Here is a thought experiment for the likes of JP:
We know that you believe that the Torah was written by God.
Theoretically speaking, what evidence could you think of, that would prove to you, that the Torah, AS WE KNOW IT, was conceived of and written by men?
I ask myself the same question in reverse-- what would prove to me unequivocally that the Torah, as is, was written by God?
Proofs for me would be the at least one of the following:
1. God explicitly revealing himself nowadays, unequivocally, and telling us that he wrote it.
2. That nature would somehow transform itself, so that the "supernatural" miracles described in the Torah would be seen nowadays.
3. That we would be provided unequivocal evidence of life after death, soul, or whatever.
4. As an alternative to #3--that nature changed such that justice is preserved in this world.
(Notice that all of these things are conditions described by some commentators as Messianic times)
I purposely omit arguments from the documentary hypothesis, since theoretically a God would write the book however he wants-anachronisms and all. This thought experiment deals with the text as is.
What do you say, JP? What would convince you? Remember: the more spectacular the claim, the stronger the evidence must be.
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9 comments:
1. God explicitly revealing himself nowadays, unequivocally, and telling us that he wrote it.
Why bother? Read the end of Jeremiah where our ancestors, in the verge of fleeing from Israel to Egypt ask Jeremiah, an established prophet, what to do. He gives them God's answer and they say "Naw! You're lying!"
An appearance by God will not change anyone's mind. They'll declare it a fraud, a hallucination, etc.
2. That nature would somehow transform itself, so that the "supernatural" miracles described in the Torah would be seen nowadays.
This is unfair. Even in the time of the Torah, miracles like the ones you want to see were rare. Ignore the Midrash and just go with the straight text of the Bible. How many supernatural miracles can you come up with? Not that many.
3. That we would be provided unequivocal evidence of life after death, soul, or whatever.
A human can't unstand what it's like to be an insect or a fish and you want him to understand what it's like to be a disembodied completely spiritual being?
4. As an alternative to #3--that nature changed such that justice is preserved in this world.
But the system was set up to ensure justice between the two worlds. You want to change this?
It’s hard to say what would be solid proof of God. Personal revelation isn’t any good. If I started hearing voices, I’d worry that I’m becoming psychotic. Mass revelation isn’t much better, because it could be a mass hallucination, or even more likely with today’s technology, it could be faked.
If we recorded an event that violates the laws of nature as we now understand them, we would conclude that we were wrong and attempt to integrate that event into our understanding of how the universe works. We wouldn’t assume that it was “miraculous” unless we were already inclined to see it that way. At best, an isolated event that violated natural laws would be a mystery, and in the right context may provide circumstantial evidence for God. Still, even that seems a bit too much like an argument from ignorance.
Evidence for the existence of a soul is exceedingly unlikely. A soul is supposedly that thing which animates our bodies, the sense of self we all have that seems separate from the physical body. Neuropsychological research is building an ever-better case for that sense of self being an emergent property of our brains. The simplest illustration of this is the changes in personality and function that come with damage to the brain.
Evidence for life after death would be interesting, but how would you get it? A living person receiving a vision from someone who had passed away brings us back to hallucinations. Near-death experiences may imply an afterlife to those who believe, but it is more likely that the bright light described is a visual hallucination brought on when the visual cortex stops receiving data from the eyes, anoxia, or some other near-death related physical dysfunction. Mediums used to claim to be able to communicate with the dead, and we all know how reliable they were.
Four is an interesting one, and may be the most convincing, but even that one has problems. There are those who claim that God is always just, and therefore is something bad happens to someone they must have had it coming, even if they seem to be good and righteous. After all, we don’t know what sort of sins he may have committed in private. Similarly, when good things happen to bad people, it is a reward of the few righteous acts that they have performed.
A problem with proof of God is that God is basically an explanation for how the world works. The Divine exists at the edges of what we can explain, and God’s domain is ever shrinking as science pushes onward.
Even if once could prove God exists, that still leaves the problem of proving a particular religion is the right one. God could have solved all of this by handing down a religious text that truly seems divine: one that takes into account the entire world instead of a tiny corner of it, one that acknowledges all people, one that reveals knowledge far beyond what the people it was given to could have known, one that has a universal timeless morality…
Unfortunately, the chumash is none of those things.
Garnel- I set out to enumerate the conditions that would convince ME, I can't speak for others. In any area of knowledge there are always "skeptics", whatever the evidence. Fair or not, my conditions are not a demand on anybody, I am simply describing, that given my rational way of looking at things, these are the things that would convince me.
G3-- In presenting these conditions, I am trying to argue fairly. We cannot fault JP with unreasonably rejecting all possible evidence if we ourselves do the same thing. OK, I don't believe in TMS, but I would like to think that this is out of reason. It follows therefore, that I could conceivably be convinced otherwise. Otherwise my beliefs are just dogma, too.
Its a thought experiment. That's why it doesn't bother me if one of the conditions is "likely" or not. Of course, as Garnel pointed out, even if all of the conditions are fully met, there could still be "deniers", although they might be on the margins.
I agree that even if we describe God as being how the world works, he is not the same as the angry and jealous God of the Bible. If he unequivocally was, we would have to submit to him, however miserably.
I agree that there should be some way of proving God. The problem is that once you reject the supernatural as a likely explanation, if you experience a supernatural phenomenon you’re left doubting your own senses.
There’s a castle in Germany where there is an ink stain on a wall. The story goes that Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, was up late one night writing when the Devil appeared and started taunting him. Luther threw his ink pot at the Devil, who promptly disappeared, leaving the inkpot to shatter against the wall.
If you believe that there really is a Devil, then his appearing to Luther is a plausible explanation for Luther’s vision. If you assume that the supernatural doesn’t exist, then it’s obvious that Luther was hallucinating, possibly because he hadn’t had enough sleep.
I suppose it can be seen as the counterpart to the argument that fossils were put in the ground by God to fool us and/or test us by making us think the world is older than the chumash says it is. If God is your default explanation, physical evidence is suspect and explained away. If the physical world is your only reality, then supernatural experiences are explained away. We can take comfort in hallucinations being a fairly common and well-documented phenomena, while a trickster God planting false evidence of age is purely conjecture.
Experimentally proving God might work, but it’s too easy for believers to discount negative results. The ever-popular, “Who do you think you are? God doesn’t have to prove Himself to you!” works well enough. One can discount prayer studies by claiming that, of course praying to Jesus / Allah / Vishnu produced negative results! Now, if they had done the same study with a yeshiva full of yidishe kinderlash saying tehilim in the z’chus that ploni should have a refuah shleimah, THAT would have shown Hashem listens to our tefilos!
> I agree that even if we describe God as being how the world works, he is not the same as the angry and jealous God of the Bible.
That wasn’t really my point. What I meant was that in a world where people had no idea why anything happened, God (and gods) provided a framework for explaining natural phenomena. Why does it rain? God did it. Where do animals come from? God created them for man. What is a rainbow, and why does it appear after it rains? Its a symbol of God’s promise not to bring a world-wide flood again. What is lightning? A weapon God uses to punish those he’s angry with.
Now we know more, we no longer need God as an explanation, and He is constantly retreating to the fringes of our knowledge.
I think we can get into an ad absurdum argument about how we know what we know, what is reality, do our senses fools us, etc. But lets say that we accept our observations and the scientific method as a method of discovering truth. If we can make repeatable observations, come up with a theory to explain it, and make predictions, we accept this as "truth" in science. I'm not talking about a one time event witnessed by one person or a limited group of people.
So I can imagine a scenario whereby prayer could be tested, or reward and punishment, or even a supernatural phenomenon. Can it be repeated or reproduced? Is it verifiable by multiple and indepedent observers? Does our "God theory" explain what we see in the simplist fashion?
Under such conditions I would reluctantly have to admit that I was wrong.
Once a phenomenon is repeatable, predictable, and subject to rules it is no longer supernatural.
Still, if the majority of times the members of a particular large religious sect prayed, there were measurable results, that would be something.
"Once a phenomenon is repeatable, predictable, and subject to rules it is no longer supernatural."
Agreed. So in that sense, I use the term to describe things that we don't see now, but if things change we could observe them, then our framework would change.
What follows is that a "miracle" would not be enough, because we would redefine the laws of nature. The miracle would have to be clearly associated with the willful act of a god who identified itself and communicated with us.
An interesting post. I think for me a true prophecy would be enough to get me to re-think my ideas radically.
If someone were to shout from the rooftops that in less than a week a swarm of bees was going to plummet the city into darkness and pain for three days, and then it happened just that way, I'd be impressed.
As I have mentioned before, having my grandfather return for a sit-down after he's been dead for 25 years would qualify as something supernatural to me.
I think that politics is similar in this way-- that people are basically guilty of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance, and resist changing their ideas, even in the face of evidence. Think of a good right winger, like Newt Gingrich. What do you think could happen to change his mind to become a left winger? Or what would turn Barack Obama into a radical conservative?
I always find it interesting about human nature, that we all can look at the same "facts" and come to diametrically opposed conclusions.
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