Argument from inconsistent revelations
Encyclopedia
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
exists because many theologians
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
and faith
Faith
Faith is confidence or trust in a person or thing, or a belief that is not based on proof. In religion, faith is a belief in a transcendent reality, a religious teacher, a set of teachings or a Supreme Being. Generally speaking, it is offered as a means by which the truth of the proposition,...
ful adherents have produced conflicting and mutually exclusive revelation
Revelation
In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, through active or passive communication with a supernatural or a divine entity...
s. The argument states that since a person not privy to revelation must either accept it or reject it based solely upon the authority of its proponent, and there is no way for a mere mortal to resolve these conflicting claims by investigation, it is prudent to reserve one's judgment
Weak agnosticism
Weak agnosticism is the assertion that, at present, there is not enough information to know whether any deities exist, but that such might become knowable. It is in contrast to strong agnosticism, which is the belief that the existence of any gods is completely unknowable to humanity...
.
It is also argued that it is difficult to accept the existence of any one God without personal revelation. Most arguments for the existence of God are not specific to any one religion and could be applied to many religions with near equal validity. Acceptance of any one religion thus requires a rejection of the others, and when faced with these competing claims in the absence of a personal revelation, it is argued that it is difficult to decide amongst them. Were a personal revelation to be granted to a nonbeliever, the same problem of confusion would develop in each new person the believer shares the revelation with.
Particular examples
ChristiansChristianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
believe that Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
is the savior of the world and the son of God
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
; Jews and Muslims
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
do not. Similarly, Muslims believe that the Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
was divinely authored, while Jews and Christians do not. There are many examples of such contrasting views, indeed, opposing fundamental beliefs (schisms
Schism (religion)
A schism , from Greek σχίσμα, skhísma , is a division between people, usually belonging to an organization or movement religious denomination. The word is most frequently applied to a break of communion between two sections of Christianity that were previously a single body, or to a division within...
) exist even within each major religion
Major religious groups
The world's principal religions and spiritual traditions may be classified into a small number of major groups, although this is by no means a uniform practice...
. Christianity, for example, has many subsets, not all of which are mutually compatible. Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
, with its conception of multiple deities being expressions of one Supreme God, is more open to the possibility that other religions might be 'correct' for their followers, but this same principle requires the rejection of the exclusivity demanded by each of the Abrahamic faiths.
Additionally, Faith-confirming events such as visions and miracles are reported within all faiths with regularity. A single deity associated with a single exclusive existing faith or sect would either have to have caused adherents to other faiths to have visionary or miraculous experiences which lead them to continue to reject the 'true' faith, or at least allowed some other agency to cause these same effects.
The problem does not arise in some theological models. In Deism
Deism
Deism in religious philosophy is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world, without the need for organized religion, can determine that the universe is the product of an all-powerful creator. According to deists, the creator does not intervene in human affairs or suspend the...
, it is believed that there is a God, but presumed that there are no divinely caused revelations or miracles at all, leaving reports of such to have natural explanations. In some forms of Pantheism
Pantheism
Pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek meaning "all" and the Greek meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of...
(where God is the Universe) and in Pandeism
Pandeism
Pandeism or Pan-Deism , is a term describing beliefs incorporating or mixing logically reconcilable elements of pantheism and deism Pandeism or Pan-Deism (from and meaning "God" in the sense of deism), is a term describing beliefs incorporating or mixing logically reconcilable elements of...
(where God has become the Universe), the appearance of many inconsistent divine revelations or miracles might simply result unintentionally from the divine nature of the Universe itself.
Mathematical description
If it were to be assumed that:- The existence of some god is certain,
- There is some number (n) of distinct, mutually exclusive interpretations of that god one could believe in,
- There is no way to tell which one, if any, were true a prioriPrior probabilityIn Bayesian statistical inference, a prior probability distribution, often called simply the prior, of an uncertain quantity p is the probability distribution that would express one's uncertainty about p before the "data"...
then the probability
Equiprobable
Equiprobability is a philosophical concept in probability theory that allows one to assign equal probabilities to outcomes when they are judged to be equipossible or to be "equally likely" in some sense...
of having chosen to practice the correct religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
(through upbringing or by making Pascal's Wager
Pascal's Wager
Pascal's Wager, also known as Pascal's Gambit, is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist Blaise Pascal that even if the existence of God could not be determined through reason, a rational person should wager as though God exists, because one living life...
) is . Therefore, if there exist more than two distinct faiths, the probability that a person who chooses to believe in either faith has chosen the correct one would be less than 1 in 2 (50% or ).
Since there are hundreds of religions in existence, some having thousands of sects with competing interpretations, the probability that a given person's religion should happen to be the one that is true (to the exclusion of all others) is diminishingly small.
Appearances
The argumentArgument
In philosophy and logic, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, or give evidence or reasons for accepting a particular conclusion.Argument may also refer to:-Mathematics and computer science:...
appears, among other places, in Voltaire's
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
Candide
Candide
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best ; Candide: or, The Optimist ; and Candide: or, Optimism...
and Philosophical Dictionary. It is also manifested in Denis Diderot's
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
statement that, whatever proofs are offered for the existence of God in Christianity or any other religion, "an Imam
Imam
An imam is an Islamic leadership position, often the worship leader of a mosque and the Muslim community. Similar to spiritual leaders, the imam is the one who leads Islamic worship services. More often, the community turns to the mosque imam if they have a religious question...
can reason the same way".
See also
- Chosen peopleChosen peopleThroughout history and even today various groups of people have considered themselves as chosen by a deity for some purpose such as to act as the deity's agent on earth. In monotheistic faiths, like Abrahamic religions, references to God are used in constructs such as "God's Chosen People"...
- Conflict thesisConflict thesisThe conflict thesis proposes an intrinsic intellectual conflict between religion and science. The original historical usage of the term denoted that the historical record indicates religion’s perpetual opposition to science. Later uses of the term denote religion’s epistemological opposition to...
- Continuity thesisContinuity thesisIn the history of ideas, the continuity thesis is the hypothesis that there was no radical discontinuity between the intellectual development of the Middle Ages and the developments in the Renaissance and early modern period. Thus the idea of an intellectual or scientific revolution following the...
- Internal consistency of the Bible
- Schism (religion)Schism (religion)A schism , from Greek σχίσμα, skhísma , is a division between people, usually belonging to an organization or movement religious denomination. The word is most frequently applied to a break of communion between two sections of Christianity that were previously a single body, or to a division within...