"g-d" as the voice of community survival

1.29: relig/god/the voice of community survival:
. when we say of a work, "god said that",
or "god had the prophets or the son say that"
we mean that work supports a plan that is
in the best interest of your community or the world,
or something your common sense will agree with
given you are sufficiently educated
to think about the spirit of the law .
2.9:
. otherwise, how do we know god's voice
when there can be false prophets?
we must assume our god is good for our community
and that if we worship the supreme god
(the one that created all national gods)
then our god is good for the world's future .
. prophets (godly critics of a society)
have been confused with futurists
exactly because they give warnings about
what the god will do if we aren't obedient;
and that often involved predictions
that the nation will invaded and enslaved,
or the crops will fail, or the plagues will come .
. if the prophet gives a warning and it happens,
and only the god could have known it would happen
then it's deemed likely that warning came from
a true prophet (the voice of the god).
. but predictions are not a good way of
sorting out the false prophets from the truth
because most of the "punishments from god"
can be seen as just natural processes:
plagues happen until science evolves;
invasions happen until the world is united
under one police force .
. we must continually ask ourselves:
is the word from this social critic
in the best interest of society or the world?
will the powers that can rule the world
fight for the word's implied plan?
will the word's plan survive democracy
or will there be endless civil war?
(look at the expense of our drug war:
can it be godly to support privacy
but not support personal drug choice?).

1.29: phi/spirit vs letter of law:
. the spirit of the law
vs the letter of the law
has an analogy with engineering documentation:
requirements (req's) vs specification (spec's).
. the req's tell what the problem is
by explaining where we want to be
vs where we are currently at .
. the spec's offer a particular design
for satisfying the req's.
. if you make sure your action satisfies the req's,
then you are following the spirit of
those who wrote the req's .