God is, of course, a person.  A human person.  A member of a tribe.  A member of a family.  Because someone who is not related to you doesn't count as a person.  It's all about the genetic material.  Not.  

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That's probably unfair to many (of all faiths) who take themselves to have an evangelical mission. It's an upgrade when you identify membership in the tribe with ascription to a creed.  And when you want to extend the opportunity for humanity to all.  But if that creed is still stuck on a particular human, then it's not much of an upgrade.  

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I understand.  It's like an untouchable constitution.  If a dead guy is the conduit to God then you really kind of get distanced from that whole "rule by men rather than rule by law," thing.  A hero on a pedestal isn't a threat, isn't likely to start making surprising demands or changing the story.  It's written in stone.  By asking  you to worship someone else, your leaders couldn't be accused of asking to be worshipped themselves.  

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How's that working out?  

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It doesn't work, does it?  Apostolic succession, or the equivalent, doesn't work because no matter how great a founder, only God is smart enough to pick a successor so ideal that successor is smart enough to pick a successor so ideal that successor is smart enough...etc ad infinitum.  In fact, even God doesn't do it that way.  Indeterminacy even limits God because God creates the detailed future of the multiverse by manifesting it, not by modeling it because at God's scale detailed modeling is impossible.  An individual timeline could theoretically (sans constantly splitting) be arranged like a really impressive billiards shot, especially since God also blows on the ball while it is rolling (which is how synchronicity gets set up), but we don't live in an individual timeline, we live in an ever expanding multiverse, increasing its size at an exponentially increasing rate of exponential growth by permutating itself in every possible way, then again.  That's right: God creates before knowing exactly what will be created.  But once it is created, God knows it fully.  It cannot precisely predict exactly how cosmic level probability distributions will change over time.  It just pushes a general trend and does know that will probably work out mostly.  I know it sounds like confident blather.

 

More to the point of why God doesn't provide the service of making the successors inevitably wise is the same as why God doesn't "reveal" anything to "messengers" in the first place.  God directly reveals to each as needed.   Sure, we can compare notes, but we are doing that for each other, not for God.   If God  used messengers to save effort, wouldn't it be extra effort to make successors wise?  God reveals as we go, to whoever--there aren't big lumps that happen once in a while and need to be preserved.  It's understandable the desire to preserve what a trusted "messenger" said, as unchanged as possible.  You can't go trusting new people claiming to speak for God.  So why trust old people claiming to speak for God?  

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But I've digressed into stuff that isn't in the holy books.  If we didn't learn it in kindergarten, we don't need it  as long as we continue doing just fine in kindergarten.  That's what I told my surgeon. 

 

Back on topic, whatever you write in stone has to be interpreted and applied.  If it isn't abstract enough, it also has to be updated.  Let's call those interpreters "successors."  You can't pick a perfect successor because there isn't one in the lineup.  Each successor will have to make a "least worst" choice.  Leaders will decay in quality because some will be better than others, and imperfection gets replicated but perfection doesn't.  A good leader will make the best of a "least worst" choice, but an inferior leader (inevitable) won't even pick the best choice available.  For most things, you have to count on real time adjustments by groups, rather than on the trajectory from an initial perfect founder.  Not to mention that requirements change.  See digression above.   Founders are best for creating a stable core element that can be highly customized.  

 

For sustained quality, people and God have to adapt in real time.  If you have an adequate interpretation system you don't have to write much in stone.  So either way, people have to be tuning in to God all the time.  So, we need the priesthood of all, at least for selecting the leaders and updaters and interpreters.  The best leaders are people inspired by God (whether they know it or not).  If we really believe in God's rule of this world, then it must be that everyone is inspired by God.  All of the people, even evil ones, are being nudged into playing their necessary roles, and taking a part in where we go collectively.  But that means we can't listen to just one person, because people have different roles and different inspirations.  Ideally we form a picture of God from the composite of everyone's perceptions. 

 

Everyone is inspired, and I'm a person, so I'm inspired by God.  But I'm just one person.  Believe me if God inspires you to do so.  I'm not using appeal to authority, so authority has no authority over me.  But you may point out that I am proposing a doctrine (bundled with an organizational code, no less), and trying to establish an organization.  Sounds a lot like establishing authority and writing in stone.    

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I'm offering a proposal.  This is my vision of God and a plan for organizing to relate with God in a particular style.  I don't propose it's for everyone or for all time.  But when it stops being for you or for your time, you have left it and can't claim to be it.  

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I'm not claiming to be any particular religion or denomination you've ever heard of, so I can't be asked to comply with anything.  Theoconsequentialism isn't Christianity.   

 

As I say in the Unanimous Rules: 

"While “church” is conventionally a term referring to Christian associations, let it be totally clear that we are not a Christian organization. We use the term 'church' because we hope to fulfill the same functions currently reserved for Christian churches in societies using them. We believe that their doctrines, which we reject, have little to do with what they are about, except that blind consent to them plays the vital role of subverting judgment. We reject the necessity for that."

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Affirmation of nonsense is being used as a substitute for real spiritual development and read as an indicator of worthiness.  The contradictions aren't a side effect, they're the active ingredient.  When you internalize opposites your power over yourself is neutralized.  Saying "I accept that Jesus must suffer to save me from the hell I deserve because of my sinful nature," does not make  you better or indicate that you are better.  It serves no useful function but it is being relied on, and every alternative blocked, as though it did.   It is neither necessary nor sufficient but it claims to be both. Making you lie isn't incidental, it's the point.    Fear of self possession as "pride" originally came from a mindset of clan identities so intense that freedom equated to claims of special authority.  Arabia based Islam is still in that mindset.  It was based on limited thinking then and is now nothing but a tool of maintaining limitation for purposes accountable only to the whims of those in control.  Such pride.   Christianity is tired and devoid of nutritional value, but God lives.    And no, your refutation can't just be a contradiction.    How does external promotion of overt doctrinal conformity earn top billing as the be all and end all?  I'll tell you how.  A movement loses all meaningful content and  becomes nothing but movement promotion for the sake of movement promotion.    Structure and dynamics always dictate results, not the platitudes that get tacked onto them.

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Not to leave out other religions--they have problems too.  I picked on Christianity because they're the ones most likely to come troll the heretic when the ad uses the word "church."  

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