I have not seen this particular idea discussed here that I have noticed, so I figured I would share it to see what you all think. (Both atheist and theist.)
TLDR summary: Why would a god (as depicted by the various religions) rely almost exclusively on human-to-human communication to communicate to humans? It makes no sense, a much more likely explanation that makes a lot more sense is that there is no god, and communication is pretty much exclusively human-to-human simply because there is no god to do the communication, and "god" is strictly a human idea.
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The thought occurs to me, religion and talk of god and what god wants, is at least 99% communication from human-to-human. Even by religions own explanations of their religion and god. Very few people alive today would claim they heard direct communication from god, and even fewer people would claim they have a message from god, that god wanted that person to communicate to everyone else through them instead of directly. So just about everything you and I ever heard about for any religion/god idea, came from other people. Other humans trying to communicate to humans about what they heard from yet other humans saying they heard it from god.
Worse still it is nearly impossible to separate out what people heard about various religious ideas from any possible original communication from a supposed "god." Except we do know complex and detailed god ideas that even closely align to an already established religion does not just "appear" in isolation. We do not have cases of people that never heard of any form of various religions (say a geographically isolated tribe of people in a jungle somewhere) come out and say "hey, adam and eve lived in a garden as the first humans and then one ate the forbidden fruit, .... and then a guy named jesus christ was born on christmas day, and then died for our sins, but was then resurrected etc etc etc.
The various holy books of instruction on religions/god idea. Written by humans, edited by humans, printed by humans. Translated by humans, distributed by humans, details amended, changed and argued by humans. Same for any religious gathering, god does not show up and communicate, at least not in a direct way, the religious groups are usually lead by "religious leaders" ... humans.
If a "god" with all it supposed wisdom and powers wanted to communicate to humans, why would a god use "human-to-human" as by far the most common way to communicate to all the people a particular god idea wanted to communicate to?
A person born in the 21st century could communicate much more directly and efficiently to people utilizing the internet. Then relying on human-to-human communication If I had a large claim and wanted to communicate to people, I could just put up a video and be able to communicate much more directly with billions of people that have at least fleeting access to internet capable of showing a video. If a person born in the 21st century is capable of that why would a powerful and knowledgeable god instead utilize a very lousy and prone to error form of communication? Why would a god handicap its communication? Especially when supposedly at a certain point in time most god ideas were just fine with direct communication based on the various religions written record of their god and then just stop? And most religions state that their god is the one true god and that god direct that people should follow it, and the followers should spread the word of this god.
I think we can all agree that human-to-human communication is a lousy form of communication especially when other much better methods are available. We all know that humans can lie, humans typically do not have perfect recall, people can have agendas, all part of the human condition. We also know humans can easily make mistakes even if they managed to avoid lying, imperfect memories, and avoid all possible agenda/bias.
All of us humans have learned early on, not to take people solely on their "word" without evidence. Especially if we never even met the person before, that has shown a strong pattern to be "true" to their word. If I say to you I am elvis, (the famous singer) you know that is extremely unlikely and that you would not just take my word for it, you would demand proof. Even something more benign, say a claim that I have brown eyes, while brown eyes are a very common eye color for humans, you are well aware I have not proved in any way I have brown eyes. You would not turn around and accept a bet with me for 100 bucks where you will pay 100 dollars if I actually do not have brown eyes.
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I imagine some theist may say: "god works in mysterious ways, we can't know god's plans, or understand god. Along with possibly some combination of: "god gives us free will, and if god were to communicate to us directly, we would lose free will."
First saying "god works in mysterious ways, or we can't know god's plans or understand god" is just another way of saying I/we do not know. A: "I do not know" answer is NOT an answer. If I could say "I do not know" to every challenge to a any claim I make, and you accepted that answer you would not be able to falsify anything I say. I could say you owe me a million dollars. Prove to me you do not owe me a million dollars, and any reason you came up with why or why not you owe me 1 million dollars, I simply said "I work in mysterious ways, or "you can not understand why."
Second: on the freewill part, why would god communicating directly be suddenly robbing people of free will? Even to pick a god? A god could create a giant permanent magical "banner in the sky" above any large gathering of people, and say "I am god, I am here go read website xyz to learn more about me!" and not rob people of the free will to believe in it or not.
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I am very interested in people's thoughts on this. Agree? Disagree? Why?
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▮ I am an atheist that always likes a good debate. ▮
▮ Please include @LogicFTW in responses directed to me. ▮
▮ Useful list on forum usage. A.R. Member since 2016. ▮
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