Dubious wrote: ↑Mon Jun 22, 2020 8:47 am
I didn’t expect any concession but I am surprised that you even considered the possibility.
Of course. It's a very basic question, but not at all a difficulty, really. Even if it were true that God chose to speak through specific human agencies, that would tell neither for nor against their truthfulness.
Their truthfulness would be a separate question: your question only asks why the mediating agencies are what they are, not whether or not the message they contain is true. It does not follow that if a man says X, then X is automatically false.
What would be the most reasonable, rational conclusion on the existence of something for which there was never any validation of having existed or even any necessity for it?
You mean if Creation itself could get started without a Creator? Or if there had been no revelations, whether to particular men, or to collectives, or in a book, or by a vision, or by any other means? Or if there had been no Incarnation? And if there had been no miracles, no Jesus Christ, no crucifixion, no salvation, no morality, no ultimate justice and no objective purpose to our existence?
No! That’s not really what I mean for most of the conditions you outline.
Well, I answered the hypothetical situation you presented, even though I think it arbitrarily denies all of the above. And I wrote:
Believe a truth or believe a falsehood, or believe nothing at all, and we all still end up as dust and nothing.
To which you replied:
I’m surprised you would say something like this - which I so thoroughly agree with – after having so often invoked an afterlife as a reason to believe in the first place.
I simply accepted the logical consequences of your hypothesis. I did not say it was my hypothesis.
As for the afterlife, I do not think I have offered it as "a reason to believe." I have, however, said that I believe in the afterlife, and that if such a thing exists, there are certain important consequences for the present.
You and I are both speaking of what follows logically from our first principle, our basic hypothesis about what is true and false about life. You are saying there's no God...that's your hypothesis. I'm saying there is, and that is mine. I know what my reasons for thinking what I think are, but I was asking about your reasons for choosing your hypothesis. You said it was that men speak for God; I said that that was a
non-sequitur, since what men say can be true or false. And there we are. That's the story so far.
Let’s subsume all that you describe under the heading of revelation which it appears to be in one form or another. But what defines a “revelation” if not usually an intense mental or spiritual experience, even a soul-shaking one, that however powerful does not in itself presuppose a reality for the revelation to make sense. Minds can be convinced without any such recourse to reality not unlike believing in conspiracy theories. Mystical experiences do not require the catalyst of an actual god existing to take place; it may even be a limitation. So again the question stands.
It's a perfectly good question, too. For the fact that a man or woman has had a mystical experience neither attests for or against its truthfulness.
Or to strengthen your question, we might even say this: it is said Mohammed went into a cave and had a vision. Jews and Christians (and Atheists) all think that if Mohammed had a vision at all, there's no reason to think his vision was anything more than a private mystical experience, with no reference to truth. So it's clear that even religious people, except perhaps for the very naive, automatically accept the claim "I had a vision" as indicative of truth.
So far, so good? I think we're agreeing thus far.
Well, what makes us reject the claim of Mohammed? The answer is remarkably similar for Jews, Christians and Atheists. It's that the Koran fails basic tests of truthfulness, such as correspondence to reality, accuracy to its own claims, empirical and historical facts, and rational coherence. So Jews, Christians and Atheists are on good grounds when saying, "If there is a revelation of God, that one isn't it."
But that doesn't warrant any of them jumping to the further conclusion, "Because Mohammed lied, so did every other claimed revelation." Each revelation has to be judged on
its own merits...rather like all scientific hypotheses or all rational statements have to pass muster on their own merits. Some are always false, and some are sometimes true. It's always on an individual basis that we know -- not on a sweeping claim that all revelations must be false merely because they claim to be revelations.
for originality
