Divine Revelation

[FallentoReason]

I am not sure about the science behind it, but how it generally works is you can hear something once or it could be something you've heard 1000 times like John 3:16, and you will be able to see it for what it was meant to be. this could happen in a sermon, or it could happen as a result of a study, or you could simply wake from a dream. God is not limited on how He decides to reveal something.

Right, so off the bat you're accepting that it is a moment filled with emotion/thoughts/"warm feelings" that occur on your own and this happens to be a "revelation" because it's to do with scripture or w/e. So no god is involved since you're admitting the individual experiences a revelation without God interfering somehow in the natural world.

This sounds exactly like Bible interpretations -- it's subjective. Since God isn't producing anything in your brain it means there's nothing verifiable and hence it's a subjective experience that the believer goes through. Therefore, how do you know what a revelation is and what isn't just like when you have to discern what is literal and what isn't? Seems like revelations are another area void of any divine intervention, just like prayer, healing, the Bible...

[FallentoReason]

P.s. this isn't related at all, but I've asked the same question on a different forum and someone gave me an answer... justifying the book Revelations.

*4 posts by the both of us later*

STILL doesn't understand that I want to discuss personal revelations.

It's amazing how some literature that you read can completely burn the brain to a crisp. It frightens me to be honest.

[Angrboda]

I was reading about the Quran yesterday, and it occurred to me that for much of the history of holy books like the bible, the Vedas, and so forth, the bulk of people worshipping such "holy books" were illiterate, and it made me wonder if the notion of "holy" words, words with magical, religious power, wouldn't have been a literal rather than a figurative truth to such illiterate people. That the myths were bound up in written language gave it its own mystical air. Now the words are less magical.... or are they? One of the beliefs about the Quran is that it is written in an inimitable style, a perfect feat of composition that could only be divine. (While cooler heads observe that the Quran has no logical structure, frequently descends into meaningless gibberish, contradicts itself and even acknowledges the contradiction (abrogation), repeats stories without any obvious reason, and borrows heavily from the bible.) It seems that anything can be imbued with special meaning. I have moments of clarity regarding theories about the human mind. What, if anything, can distinguish between actual insight and mere apophenia, seeing meaning in the ordinary or meaningless, is how such insights respond to verification procedures, and what verification procedures are applied. Someone like Drich won't bother to independently validate his insights, and just accepts them at face value; this is the "no validation" option. Then there is the bulk of religion and pseudoscience which uses verification procedures which are naively persuasive, but ultimately do not do a reliable job of separating true from false. Then you have disciplines like science and math whose verification procedures tend toward considerably greater robustness and reliability. The test of any revelation, that of insight into a biblical verse, or theorizing about human psychology, is how it fares outside your head, and outside of unreliable and weak verification procedures.

Anyway, I'm rambling.

[KichigaiNeko]

No apophenia, I don't think you are rambling.

I have often considered the worship of the written word as magical by it's followers and said followers were in the main illiterate. But to clarify this point of view one has to "ramble" through the workings of the human mind, possibly to come to the point where it is realised that the human mind on the whole is lazy and will take any easy way out it can.

[FallentoReason]

I was reading about the Quran yesterday, and it occurred to me that for much of the history of holy books like the bible, the Vedas, and so forth, the bulk of people worshipping such "holy books" were illiterate, and it made me wonder if the notion of "holy" words, words with magical, religious power, wouldn't have been a literal rather than a figurative truth to such illiterate people. That the myths were bound up in written language gave it its own mystical air. Now the words are less magical.... or are they? One of the beliefs about the Quran is that it is written in an inimitable style, a perfect feat of composition that could only be divine. (While cooler heads observe that the Quran has no logical structure, frequently descends into meaningless gibberish, contradicts itself and even acknowledges the contradiction (abrogation), repeats stories without any obvious reason, and borrows heavily from the bible.) It seems that anything can be imbued with special meaning. I have moments of clarity regarding theories about the human mind. What, if anything, can distinguish between actual insight and mere apophenia, seeing meaning in the ordinary or meaningless, is how such insights respond to verification procedures, and what verification procedures are applied. Someone like Drich won't bother to independently validate his insights, and just accepts them at face value; this is the "no validation" option. Then there is the bulk of religion and pseudoscience which uses verification procedures which are naively persuasive, but ultimately do not do a reliable job of separating true from false. Then you have disciplines like science and math whose verification procedures tend toward considerably greater robustness and reliability. The test of any revelation, that of insight into a biblical verse, or theorizing about human psychology, is how it fares outside your head, and outside of unreliable and weak verification procedures.

Anyway, I'm rambling.

Sure, and let's say for argument's sake that a revelation seems to float in real life. This still leaves us with the question of how one came to obtain such a revelation. Did one go through a solitary mental process OR did GOD embed this knowledge into one's brain, be it through materialising particles in the brain, producing sound that one identifies as a voice etc..?

[The Grand Nudger]

I am not sure about the science behind it,

Because there isn't any

but how it generally works is you can hear something once or it could be something you've heard 1000 times like John 3:16, and you will be able to see it for what it was meant to be. this could happen in a sermon, or it could happen as a result of a study, or you could simply wake from a dream. God is not limited on how He decides to reveal something.

[rexbeccarox]

I'm wondering why only three of those could be considered divine revelation. Is it because the authors of the other two don't claim it? What else makes the three worthy of that description?

[FallentoReason]

I'm wondering why only three of those could be considered divine revelation. Is it because the authors of the other two don't claim it? What else makes the three worthy of that description?

What "three" are you referring to?

[killybob]

I'm wondering why only three of those could be considered divine revelation. Is it because the authors of the other two don't claim it? What else makes the three worthy of that description?

He argued that, because the last people on the list were not actually divine figures, it would not be divine revelation. However, he's still jumping around the question like scared animal: The other 3 cases of "divine revelation" that were mentioned still stand and he wont address the argument.

[Drich]

P.s. this isn't related at all, but I've asked the same question on a different forum and someone gave me an answer... justifying the book Revelations.

*4 posts by the both of us later*

STILL doesn't understand that I want to discuss personal revelations.

It's amazing how some literature that you read can completely burn the brain to a crisp. It frightens me to be honest.

What personal revelation do you have?