Benevolent Creator God?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If you believe that, you're a solipsist.

I didn't read Poca's post, but here's the deal. It is more plausible to think "healers" in ancient times were charlatans than to think that they might have actually had healing powers. Why is it more plausible? Look around. We have the same shit going on nowadays. Faith healers and the like. But never do they turn out to be provably genuine.

But they do turn out to be provably charlatans sometimes. What makes you think ancient times were any different?

Well, healing and receiving a message are two different things, in general, it's not difficult to expose charlatans. Not the same can be said about sincere people who can or cannot be delusional.

The beginning of Muhammad's religious experience is well-known, and he himself thought in the beginning that he had some mental illness, it's clear that he didn't want to be the recipient of the Qur'an. Now, what are we to make of his religious experience? His sincerity and devotion to his own message is not really disputed by anyone, so we're left with either delusion or accepting his message at face value. Evaluating the content of his message and whether he could up with the Qur'an from knowledge that is available locally is the way to proceed.

Muhammad also had a military career and was a successful statesman, which means he definitely didn't have some debilitating mental illness or something like schizophrenia. Also, epileptic seizures are followed by memory less, Muhammad produced the revelations immeditely after his reported agitated states of receiving revelation, so they are unlikely to be symptoms of epilepsy.

I invite you to re-think this part of your statement.

Boru

[LadyForCamus]

I’ll make it as simple as possible for you, @Klorophyll :

Theist: I had experience X.

Skeptic: Oh, cool.

Theist: It was god talking to me.

Skeptic: How do you know that? How did you rule out natural causes?

Theist: I can’t rule out natural causes.

Skeptic: Do you have any evidence that it was a god?

Theist: No.

Skeptic: Then I’m not convinced the cause was a god.


Explain to me how my reasoning is flawed and yours is sound.

Fair enough, let me explain it to you : All experiences come from God, a deity being the source of all things. The most insane delusion of a mental patient also comes from God. The particular religious experiences we're talking only differ from the rest of experiences by their content. The revelations of prophets have material that is so culturally impressive as to be considered to be a message from God. Each individual perceive these religious experiences differently, accepting or dismissing them is the very divine test all religions are about.

So, you reached a moment in your thinking where you’ve realized that you can’t make an evidence-based distinction between a natural cause and a supernatural cause. Great! Bravo. I commend you.

Except that rather than appropriately adjust your confidence level in your belief to match what you’ve just realized, which would be the rational thing to do, you’ve instead decided to grasp at a fallacy and conflate the two causes so that you don’t have to make that distinction in the first place. You were so close, man, lol. Stop trying to shirk your responsibilities. If all experiences are from God, then what is the difference between natural and supernatural? Which one is god?

[R00tKiT]

I’m certain Poca can support that claim. We have far more evidence for liars and delusional individuals than we have for any god, as I stated above. Confidence and certainty aren’t synonymous. I feel like you should be able to grasp that distinction. 

I agree, and I am not telling you that we should accept someone's claim of prophethood at face value. But if we systematically dimiss such claims - as poca is doing - then we are not just confident, but certain that no God ever communicated anything with us, and this wouldn't be very rational would it

And some people are demonstrably more wrong than others.

True. And since we are all wrong about something in reality, we are all delusional, which makes poca's criterion of delusion completely empty of meaning.

Sure, it could be. But in the absence of any evidence, or even a reliable method to make such a distinction, you have no good reason to believe that it is, and a well-evidenced reason to seriously doubt that it is. Yet you jump on wagon number one every single time.

The only method I am suggesting is to evaluate whether the contents of revelations could have come about from local knowledge. If they couldn't, they we should accept them at face value.

---

So, you reached a moment in your thinking where you’ve realized that you can’t make an evidence-based distinction between a natural cause and a supernatural cause. Great! Bravo. I commend you.

Except that rather than appropriately adjust your confidence level in your belief to match what you’ve just realized, which would be the rational thing to do, you’ve instead decided to grasp at a fallacy and conflate the two causes so you won’t have to. You were so close, man, lol. If all experiences are from God, then what is the difference between natural and supernatural? Which one is god?

I am not very comfortable with this natural/supernatural distinction. If everything is from God, then everything that happens through natural means has the same "godliness" as religious experiences, including those of major belief systems. Again, the only way to make a difference between a message or an experience that we usually call divine is to assess its content and see if it's worthy of divine source, that's it. There is nothing else. We don't need some mechanism connecting the natural to the supernatural, we just need to make sure revelations didn't come from the local environment.

---

I invite you to re-think this part of your statement.

Boru

Why? Should I allow for the possibility that a schizophrenic is capable of leading armies and convince military leaders that he is sent by God?

[LadyForCamus]

I’m certain Poca can support that claim. We have far more evidence for liars and delusional individuals than we have for any god, as I stated above. Confidence and certainty aren’t synonymous. I feel like you should be able to grasp that distinction. 

I agree, and I am not telling you that we should accept someone's claim of prophethood at face value. But if we systematically dimiss such claims - as poca is doing - then we are not just confident, but certain that no God ever communicated anything with us, and this wouldn't be very rational would it

And some people are demonstrably more wrong than others.

True. And since we are all wrong about something in reality, we are all delusional, which makes poca's criterion of delusion completely empty of meaning.

Sure, it could be. But in the absence of any evidence, or even a reliable method to make such a distinction, you have no good reason to believe that it is, and a well-evidenced reason to seriously doubt that it is. Yet you jump on wagon number one every single time.

The only method I am suggesting is to evaluate whether the contents of revelations could have come about from local knowledge. If they couldn't, they we should accept them at face value.

---

So, you reached a moment in your thinking where you’ve realized that you can’t make an evidence-based distinction between a natural cause and a supernatural cause. Great! Bravo. I commend you.

Except that rather than appropriately adjust your confidence level in your belief to match what you’ve just realized, which would be the rational thing to do, you’ve instead decided to grasp at a fallacy and conflate the two causes so you won’t have to. You were so close, man, lol. If all experiences are from God, then what is the difference between natural and supernatural? Which one is god?

I am not very comfortable with this natural/supernatural distinction. If everything is from God, then everything that happens through natural means has the same "godliness" as religious experiences, including those of major belief systems. Again, the only way to make a difference between a message or an experience that we usually call divine is to assess its content and see if it's worthy of divine source, that's it. There is nothing else. We don't need some mechanism connecting the natural to the supernatural, we just need to make sure revelations didn't come from the local environment.

---

I invite you to re-think this part of your statement.

Boru

Why? Should I allow for the possibility that a schizophrenic is capable of leading armies and convince military leaders that he is sent by God?

No. You need some way to demonstrate divinity as the cause. God either divinely spoke to someone, as you claim, or he didn’t. If you have no way of showing that he did, then neither you nor anyone else has good reason to believe that he did. You don’t get to use the details (“content” if you will) of a claim about a divinely inspired experience to prove the cause of the experience was divine inspiration. That’s question-begging as far as I can tell.

[vulcanlogician]

Well, healing and receiving a message are two different things, in general, it's not difficult to expose charlatans. Not the same can be said about sincere people who can or cannot be delusional.

It's extremely difficult to expose charlatans. It took 20th century technology that tapped into earpiece conversations to truly expose the depths of depravity in those claiming special endowments from God.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to mystics. (Read Neo and I's convo). I think that, sometimes, it can be reasonable for a person to accept their own mystical experience as true. But only true for themselves. They ought not inflict it on others or expect others to accept it as true. It's asinine to do that. And if you did that, you'd have to accept thousands of visions of Vishnu and Shiva that Hindus have had.

Camus has stated clearly the atheists argument for not accepting another person's mystical experience as true. I can't say it any better than she did.

[LadyForCamus]

Well, healing and receiving a message are two different things, in general, it's not difficult to expose charlatans. Not the same can be said about sincere people who can or cannot be delusional.

It's extremely difficult to expose charlatans. It took 20th century technology that tapped into earpiece conversations to truly expose the depths of depravity in those claiming special endowments from God.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to mystics. (Read Neo and I's convo). I think that, sometimes, it can be reasonable for a person to accept their own mystical experience as true. But only true for themselves. They ought not inflict it on others or expect others to accept it as true. It's asinine to do that. And if you did that, you'd have to accept thousands of visions of Vishnu and Shiva that Hindus have had.

Camus has stated clearly the atheists argument for not accepting another person's mystical experience as true. I can't say it any better than she did.

*kisses*

[R00tKiT]

No. You need some way to demonstrate divinity as the cause. God either divinely spoke to someone, as you claim, or he didn’t. If you have no way of showing that he did, then neither you nor anyone else has good reason to believe that he did. You don’t get to use the details (“content” if you will) of a claim about a divine experience to prove the cause of the experience was divine. That’s question-begging as far as I can tell.

Why is it circular? If these details contain material that is unlikely to be the product of the local environment, then these details couldn't have come from the individuals claiming they are prophets. If what's in the Qur'an couldn't have been compiled from the available knowledge back then, then the Qur'an must have come from some other source. 

Since we are presupposing God here, God either allowed this other source to deceive people and send a message under God's name -in this case the deity would't be benevolent, and thus it's useless to investigate about its existence -, or this source is God Himself.

[R00tKiT]

It's extremely difficult to expose charlatans. It took 20th century technology that tapped into earpiece conversations to truly expose the depths of depravity in those claiming special endowments from God.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to mystics. (Read Neo and I's convo). I think that, sometimes, it can be reasonable for a person to accept their own mystical experience as true. But only true for themselves. They ought not inflict it on others or expect others to accept it as true. It's asinine to do that. And if you did that, you'd have to accept thousands of visions of Vishnu and Shiva that Hindus have had.

Camus has stated clearly the atheists argument for not accepting another person's mystical experience as true. I can't say it any better than she did.

Can you give more concrete examples of the charlatans you're referring to above ? 

Charlatans in general are not expected to endure anything life-threatening caused by their claims, they're not prepared to give up their wealth, family members, etc. for their cause, which is something we know Muhmmad did since the onset of his prophetic career. This has no bearing of course on the truth of the claim, but at least it renders charlatanry very unlilkely.

You reference to he visions of Vishnu are not relevant here. We are capable, after all, of dismissing trivially wrong claims of divinity. Polytheism is inherently illogical. Monotheism seems logical and possibly unfalsifiable. But I don't know if unfalsifiable implies false. The criterion of falsifiability only applies to scientific theories about the observable universe, not to some metaphysical belief system.

[LadyForCamus]

No. You need some way to demonstrate divinity as the cause. God either divinely spoke to someone, as you claim, or he didn’t. If you have no way of showing that he did, then neither you nor anyone else has good reason to believe that he did. You don’t get to use the details (“content” if you will) of a claim about a divine experience to prove the cause of the experience was divine. That’s question-begging as far as I can tell.

Why is it circular? If these details contain material that is unlikely to be the product of the local environment, then these details couldn't have come from the local environment.

Can you give me an example?

[R00tKiT]

Why is it circular? If these details contain material that is unlikely to be the product of the local environment, then these details couldn't have come from the local environment.

Can you give me an example?

One good example would be the Qur'an's own account of some figures in the bible. The Qur'an says that the Egyptian Pharaoh(or the pharaoh of the Exodus) claimed divinity, this detail is really not mundane. The Pharaoh of the Exodus is mentioned in the old testament in various ways, but never as someone who claimed he was God.

Christian missionaries thought for centuries this was an historical error, and thought it was an obvious flaw in the Qur'an, until the recent decipherment of hieroglyphs revealed that ancient pharaohs actually claimed divinity, confirming Muhammad's description of the Pharaoh and surpassing the Bible's accounts which were the predominant and even the sole source of information about such historical figures.

More about this here : https://www.islamic-awareness.org/quran/...ngods.html

The Qur'an naming of Abraham's father is also another example of this. All this should be thought of in the context of the 7th century's Mecca, of course.