Religious texts

[Zzyzx]

WHY should any religious texts be considered as anything more than claims, stories, and opinions of men (exclusively male authorship it seems) pretending to speak for (or AS) one of the thousands of proposed 'gods'?

[Athetotheist]

WHY should any religious texts be considered as anything more than claims, stories, and opinions of men (exclusively male authorship it seems) pretending to speak for (or AS) one of the thousands of proposed 'gods'?

A more indepth question, I would say, is: Why do followers of one organized religion tend to hold other religions to a higher standard of credibility than they do their own?

[1213]

WHY should any religious texts be considered as anything more than claims, stories, and opinions of men (exclusively male authorship it seems) pretending to speak for (or AS) one of the thousands of proposed 'gods'?

I consider the Bible texts more than just words of men, because I think they show love, wisdom and knowledge that I don't think humans would have without God.

[Jester]

[Replying to Zzyzx in post #1]

WHY should any religious texts be considered as anything more than claims, stories, and opinions of men (exclusively male authorship it seems) pretending to speak for (or AS) one of the thousands of proposed 'gods'?

There are a few questions and assumptions here. I'll try to pull them apart.
As to why texts should be seen as anything more than claims, I suppose that depends on how well a particular text does on tests of authenticity.
As to speculation about the demographics of those who wrote a given set of texts, I'm not sure what relevance that has to whether the claims therein are true.
As to the matter of pretending to speak for or as a god, if we're assuming this from the outset, then we'll definitely conclude that these texts are not valid, but only because we're reasoning via circulus in propando fallacy.
As to the number of proposed gods out there, we'd need to compare the support for them as well. The existence of competing theological claims is no more a reason to dismiss all such claims than the existence of competing scientific theories is a reason to dismiss all theories as worthless.

But the real issue here is the presumption of naturalism that underlies the question. So long as we accept naturalism without expecting any support for it, then it is no surprise that we'll end up with a naturalist conclusion—but that hardly seems a reasonable approach to evaluating religious claims.

In that case, what is the support for naturalism, and why should that be our starting point in answering this question?

[SiNcE_1985]

WHY should any religious texts be considered as anything more than claims, stories, and opinions of men (exclusively male authorship it seems) pretending to speak for (or AS) one of the thousands of proposed 'gods'?

Because, throughout history, everyone was smart enough to know that mankind isn't just some freak product of nature.

And everyone adopted their favorite God concept to explain this.

However, they can't all be right.

But, they can't all be wrong either.

[The Tanager]

WHY should any religious texts be considered as anything more than claims, stories, and opinions of men (exclusively male authorship it seems) pretending to speak for (or AS) one of the thousands of proposed 'gods'?

Only when the evidence shows those claims to be the most rational position to take. It's the same for any claims of any worldview, including secular texts that espouse their claims and opinions.