(July 19, 2022 at 10:37 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: If I am not mistaken you consider yourself a Muslim. As such, most of what you mention are IMHO secondary theological disputes (like the unity of God) that arise after initial first principles on which we already agree, such as, "only useful if one is convinced a benevolent God exists for some given independent reasons." What kind of independent reasons? Well, first off having reasons for a belief is not the same as having evidence justifying belief. The atheists, by and large, seem to believe that the subset of beliefs justified by evidence is superior to the larger set of reasonable beliefs. When it comes to natural science, I would generally agree with them; whereas when it comes to philosophy such an approach is questionable, to say the least.
Yes I am a Muslim as you said. I think the core beliefs of my religion have more initial plausibility than those of the other Abrahamic religions.
If someone invites you to join a new religion, and presents its deity as capable of creating a square circle, do you think such religion is worth considering at all? Do you think that the adherents of such religion can reasonably engage in "secondary theological disputes" about whether it's sensible to believe in such deity?
I agree there is a difference between good reasons to believe and evidence for belief. But evidence usually means empirical evidence (which I think is only one category of evidence) and, as you said, some people can have compelling religious experience, which might give them some justification to have a personal belief in God.
Religious experience can never be considered as proof of God because :
(1) There is the obvious problem of conflicting religious experiences. Imagine that you have, on the one hand, a christian who had an overwhelming experience of Jesus and a manifestation of his divinity, and a non christian who had an experience of Judas revealing to him that all christians are misguided by Satan (who, it turns out, impersonated Jesus) and that Judas is indeed the real God. Obviously, at least one (or more) of the two religious experiences is factually wrong. And there is no good reason to favor one over the other.
(2) you can't link religious experience to the God you have in mind. There is an obvious confirmation bias when someone who was brought up by christian parents has an experience of Jesus. The more parcimonious explanation is that his subconsciousness- and past experiences/exposure to various christian doctrines -generates this experience.
You asked : but what about the prophets themselves? That's certainly a legitimate question. But a quick glance at islamic/christian scripture gives you the answer : neither prophets nor their contemporaries were looking for proof of God. Believing in God was ubiquitous and nobody needed rational arguments for it. The entirety of the Qur'an almost doesn't mention the topic of God's existence, there is only one verse merely saying that God can't be doubted, with no further elaboration. The entire career of the Islamic prophet was about God's unity, opposing paganism and establishing the pillars of Islam -the various forms of worship etc. In christian scripture, you have the famous verse "the fool says in his heart there is no God" clearly indicating that the priority of Jesus's teachings is not to establish such a clear fact.
(July 19, 2022 at 8:35 pm)Jehanne Wrote: If the prophets truly are from God, why can't they provide clear & convincing evidence of such??
Well, theists argue of course that prophets did indeed present convincing evidence. After all, they didn't gather followers for nothing.
In any case, being able to convince someone is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the truth of the claim. There is enough evidence that the Earth is round even if I fail to convince a flat earther.
