How to select which supernatural to believe?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Yes, of course there has to be independent reasons for believing God exists.I said that prophets are the only way to know God's intentions/true religion/message. No religious experience of any kind can by itself establish God's existence.

There's an exception that unmines the initial premise. What about the prophet/prophetess themselves? By your logic they could not consider the God's revelation to them (a religious experience) as verification of God's existence. Ergo, why shouldn't anyone believe his or or her own religious experiences as equally, if not more valid than, the special revelation claims of others. Independent reasons, no?

One establishes God' existence first, then argues that He's benevolent, and finally shows that a particular religious experience of a prophet is most likely caused by God, as a result of his benevolence/his willingness to reveal his intentions. I don't know nor ever saw any other promising way to argue for theism from first principles.

And why do we need One True Prophet when we have been endowed by our Creator with the intelligence to recieve wisdom through a variety of theological speculations, mythology, and narratives, each according to the Light he or she is able to recieve and the latent wisdoms within each text?

[The Grand Nudger]

It would be troubling to many muslims to think that any number of other books..and..ostensibly, even books that have nothing to do with gods or everything to do with pagan gods, are just as potent and just as demonstrative of this god and it's existence as the one they believe to be uniquely endowed with that attribute.

He does have a point though. Just how does one argue for a personal and intervening god from first principles, so that one might claim it to be a reasonable belief if not based on evidence, based on that instead?

[The Architect Of Fate]

Benevolence isn't a reason to believe any being. Benevolence creatures can lie and have kind reasons for doing so. Also, how would one determine true Benevolence from merely the false belief in it or merely the deception of Benevolence?

[R00tKiT]

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.

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.

[Pat Mustard]

Yeah, sorry, that doesn't square with what I posted at the beginning of this thread.

Is the Donation of Constantine authentic (that is, written by Emperor Constantine), or, was it a later forgery?

Forgery, either 9th or 10th century, a part of one of the medaeval pope's fights with the German emperors for temporal control over Italy.

[Jehanne]

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.

And, so, Jim Jones was a Prophet?

[R00tKiT]

There's an exception that unmines the initial premise. What about the prophet/prophetess themselves? By your logic they could not consider the God's revelation to them (a religious experience) as verification of God's existence. Ergo, why shouldn't anyone believe his or or her own religious experiences as equally, if not more valid than, the special revelation claims of others. Independent reasons, no?

Again, who said the prophets considered their experience as a verification of God's existence? It was really awkward back then, a dozen of centuries ago, to deny or even doubt God's existence -and it still is, atheists just have more sophisticated excuses-. And this was true even for ordinary people. They needed guidance from God, not confirmation that He exists.

And why do we need One True Prophet when we have been endowed by our Creator with the intelligence to recieve wisdom through a variety of theological speculations, mythology, and narratives, each according to the Light he or she is able to recieve and the latent wisdoms within each text?

I don't remember having said there has to be one true prophet, Islam acknowledges thousands of true prophets of God, who preached the same essential message: submission to God, and only one God.

So if your question is why we need prophets in the first place, my answer would be : just look around, in this forum for example, literally everyone has some personal take on the core metaphysical questions : God, the afterlife, the soul, etc. Since these opinions are logically incompatible, at least 99% of them must be wrong. 

It's clear that people aren't that good at theological speculation, after all. I think you already know that philosophy and discussion of deep theological issues isn't for everyone, and even elite theologians or philosophers sometimes defend silly ideas. Surely, an omnibenevolent God wouldn't communicate His message through conflicting opinions of theologians that most people don't even understand. And let's not forget that modern literature in the philosophy of religion uses modal logic, bayesian probability, and sometimes set theory. It shouldn't be that tough to find adequate justification for belief in God, if there is any..? 

Compare that to the Islamic Prophet's or to Jesus's teachings, they are simple and straightforward, and they present an independent miracle for their prophethood (the miracle of the Qur'an in the case of Muhammad PBUH, and healing the blind and the lepers, or raising the dead in the case of Jesus PBUH).

[The Grand Nudger]

Strange, I never found it akward at all. Lemme check again. Your god is imaginary. Nope, still not awkward. Did you know that people have been saying that on record, for thousands of years? I bet they didn't find it any more awkward then than I do now..but it was definitely a whole lot more dangerous. You lot get pissy about it in a big murderous way.

As to sophisticated excuses....? I don't have any excuses for your imaginary god, or for my position on it, that's your ao..though I've never seen you offer a sophisticated one.

[arewethereyet]

Going back to the OP - I don't want to believe in sparkly vampires, I'd rather believe in the sexy, sinister ones.

[R00tKiT]

Strange, I never found it akward at all.  Lemme check again.  Your god is imaginary.  Nope, still not awkward.  Did you know that people have been saying that on record, for thousands of years?  I bet they didn't find it any more awkward then then I do now..but it was definitely a whole lot more dangerous.  You lot get pissy about it in a big murderous way.

As to sophisticated excuses....? I don't have any excuses for your imaginary god, or for my position on it, that's your ao..though I've never seen you offer a sophisticated one.

It's a matter of fact that atheism in its modern sense wasn't widespread -to put it charitably- in the West before the Renaissance, and it was almost nonexistent in the Islamic world. The East was probably the only portion in the world who explicitly endorsed godless philosophies/religions (Buddhism, Jainism, ..), and even in these religions one finds many figures of gods and supernatural entities. Among ancient greek philosophers, one frequently encounters the name Epicurus as an important thinker in the history of atheism, the problem is that the guy did maintain that the gods existed.

It was awkward indeed to not believe in God before Darwin. Like seriously, the appearance of design is an overwhelming indication of God's existence, and some famous atheists today acknowledge that if there were no theory of evolution, they would believe in God or the first mover (Sean Caroll said that verbatim in his debate with WLC). 
And it doesn't take a genius to figure out that evolution is actually irrelevant to God's existence, so Sean Caroll really should just believe in God, I guess.

So one might ask, what about the sincere atheists today? My personal take is that the corruption of christianity is the key reason for atheism in our era, here's why: people are naturally tilted to explain things teleologically and believe in a creator, but since deism is untenable because it's a hollow idea (you just believe an entity, that you know nothing about, exists), people turn to organized religion, and the leading organized religion happens to be christianity, which has many untenable beliefs like the Trinity/the Resurrection/the original sin, etc. And because of that, people reject belief altogether.