Hellfire? and fundamentalist, fear-based religious doctrines

[Ali Quadir]

I often say something like, "Rather than limit myself to a single book, written by humans thousands of years ago, I prefer to marvel at the wisdom found in numerous books and traditions from all over the world. I just don't believe that the Creator of this vast and magnificent UniVerse would have entrusted all knowledge to a single primitive tribe and expect everyone in the world to be smart enough to figure out that this book contains all the secrets to eternity, when there are so many other sources of knowledge that make more sense."

Agreed... In other words one could say: "The world is my bible".

In sufism there's the "Spirit of guidance" (it's the part of God that writes bibles and fortune cookies) basically all guidance comes from there. And it does not restrict itself to a voice or a book.

They then say, "God is so powerful he made sure that the Bible got recorded, passed down, and translated properly."

Which is factually untrue if we check old bibles versus new bibles. But hey. I'm sorry... I am frustrated myself too.. In american vocabulary, I was raised a bible belter... In my tongue.. I wore the black socks and ate the mints.

Which is basically saying that God's infinite power is being expressed in his ability to make something confusing, but we're supposed to trust it's from God anyway, no matter how confusing and nonsensical it is.

Precisely. We've got it all figured out, lets go stand on the market place and convince everyone else

(For the record, I acknowledge that there is much beauty and STO teaching in the Bible, in particular the teachings of Jesus. It's the rigid belief that every word in the Bible is the 'word of God' while other lost books and scriptures from other traditions are 'satanic' that I have an issue with.)

You don't even have to state this. I think we all know.