I’m perfectly willing to accept the possibility that prophetic (or any other kind of) revelations are god-derived. The trouble is, there doesn’t seem to be any reliable method to distinguish divinely inspired rhetoric from the rantings of a lunatic or a confidence trickster.
If a man calling himself The Divine Light Of Jesusania stands on a street corner wearing robes made of old bath towels and says that God wants us to change are underwear every four hours (and wear it on the outside so He can check), there’s no way to prove him wrong. Similarly, if a 40 year old Arab merchant says that an angel appeared to him in a cave, we have no way to prove him right.
Boru
If a man calling himself The Divine Light Of Jesusania stands on a street corner wearing robes made of old bath towels and says that God wants us to change are underwear every four hours (and wear it on the outside so He can check), there’s no way to prove him wrong. Similarly, if a 40 year old Arab merchant says that an angel appeared to him in a cave, we have no way to prove him right.
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson