Thursday, October 14, 2010

I have seen and heard the one true God!

Okay, this is a continuation on my previous post on the issues of miracles or personal religious experiences being evidence for the existence of a god. As I stated before, all alleged supernatural experiences that are used to prove that God exists are circular arguments since the person making such arguments has to already pressupose the theistic worldview, unless of course, they are omniscient and can rule out all possible natural causes.

Let's say, hypothetically, that Yahweh manifests himself to me. Not only does Yahweh clearly speak to me from a burning bush but he demonstrates to me his awesome power. And I'm not talking about watered down vague examples of God's power that most Christians refer to. Usually when Christians attest to how awesome God's power is, they are referring to events dealing with them going through hard times, someone recovering from an illness, or a person turning to the christian faith. As opposed to these insignificant examples, let's say that Yahweh literally (not metaphorically) causes an entire mountain to move from one location to another right before my eyes. And then, at my request, God causes all the mountains to disappear and causes brand new mountains to form. As proof that I am not hallucinating, I have hundreds of people who are witnessing AND recording such events. Then, God causes the earth to shake and causes the earth to start splitting in two. As a means of protecting us, he elevates us from the ground and keeps us suspended in mid air while he demolishes the ground beneath us. And then within seconds he repairs all the damage done and brings us back to the ground. Any type of supernatural act that we can think of, God does per our request. One person asks that all the fish, sharks, and whales be taken out of the ocean and suspended in mid air for us to see. Everyone of us marvels.

After all the miraculous events take place, God then tells us about who he is. He states that he infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient (characteristics of the theistic God). Now, have all these "miracles" provided evidence that this being possesses all the characteristics that he claims to have? Not at all. Of course, if there are theistic minded people in my group then they immediately will be convinced. It is, however, blantantly obvious that there is a higher being that has extraordinary powers. That point is clear. But it is not clear that this being created the cosmos, or is eternal, or has any of the omni -attributes. Any person in my group that says otherwise has to already presuppose theism.

How do we know that this "god" is even telling us the truth? How do we know that this "god" is not an highly evolved extraterrestrial that has technology so advanced that it is able to manipulate matter and energy in finite ways that it deems fit? How do we know that this being is even a person? It could just simply be a immaterial/spirit machine that is inherently programmed to interact with finite human beings in accordance to how those beings respond or act towards it. Without omniscience, we have no way of knowing or identifying the source of all the phenomena that we have witnessed. All we can know is that there is something that exists that is higher than us. Theism, based on my hypothetical scenario, cannot be established.

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