The value of scholarship in religious matters.

[Note. I realize that the text for my blogs shows up as a very faded shade of grey.
I'm honestly tired of how glitchy Google's Blog platform is.
I'll be moving my blog to a new service soon.]

Someone asked me
 "All human scholars don´t share the same idea and same sources, because all those scholars have also their own sources, nothing is from them, the way to understand what they say is correct or not, is to compare things with reality in the one hand, am I wrong ?"
---
My thoughts about this:

For starters, yes.
They all start with different biases.
I agree.

However,
the fully accredited secular Universities, along with the entire professional field for historical analysis of ancient cultures ...
have done an amazing job of making sure their investigations are as scientific and ethical as possible.

It will never be perfect.

There will always be a LOT we can't know for sure.
There will always be competing theories for how to explain available data.

But when all the leaders and the overwhelming consensus is that:
* "X-thing didn't happen at all",
or
"Y-thing could only have happened differently than what's written here",
 (etc)
...
then we (laymen) can fully justify calling those matters "settled".
--
--
It's important to realize that:
IF
there is an All-Powerful, All-knowing, All-wise Super-Being who cares what conclusions we draw about anything, ...
THEN:

it's that Super-Being's
ethical and strategic duty
to ensure that the evidence is so overwhelmingly supporting 
whatever it/He wants us to think about that exact matter
that the leaders and consensus in those fields reach the conclusions that the Super-Being wants them to reach. 

The only way leaders and consensus could be wrong about anything a "God" cares about ... is if that God has failed to behave responsibly.
---
---
What can laymen do,
to 'see for ourselves' what 'stands to reason' in view of all available facts?

We can't do as much as scholars can,
 when it comes to history.
Why not?
 Because it takes decades of disciplined and structured
* access to
and
* use of
data.
 -Data
that is
* hard to find with the tools laymen have easy access to 
and
* which (in some cases) can't be properly understood without formal training in those disciplines.

However, ...

There is still a lot of great research we can do.
I agree with you about this. 

However, it's much more important to realize: 

The really good news is that there's no way a "God" would expect to care about any such matters.

Why not?
Because people with low IQs (and other learning disabilities), along with people who lack good access to advanced information, ... would be totally screwed.

What sort of "God" would totally screw innocent people over, by having academic questions on a graded "test" everyone is given, when the score determines if we end up eternally blessed, cursed, or discarded like trash?

There's simply no way historical analysis
(or even just basic reading comprehension skills)
will have anything to do with what any "God" expect of us.

So while all the Abrahamic faith-religions are arguing and competing over all those academic issues (because their books really do require it), ...

They are all missing the point.

LOVE does not depend on any such conditions.

I know this as a parent; 
and as a non-psychopath. 

My love for my children
and my relationship with them
does not depend on (nor would I even want) 
them to make me into an obsession to build their lives around.

They don't have to study for any tests.

They don't have to concern themselves with my opinions about the "correct" ways to behave while naked.

I'm never going to spy on them.

I'm never going to measure them against a nebulous and impossible standard of "perfection".
Nor would I damn for them not meeting such a standard.

I'm not going to keep a record of every mistake they ever made.

I'm not going to hold past mistakes against them.

I'm not going to have such a hard time forgiving them for trivial nonsense that someone has to literally be tortured to death to satisfy my anger.

I'm not going to circulate rumors about myself drowning puppies, kittens, and babies ... as a warning about how homicidal I can get when I feel my children have outgrown their dependencies.

I'm not going to fatally poison my kids with a piece of fruit, and then justify that as a "test" to see if they were obedient enough to 'deserve to live'.

None of my kids have to worry about some secret day of DOOM where:
 I finally lose patience
waiting for them to make some special guesses about how exactly they are supposed to cater to my insecurities ...
and then I KILL THEM (or worse) for not figuring it out on time.  

--
--

Abrahamic-religious writers in the Bronze and Iron ages were
mostly psychopaths and narcissists.

That's why they envisioned a "God" who reasons like a psychopathic narcissist.



So when the world's foremost historians came out and said those stories are mostly BS, ...
I was quite relieved.

But I still felt like I needed to do a lot of my own research and thinking, to sort it out for myself; just to be sure.

So that's what I did; for many years. 

And that's how I know the scholars are correct.

Those books are mostly BS.

I don't know all the things the scholars know.
But I learned enough to be sure for myself.