In a previous thread, anonymous poster "lurking in" asked the question, "So what evidence would convince you that God is real?"

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2218386,2218386#msg-2218386

This is much like a thread (another?) anonymous poster named “lurking in” asked a couple of years ago, here:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1968122

A lengthy (now-closed) discussion ensued in the latter thread, much of which I found interesting and informative, particularly the notion of the vast extent of evidence that would be required. In scientific terms, such a claim would require convergence, meaning independent lines of evidence all pointing in the same direction. For a discussion of that concept, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergence_of_evidence?wprov=sfsi1.

But lack of convergent validity is not the biggest problem for ethical monotheism. The problem is actually more fundamental than any specific line of evidence. There is a totally insurmountable epistemic barrier.

Ethical monotheism, or the belief that the universe is created and governed by a single higher power that governs through ethical principles, suffers from a fatal epistemological flaw that cannot be solved by appeal to scripture or prophets, or even more familiar forms of physical evidence.

If one assumes the veracity of prophets' claims to supernatural visitations (an unjustifiable assumption of course, but simply assuming arguendo), such supernatural visitations do not answer the question about the source of the supernatural communication, the nature of the supernatural visitor, or the nature of the universe.

Take Moses's burning bush as an example. Assuming Moses's bush really was on fire (which I might ascribe more to the likelihood of crabs than to God, but again, assuming arguendo), the bush said to Moses "I am God." Even if the bush really did say this to Moses, what assurance can we have that the bush is telling the truth? Maybe the bush was being voiced by Satan, or James Earl Jones, or someone named Chuck.

Next, Moses's bush says "I am good," and "I cannot lie." There are no external guarantees that these statements are true. One has to assume the veracity of the statements a priori in order to believe them when they are actually spoken. In other words, statements that serve as the proof of their own veracity are tautologies, or logical fallacies. Maybe Chuck the Burning Bush is lying to Moses when he says "I cannot lie." And how would Moses, or any of us, know the difference?

Further, Chuck Bush says to Moses "I am God and there is no other." Because we have no external epistemic mechanism for determining the veracity of Chuck's statements to Moses, we cannot take Chuck at his word when he describes the nature of the universe, including his statements that he is the only god out there. Maybe he's evil, maybe he's an alien, maybe there are many different gods passing around the microphone in a cosmic prank call, having a laugh at Moses, each pretending to be Chuck. Moses simply couldn't tell, and neither could we.

There are an infinite number of possible explanations for the (assumed for the sake of argument) supernatural visitations to prophets through the millenia, and the content of the supernatural messages does not solve the question of which possibility is more likely. Without Chuck giving Moses a methodology for discerning the veracity of Chuck's identity and character for truthfulness, nothing else contained in "divine revelation" can be taken as true.

And this problem does not resolve if the advanced being communicates with everyone simultaneously.

I am unaware of an appropriate epistemic mechanism Chuck could have provided, but that just might be my own lack of imagination. It certainly would have been much more helpful if Chuck had said "DNA. You don't understand it now, but you should look into it someday." But even then, such proofs would only speak to Chuck's knowledge and power, not his identity, absolute goodness, or character for unshakable truthfulness or integrity. Maybe an even better hint would have been if we had found lodged in our DNA coding that says "I am Chuck. Moses was right." I suspect even this would crumble under the same epistemic scrutiny, however.

As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Or for that matter, from the divine.

The point, ladies and gentlemen, is that it is really stupid to believe voices from the beyond, even if they really are there.

I’m sorry if you are a known poster. The name “lurking in” implies a lurker, someone who is not a frequent contributor making a one-off comment. See here: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lurker&amp=true&defid=204662

But if you are a known, frequent contributor, then I retract that statement.

Okay, no problem. I don't know how many on this board recognize me. But, if you click on my nickname on the message board main page where my "Evidence of God" thread is listed, you'll see I have over a thousand posts under the name "lurking in" going back three years, although I did just start posting again a few weeks ago after a hiatus during which I didn't post and was ... just lurking. (And that similar thread started by "lurking in" a couple of years ago was indeed started by me. I thought it would be interesting to ask the question again.)

:-)

Maybe Moses lied about the bush.

Or, is it possible somebody else lied about both Moses and the bush?

Yes, those are certainly more likely. My point is the impossibility of relying on such evidence even GRANTING its historical accuracy. That is, taking the evidence as true, it still proves nothing.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2019 03:33PM by resipsaloquitur.

I did not mean to dismiss the premise that you had clearly defined at the beginning of your post. I simply could not resist a simple application of Occam's Razor, despite your well-written point.

The existence, or non-existence, of God is an On Topic subject for this board.

The Jewish explanation(s) for the burning bush center around the intended MEANING of the burning bush, rather than whether or not there was an actual, three-dimensional, burning bush--or, alternatively, whether the biblically-cited "burning bush" is a symbol, or a metaphor, as a message "to," and about, the Jewish people.

https://www.ouisrael.org/torah-tidbits/the-burning-bush-symbol-of-jewish-suffering-and-survival/ [The first five paragraphs, after which the general Jewish explanation changes focus, into Jewish sectarian beliefs which are not more generally accepted throughout the Jewish people.]

As for the existence or non-existence of God: the "adult level" concept of God in Judaism is Ein Sof ("that which is boundless"), the same concept which is known in Hinduism as Brahman. ("Brahman" WITH the final "n"--"Brahma" is a different concept.)

In physics and mathematics, it is conceptualized as "infinity."

In pre-modern times, the intersecting, human beginning understandings of "infinity," "nothingness," etc. were personalized as entities or three-dimensional objects because there was no other way for most people to understand the concepts.

As human understanding evolved, so did the increasing ability of individual humans to conjure with concepts akin to "infinity" and "nothingness" [means: no-thing-ness, according to current Jewish understanding].



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2019 04:02PM by Tevai.

You’re describing a species of pantheism, which is mutually exclusive with ethical monotheism, the subject of this post.

resipsaloquitur Wrote:
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> You’re describing a species of pantheism, which
> is mutually exclusive with ethical monotheism, the
> subject of this post.

You are using a Jewish text, written by Jews, but you are using it inaccurately (according to Jewish understanding).

I don't know the precise definition of ethical monotheism, and I will look it up.

If the word "ethical" is removed from monotheism, then logically, infinity/"no-thing-ness" would be another way of expressing the concept "one"--or mono: "single."

The burning bush is not critical to my analysis. If you please, you may substitute in a visitation from Gabriel to Mohammed, or the Lady of Lourdes, or two personages whose brightness and glory defy all description appearing to a 14-year-old boy in upstate New York, or Athena aiding Odysseus. The content or metaphorical meaning of any of these apparitions is not my point. I’m talking about people who rely on supernatural visitations as evidence in support of ethical monotheism.

There’s also Benny Shanon’s theory that Moses made and drank ayahuasca. The burning bush scene would have had him tripping balls in the desert, having a conversation with a plant.

That’s not exactly a joke. Shamans use the brew to enter the world of plant consciousness. There’s a real possibility that the Torah was dictated by plants.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2019 04:13PM by babyloncansuckit.

I doubt that for a couple of reasons.

First, there is a tendency of most people today to presume that religious hallucinations require drugs. While drugs were, and are, sometimes used to induce ecstasy, there were many other ways to achieve that state, including meditation, self-torture, music, etc. Since meditation was a major part of Hebrew/Jewish practice, the presumption should probably be that that was how religious practitioners operated.

Second, there are multiple Talmuds and historically documented patterns of evolution. That suggests a process of discussion, debate, and reinterpretation rather than a drug-induced period of creativity.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> First, there is a tendency of most people today to
> presume that religious hallucinations require
> drugs. While drugs were, and are, sometimes used
> to induce ecstasy, there were many other ways to
> achieve that state, including meditation,
> self-torture, music, etc. Since meditation was a
> major part of Hebrew/Jewish practice, the
> presumption should probably be that that was how
> religious practitioners operated.

I agree with this, and (because of a Henry Abramson YouTube lecture on the woman who began Jewish schools for girls, an earthshaking idea during her lifetime) I would like to add: Walking in nature.

Not only did she "walk in nature" a great deal, throughout her growing up and throughout her adulthood, but this is (according to Dr. Abramson) a common theme amongst Jews who "spontaneously" are attracted to "higher level" and "mystical" Jewish studies.

This observation by Dr. Abramson had a tremendous impact on me, because where I grew up, I grew up "walking in nature" a relatively enormous amount of time, even back then.

We lived in an extremely safe environment, where the larger community I grew up in essentially functioned like a very large "family," and where the crime rate for felonies like kidnapping, rape, and murder was zero. (Well, there WAS the guy, just a bit up the hill, who murdered two wives in succession, but he wasn't interested in murdering anyone else, so it was safe for us kids who were growing up on the hill.)

I (and my sister, six years behind me) had total freedom to get up in the middle of the night, walk out of the door, walk all over "creation" (means: Woodland Hills), and so long as we were back in time for breakfast, all was well. Whenever things got "bad," I was out the door as soon as I could, and walking to "the highest hill" (a specific place; that was our family name for it). I walked "up," my sister (six years later) walked "down," to where the exteriors of movie sets used to be warehoused (now: the Motion Picture and Television Hospital and Country Home), and then back to our house on the hill.

I don't know what I would have grown into without those walks, but with them, I definitely grew up with a pronounced mystical outlook on life (which actually, on a very practical basis, helped when biology, geology, life zones and landforms, chemistry, and physics came into my school subjects--because of those endless numbers of walks, I could already think both extremely small, and extremely large). My sister had a similar (but not identical) experience in her growing up.

"Walking in nature" can be, in my opinion, a significantly important way to develop the parts of a given person's ability to comprehend reality, and to develop the ability to mentally joust with concepts regarding infinity, the multiverse, and realities which from range from the nearly incomprehensibly small, to the nearly incomprehensibly large....as well as the mystical innards (assuming they are actually "there") of spiritual thought, religion, and Earth and human history.

> Second, there are multiple Talmuds and
> historically documented patterns of evolution.
> That suggests a process of discussion, debate, and
> reinterpretation rather than a drug-induced period
> of creativity.

Yes. It is Monday today, which means it is Tuesday on the other side of the International Date Line, which means that I can say with 100% certainty that this continuing discussion, debate, and reinterpretation is going on at this very moment, in countless rooms and various learning institutions of one kind or another, all over this planet--and down the road into the future to come, some of those discussions going on today, as those learned arguments evolve, are going to be the basis of what is referred to in the years and centuries to come.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2019 06:06PM by Tevai.

I'm not sure human understanding "evolved." There were always really intelligent people who interpreted religious texts metaphorically, and even today a lot of people feel more comfortable with an encorporated deity.

Whenever religion gets too esoteric, there is a movement back towards literalism since it is hard to worship an inchoate principle.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Whenever religion gets too esoteric, there is a
> movement back towards literalism since it is hard
> to worship an inchoate principle.


Mormon polygamists are succeeding.

Mormonism: Judaism for dumb people. They’ll tell you how it really is.

"A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." --- From somebody who knew.

Also, lies are more fun to believe. The truth is boring.


Just because something is written down does not make it true. "For the Bible tells me so . . ." was written for suckers. It's all hearsay. Would I lie? Hahaha.

Forty days ole Moses is up on the Mt Sinai and this is the second time he is up there and then comes down with the 10 commandments on the stone tablets saying the finger of God did it, wink wink, and nobody notices that is more than enough time for Moses to do it himself with his hammer and chisel. Yeah. That't it.

Who saw the burning bush? Only Moses. Don't tell me his grape juice wasn't fermented. That Moses! Burning bushes, staffs turned into snakes, parting the Red Sea. Lots of tricks up those sleeves on that robe. Like to see how far he'd get if he pulled that crap today.

I guess when you are desperate for any evidence at all then the legend of the burning bush makes a nice life boat in the middle of the sea.


Even the Gerontocracy has wised up and quit with the milk and cookies with God claims and just witness to his name.

A thoughtful individual trying to burrow his/her way through this gets his/ her chain yanked by the individual who announces, "the spirit confirmed it is true."

These people pay their tithing and think the temples are holy.

A lengthy (now-closed) discussion ensued in the latter thread, much of which I found interesting and informative, particularly the notion of the vast extent of evidence that would be required. In scientific terms, such a claim would require convergence, meaning independent lines of evidence all pointing in the same direction.

COMMENT: Not so. In the first place, convergence, or E.O. Wilson's "Consilience," is a scientific ideal, not a requirement involving quantity or quality of evidence. Scientific disciplines often have their own rules or laws that are not reducible to physics. Psychology is a case in point. So, you cannot, right off the bat, require some standard for God that exceeds a scientific standard.
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But lack of convergent validity is not the biggest problem for ethical monotheism. The problem is actually more fundamental than any specific line of evidence. There is a totally insurmountable epistemic barrier.

COMMENT: Now you've got my attention.
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Ethical monotheism, or the belief that the universe is created and governed by a single higher power that governs through ethical principles, suffers from a fatal epistemological flaw that cannot be solved by appeal to scripture or prophets, or even more familiar forms of physical evidence.

COMMENT: No modern Christian theologian would claim that the existence of God, or epistemology of God (the requirements for knowledge of God) is, or must be, subject to either scripture, prophets, or physical evidence. The latter assumption is a non-starter, and begs the question for the existence of God. Scripture and prophets "reveal" God, or testify of God, but they are not evidence for God. The real epistemic test is subjective, mystical experience.
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If one assumes the veracity of prophets' claims to supernatural visitations (an unjustifiable assumption of course, but simply assuming arguendo), such supernatural visitations do not answer the question about the source of the supernatural communication, the nature of the supernatural visitor, or the nature of the universe.

COMMENT: Exactly my point. So what! God is ultimately revealed through the mystical or spiritual experience, which experience itself is the source. The fact that such a source is silent as to the nature of God, or the experience itself, means very little. After all, science relies upon consciousness, human intelligence, inspiration, creativity, mathematics, and natural law, the source of all of which is also completely unknown; other than through speculative "just-so" evolutionary stories.

________________________________________

Take Moses's burning bush as an example. Assuming Moses's bush really was on fire (which I might ascribe more to the likelihood of crabs than to God, but again, assuming arguendo), the bush said to Moses "I am God." Even if the bush really did say this to Moses, what assurance can we have that the bush is telling the truth? Maybe the bush was being voiced by Satan, or James Earl Jones, or someone named Chuck.

COMMENT: This is a horrible example. See comments of Tevai below.

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Next, Moses's bush says "I am good," and "I cannot lie." There are no external guarantees that these statements are true. One has to assume the veracity of the statements a priori in order to believe them when they are actually spoken. In other words, statements that serve as the proof of their own veracity are tautologies, or logical fallacies. Maybe Chuck the Burning Bush is lying to Moses when he says "I cannot lie." And how would Moses, or any of us, know the difference?

COMMENT: No theological or scriptural statement statement is offered by theologians as "proof" of its own veracity.

There are an infinite number of possible explanations for the (assumed for the sake of argument) supernatural visitations to prophets through the millenia, and the content of the supernatural messages does not solve the question of which possibility is more likely. Without Chuck giving Moses a methodology for discerning the veracity of Chuck's identity and character for truthfulness, nothing else contained in "divine revelation" can be taken as true.

COMMENT: Now you are backpedaling. The fact that there are alternative, non-spiritual, explanations for supernatural accounts in religious history, is beside the point. This is not a logically insurmountable "epistemic barrier" as was your original claim. It just means that on scientific grounds such claims are most likely false. Again, so what? The basis for religious faith is not science, or scientific evidence, it is the personal mystical or spiritual experience.
_______________________________________

And this problem does not resolve if the advanced being communicates with everyone simultaneously.

COMMENT: What problem? The epistemic problem? Well, arguably if vast numbers of people allude to the same, or similar mystical spiritual experience that confirms for them the divinity of Jesus, that carries more weight that one isolated prophet.
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I am unaware of an appropriate epistemic mechanism Chuck could have provided, but that just might be my own lack of imagination.

COMMENT: This is the most intelligent comment in your post! The epistemic mechanism of religion is revelation through mystic or spiritual experience. How that works, if at all, is certainly itself mysterious. But there is a lot of mystery in the world of science, so there is certainly room for this mystery as well, if one wants to believe in Christianity.

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As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Or for that matter, from the divine.

COMMENT: Yes, so take a lesson from this. What is mysterious for us today, may well be just a lack of imagination and appropriate technology. Why can't a Christian appeal to this quote. Revelation is a mystery, O.K., but so was electromagnetic radiation, which powers our wireless communications today.
______________________________________

The point, ladies and gentlemen, is that it is really stupid to believe voices from the beyond, even if they really are there.

COMMENT: How ironic a closing comment. I hear voices from beyond every time I answer my phone. I believe there are people somewhere out there trying to communicate with me. How stupid of me.

I’ve thought about responding to your arguments, but decided against it. Personal insults (“This is the most intelligent comment in your post!”) violate the principle of charity, which is foundational to rational engagement. You’ve shown yourself to be disinterested in collegial discussion, so it wouldn’t be productive to debate your points.

I apologize. You put a lot of thought into this post and I should have been more respectful. Note, however, that your reference to God as "Chuck" was also disrespectful, and belittling to believers.

In responding to the question, "So what evidence would convince you that God is real?" you proposed, "The problem is actually more fundamental than any specific line of evidence. There is a totally insurmountable epistemic barrier."

This suggests that there is something about belief in a traditional God that is *logically* ruled out by some philosophical argument related to epistemology (theory of knowledge); such that a consideration of evidence is not required to evaluate such beliefs. I find that these types of "slam-dunk" anti-religion arguments suspect, including your attempt here.

Why are we seeking God searching hither and yon when 'he' has been hiding within us all this time?

A hypothetical question of course.

But then...…



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxI7i-ycyG8

If god is within me then he is in every one of my atoms therefore I am god.

Thus every fart is precious... And so forth.

If God is inside me, he got there without my consent.













No means no, Jesus.

He didn’t ask Mary either.