What Should the Bible Be Like?

Tree of Life said:

Christians believe that the Bible is God's word. It is his revelation of himself to humanity and made accessible through a written record. The Bible is often criticized by unbelievers for various reasons.

Suppose that God exists. Further suppose that God wanted to communicate with humanity, reveal himself and his purposes, and leave an accessible written record. Since you have problems with the Bible, I assume you have some idea of what would have been a better attempt. What do you suggest that the self revelation of God should have been like?

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The self revelation of God is not so much the bible as it is the human conscience. So I suppose God might imprint Himself on the human conscience and all mankind would have knowledge of God. But mankind tends to wander away from its conscience collectively and has needed someone with a "hyper-conscience" to come and set them back straight.

Tree of Life said:

How do you know this?

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Because it says so in the bible.

Tree of Life said:

Do you see how you've contradicted yourself?

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I almost hated to do that to you.

Tree of Life said:

Christians believe that the Bible is God's word. It is his revelation of himself to humanity and made accessible through a written record. The Bible is often criticized by unbelievers for various reasons.

Suppose that God exists. Further suppose that God wanted to communicate with humanity, reveal himself and his purposes, and leave an accessible written record. Since you have problems with the Bible, I assume you have some idea of what would have been a better attempt. What do you suggest that the self revelation of God should have been like?

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Is there a point to answering your question? I have a sneaking suspicion that this will not end well. That a Christian, if cornered, will resort to saying "Since God knows everything, he must have had a reason to write the Bible like he did."
But alright, I'll bite.
First of all, it shouldn't contain incorrect scientific facts. The world isn't six thousand years old, there wasn't a global flood, and mankind isn't descended from two individuals.

Tree of Life said:

What do you suggest that the self revelation of God should have been like?

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A pop-up book would have been nice.

Tree of Life said:

Is this to say that it should conform to modern scientific standards or that it should not contain incorrect scientific facts generally speaking.

For example, should the origin story of the Bible get into scientific details about evolution or could it say something more simple like "mankind arose from the earth"?

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I wouldn't include scientific facts which pre-scientific peoples wouldn't understand, but I wouldn't use stories which hadn't actually happened either.
"Fourteen thousand million years ago, there was a huge explosion, scattering dust throughout the endless dark. Some of it formed together, and became stars, with worlds such as ours is. And from the seas of the world came life, which changed over many millions of years until the world was as you see it today..."

Tree of Life said:

Christians believe that the Bible is God's word. It is his revelation of himself to humanity and made accessible through a written record. The Bible is often criticized by unbelievers for various reasons.

Suppose that God exists. Further suppose that God wanted to communicate with humanity, reveal himself and his purposes, and leave an accessible written record. Since you have problems with the Bible, I assume you have some idea of what would have been a better attempt. What do you suggest that the self revelation of God should have been like?

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IMO the highest "revelation" are the Laws written into & governing the fabric of Reality itself - this is the approach and perspective of early Buddhism. We call it "Dhamma" (aka "Dharma" in Sanskrit).

These laws are equally accessible to all, throughout space and time, without the need for fallible intermediaries (e.g. written parchments subject to decay, human languages subject to misinterpretation, fallible humans, etc.).

Tree of Life said:

Ok fair enough. I would say that the creation event and the flood event can be seen as miraculous events which would be categorically offensive to scientific materialists. Do you have a problem with other miracles in the Bible? The resurrection of Jesus, for example, would be seen by many as contrary to scientific fact.

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For myself, I'm generally open to the idea of miracles, but not to miracles that should be verifiable if they actually happened. For example, a man is killed and comes back to life 2000 years ago. Tricky to go back and verify that, but I do see a Church dedicated to the man which has persisted 2000 years later. And humans in power are known to kill people who speak truth to them. So... God visits, doesn't defend himself 2000 years ago... what happens? THAT part of the story, the part about human nature (which was what the whole visit was about), I can completely see. It would probably repeat if he visited again today and didn't defend himself.

On the other hand, a miracle such as a flood of the scale described in Genesis (if that was ANYTHING like the literal scale) there would be MASSIVE geological evidence, which doesn't exist. I know that there are some who argue that it does and is being suppressed, but I am with the body of science here, which I believe represents the reality of the situation. So, I'm not for miracles that 'clean themselves up'. On the other side, there are lots of Big Flood stories from different early civilizations. So I think that *something* happened, just not of the scale recorded in Genesis.

And then there are other stories, such as the Angel of Death slaying the firstborn of the Egyptians, really the firstborn of anyone who didn't have the blood of the lamb on their door. Still celebrated as the PassOver today, like (4000?) years later. ...What happened? Let's suppose for a moment that you are Moses leading the Isrealites out of Egypt and there were NO miracles associated with Exodus. Where the heck does that story come from? You can't just make it up one day while you are wondering through the wilderness. If it wasn't true, then everyone KNOWS it's not true *because they were there*. So, my feeling is that SOMETHING happened that left a big impact. And Jews are still remembering it to this day.

Tree of Life said:

Since we are all fallible humans, how may we infallibly access these laws?

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They are part of each of our innate, direct experiences.

Do you not perceive the Law of Cause and Effect plainly in your life? Or, the Law of Habit? The Law of Impermanence & Change? Etc.

Tree of Life said:

I believe in the principle of cause and effect. Some deny it on philosophical grounds. I'm not familiar with the "Law of Habit" or the "Law of Change", so I can't say that I perceive them.

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Law of Habit = Habitual, volitional choices redirects our lifestream towards that particular direction.
Law of Change = Things change, nothing stays the same.

Tree of Life said:

I think if you met Lazarus a few months after Jesus raised him from the dead he would not at all have looked like a man who had once died and been buried for four days.

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I agree. But that was not a miracle on a world wide global scale, it was a miracle on a personal one.