Chuck Fager:
: Okay, here's a bit of feedback:
:
:I find it hard to imagine a non-theist prophet.  That is, I have trouble
:conceiving of what kind of experience would produce a document like Amos, othe
r
:than some overwhelming, and propulsive experience of a conscious power outtsid
e
:of and transcending the prophet.
:       Of course, Amos says as much, when his hearers tell him to get lost,
:that he is no prophet, but was taken from his usual, and very mundane,
:occupation by the personal and irresistible command of what he calls God.
:        What else could produce such a document, Rich?  I don't insist on the
:name "god," which has no specific meaning anyway; but what's the non-theist
:equivalent?

Thanks for the response!  If you don't mind, I'll answer both this and
your last message with the same answer.

First, I want to point out that I'm not insisting that everyone read
Amos in a non-theist way.  If you beleive in God, and in that kind of God,
you'll be able to read the text in a way that's much closer to the way
that Amos intended.  I have no desire to interfere with anyone's
appreciation of Amos as divinely inspired prophecy if that's how they
want to read it.

However, a non-theist *explanation* for why Amos wrote as he did is easy to
come by, if you want one.

I'll start with the harshly reductive explanation.  People feel personal
and irresistable commands to do all sorts of things.  I don't see any
reason why these inner commands can't be explained by psychology,
biochemistry, and perhaps sociobiology.  After all, if you're a
non-theist, you have to explain everything without reference to God.
Explaining why prophets speak is then not too different from explaining
why singers sing, charismatic leaders lead, or for that matter,
why obsessive-compulsive people are compelled to perform their repetitive
actions.  There are secular works that explain these things to the
extent of our current scientific knowledge, and non-theism -- which
can require its own kind of faith -- often involves a belief
that these things are at least in theory all reducable to physical
processes.

But I think that phrasing it that way is too harsh.  I prefer to think
of it as that Amos was what we'd call an inspired person, not divinely
inspired but inspired by his own passion, intelligence, and empathy.
Because he lived in a time when all deeply felt inspiration was thought
to be from God, he too thought his inspiration was from God.  If he
had been in another culture, or another time, he might well have thought
his inspiration was from a different God, or from some other mystical
or even secular cause.  That doesn't change the *value* of his message.
People beleive that they are inspired by God to produce all sorts of
messages, including parochial, meaningless, or self-serving ones.  In
my opinion, Amos was a great prophet because he produced a great message,
not because he felt that that message was from God.