for a real message to be permanently and unquestionably available equally to everyone.
Selecting for Gullibility
Let's define gullibility as "believing in things without sufficient evidence" particularly when someone is trying to persuade you of something.
Christianity is a system which selects for people willing to believe without sufficient evidence. That is, it selects for gullible people.
Whatever power formed the universe, it gave humans the ability to use logic to figure things out. In our daily life we make decisions based on logic founded on solid evidence and principles. This is a survival trait: there are many wrong ways to plant and care for crops, and if you want food you need to follow the ways that have worked in the past.
Christianity demands that you accept based on faith, and in fact elevates faith as a superior way to make decisions. Christians glorify those who believe in a particular god even though there is a complete lack of solid evidence. Their stronger faith makes them stronger Christians. They look down upon people who require evidence as not being sufficiently open to experiencing god.
An omniscient god would never do this because training people to be gullible opens them to the wrong message as much as it does to the right message. A gullible person is just as likely to believe in crystal power which has no evidence either. Or they might believe in the other gods mentioned in the bible even though there is no evidence for them either. Gullibility denies the value of logic, and open the way for believing non-truths.
Clearly a god that gave humans logic, would deliver an important message in a way that is consistent with that logic by providing evidence to support only the one single interpretation of the evidence. Delivering a message is achieved only when a single message can be discerned upon receipt.
It is not arrogance to demand evidence, it is a logical requirement if there is a single message to be received. Without evidence, any message is equally possible.
Selecting people for gullibility would never serve a God who wants to deliver a message, but it does serve a different purpose: people who want to fool other people are greatly served by suggesting that god requires gullibility. If Christians can convince you that god wants you to be gullible, then it is far easier for them to manipulate you. A Christian leader can feed their flock nonsense which they accept because they believe it is god's way of communicating. Since there is no logical way to check that the message actually is from God, any message can be claimed to be from God.
Which leads to the second reason God would never deliver a message in a way that requires gullibility: it opens the entire Christian organization to manipulation by people with evil purposes. A loving God would never do that, because instead of communicating truth, the God delivers randomness instead.
The Christian church demands that members be gullible, so that Christian leaders can manipulate the flock more deftly.
Is This Arrogance?
Theists usually claim I am demanding too much of this God, and in so being arrogant. I would like it to be clear, I make no demand here. My point instead is that a maximally intelligent being would know the nature of humans, and would know the flaws of the revealed written word. This argument is about the logic behind using a flawed communications approach when many better options exist that would be easily available.
Remember that we assume the message is important and it is for everyone. Some might claims that god only wants the message to go to only a few people of his choosing. Well, this sounds to me like arrogance. You have a being able to make a universe of billions of light years across, and yet there are a couple of puny humans that this god want to elevate over other puny humans. Doesn’t it seem more likely for the person who claimed to be speaking for God might in fact want you believe they are the select few? The tribe of Israel is the chosen people, according to the leader of the tribe of Israel. Doesn’t that strike you as a little bit improbable that the real God of the universe would want to play that kind of favorites? Why would a God want to take sides. I can imagine a God wanting to root for a side, but then helping them would invalidate any reason for siding with them. An omnipotent being likes a human for being good, but their are not good if God vanquishes the bad for them. I can’t see why God would play favorites at this scale.
A weaker argument is that this is too much for God, but omnipotence pretty much rules that out. The suggestions above should be trivial for God, and there are probably much better options that I never thought of.
Another argument is that the bible is somehow special. All the other written revealed manuscripts are from false prophets who made it all up, and in any case got distorted over time, but the bible on the other hand is special and did not experience all these things. But in any case we have multiple version of the bible that show it did not escape the problems presented here.
Reflection
We find ourselves in the 21st century wondering where to take advice on the origin of the universe. We have a bible and a story and we must weigh two different explanations:
- did an omniscient omnipotent god decide to use the means of revealed written word as the best way to deliver a message to his chosen people.
- or did the leaders of the chosen people make up the story in order to embolden warriors entering battles so they would win in the end
Given the flaws of revealed written word, and the comparative ease that one could use it to manipulate people, we a led to the conclusion that the second option is far more likely than the first. Even if some revealed written words is exactly perfectly from God, the fact that there are so many to choose from, and that it is impossible to say which one is real and which one is fake.
It simply does not stand to reason that the most intelligent entity in the universe will not know these flaws. And for this reason I simply can not see that there is any case to be made for the bible to be true. Sorry, this is not a comforting discovery, but I can not deny this conclusion.
