1.1.5 Revelation and Reason

Version 1.3 March 2013                                (Previous Version)

Many people can accept the 4 theses reached in the previous 4 sections:

1.     There are no agreed methods to fully resolve philosophical issues;

2.     Rationality has its limits and does not provide ultimate answers;

3.     Our human nature – being caused or chaotic – blinds us to what is true;

4.     Yet we are compelled to act, even though our knowledge of the world is uncertain.

Some other people wish that there could be some other source of knowledge to provide guidance for our decisions, and conclude that we can only get the truth through revelation from God.  This kind of “revelation� is usually in some sacred texts, such as the Vedas, the Guru Granth Sahib, the Bible or the Koran. 

The revelations we consider are based on words and actions, now recorded in books or other media.  Some claim that the universe itself or a wordless spiritual experience is a revelation, but this is a strained use of the word.

If we choose one set of revelations over another we should be able to explain why.  Followers of a revelation usually claim theirs is the work of God – that God actually said the words or caused people to write them down.  The question is how do we know which sacred book came from God?

·       Why are the (Hindu) Vedas sacred but not (Sikhism’s) Guru Granth Sahib (or vice versa)?

·       Why is the (Jewish) Tanakh from God and not the (Christian) New Testament (or vice versa)?

·       Why is the (Muslim) Qur’ran the work of God and not the (Christian) Bible (or vice versa)?

And if we can decide that some revelation came from god, does it actually provide good and true guidelines for life, and is the revelation our primary source of knowledge and values?

Here we are not discussing whether God exists, but rather:

·       whether we can determine whether any revelation is true;

·       whether prophecies make a revelation more reliable as a guide to life;

·       whether we can trust in any godly revelation to be true and good;

·       whether revelation can be authorative on things we can't know about in any other way;

·       whether revelation is a good starting point for seeking a world view;

·       whether we can judge a revelation and still believe in revelation;

·       whether revelation is of any use at all.

After exploring the issues below, we come to the following conclusion.

1.1.5.1 Which Revelation

The main problem with accepting revelation is choosing which one.  Many of the world’s major religions involve different and contradictory revelations from God:

·       In Hinduism, some books of the Vedas are thought by some to be directly revealed.

·       In Sikhism, God reveals nam, the ultimate truth, in bani (words), written in their sacred text, the Granth Sahib, revealed over time to the ten Sikh gurus;

·       In Judaism, the first five books of the Tanakh (the sacred text that Christians call the “Old Testamentâ€�), is the Torah, which some believe was revealed to, and written by, Moses;

·       In Christianity, Jesus revealed the truth from God, and this is recorded in the sacred text, the Bible (the Old and New Testaments) which some Christians take as the literal word of God;

·       In Islam, the archangel Gabriel revealed God’s truth to Mohammed, and this is recorded in their sacred text the  Qur’an, which most Muslims take as the literal word of God, and many sayings and actions of the Prophet and his Companions are recorded in the Hadith;

·       In the Bahá'í faith, progressive revelation is a core teaching  that suggests that religious truth is revealed by God progressively and cyclically over time.

On the other hand some religions don’t have divine revelations, but other sources:

·        In Jainism, there is no revelation from god, but only the teaching of the Tirthankaras, rare teachers who escaped saṃsāra, the cycle of death and rebirth, on their own, such as Mahavira.

·       In Buddhism there is no god, but only the teachings of the Buddha and his followers, recorded in various texts such as the Pāli Canon of the Theravadan Buddhist tradition.

A person accepting our first four theses and looking to find a believable revelation needs to consider all of these revelations, and the multitude of ways of interpreting these revelations.  We need to work out whether there are any grounds for choosing one set of revelations above another.

Accidental Adoption

Most people in fact choose the revelations of their parents.  Most Hindus, Christians or Muslims are, respectively, the children of Hindus, Christians or Muslims, or grew up in a Hindu, Christian or Muslim society.  Most of us humans don't know much about religions other than our own.

Some choose alternative revelations explained to them by friends or acquaintances, or visiting gurus or televangelists.  Some Christians have become Muslims, and vice versa, because they met someone who explained the “new� revelation and it seemed to make sense, but most people make such choices in almost total ignorance of other religious or non-religious approaches to life.

Many people adopt a “revelation� in a time of emotional turmoil, when they don't know much about the world or religion, when they are young, poor, uneducated or oppressed.  Some of course can convert when there are no such pressures, but we must admit that there is often an irrational component to the adoption of a “revelation�.

 

1.1.5.2 Revelation and Prophecy

Some people believe that sacred texts, such as the Bible, contain prophecies – predictions of what will happen after they were revealed.  Some people believe there is evidence that these prophecies are being “fulfilled� – turning out to be true.  These people suggest that because science has no way of explaining such prophecies they must have been revealed by God.

When we look at these prophecies it turns out that they have been interpreted out of context, or what they supposedly has not actually happened, or the prediction was bound to come true anyway.

·       Supposed predictions about Jesus in the Old Testament have all been taken put of context.  They weren’t actually talking about Jesus at the time, and it's obvious that they weren’t.

·       Prophecies of the end of the world have been made many times, but none have come true.

·       A prophet who predicts earthquakes, volcanoes and storms isn’t any help.  We know these will continue to happen periodically, regardless of what people say or do.

·       Some predictions are so general that they are bound to be true at some stage.  It takes no special knowledge to predict that there will be wars and pestilence: these are common in history.

Even if we did find that there was some prophecy that was correctly interpreted and turned out to be true, if doesn’t follow that the prophecy came from God. 

·       It may have come from the Devil or another evil being – how can know whether it came from God or not?  For instance, the prophecies made by Nostradamus aren’t said to come from God.

·       It may have been just dumb luck.  There are hundreds of prophecies in the sacred texts, most of which we can show were false.  Some may have been true just by chance. 

The ability to predict one kind of event doesn’t necessarily mean you can predict another kind. 

·       Scientists can predict the paths of the Earth and the Moon around the Sun, but they can’t predict what I will have for breakfast tomorrow. 

The predictions actually made in the sacred texts, such as the Bible, are about the kinds of events that people at the time knew about.  No really new kinds of events were predicted.

·       Three thousand or three hundred years ago people knew about empires, wars, famines, plagues and so on, and predicted these kinds of events. 

·       In those times people didn’t know about atoms and molecules, bacteria and viruses, telephones and the internet, and none of these were prophesised. 

Surely a god trying to impress later generations with their ability to prophesise would have given us more persuasive examples than the actual prophecies that humans could generate at the time.

Even if some prophecies were true, it doesn’t follow that all the other statements in the book are good or true.  The ability to predict the future is not the same as the ability to give wise advice.

·       Scientists can predict that the Earth will be swallowed up by the sun (in about 4 billion years) and that our universe will eventually slow down, but do we believe them on moral issues?

·       If one prophet predicts the coming of another prophet, or that empires will rise and fall, does it follow that their assessment of homosexuality or what foods we should eat are more reliable?

1.1.5.3 Is the Revelation True and Good

We need to judge whether the revelation is true, and truly from God. 

·       If there are supernatural beings, then the revelation could come from an evil spirit, such as Satan or the Devil, who is motivated to mislead us. 

·       The revelation could also be a fabrication made up by a person, consciously or unconsciously, for good or evil reasons, because they are too self-confident, crazy, ignorant, or because they want to or show off, make themselves heroes, or benefit themselves.

There are four steps to do this and all of them are required before we can make an assessment.

1.     We look at the provenance of the revelation: who, when and where it came from, and how it got to us now.  Many revelations were supposedly revealed hundreds or thousands of years ago, were not written down until decades or centuries after the initial revelation, and have been manually transcribed, edited, embellished and translated many times.  When we look at a copy of the revelation today, we don't know how close it is to the original version. 

2.     We have to consider which interpretation of the revelation we will adopt.  Some people take every word as the literal truth.  Many treat some sections as allegories – not literally true in the scientific sense but inspired stories with a deeper lesson that is a deeper truth.  We need to work out which sections are allegorical, and which sections are literal.  And which sections are unbelievable!  Perhaps no parts of the revelation are to be taken literally, but that makes choosing the correct interpretation even more difficult.

The Bible never claims it is literally true.

The Qur’an explicitly says that some parts of it are allegorical, but does not tell us which parts (Sura 3 Verse 7).  Taking every verse of the Qur’an as the literal truth is contrary to the Qur’an.

3.     We compare the revelation with what we know to be true.  Our other sources of knowledge are science and history, clever friends, relatives and teachers, and our personal experience. 

We need to consider each revelation – the Vedas, the Granth Sahib, the Torah, the New Testament, and the Qur’an, and so on – and use the same criteria to assess them all (it would be hypocritical to do otherwise). 

4.     We compare the rules in the revelation to what we know to be good.  If the revelation requires us to do bad things, this it is a sign that it is not from a good god: it could be a flawed human invention or from the Devil.  We discuss this further in chapter 1.5.

What we discover is:

1.     The provenance for all revelations is unreliable. 

Most of the sacred texts were written down tens or hundreds of years after the events they are supposedly about.  For instance, in Christianity, the earliest Gospel about Jesus’ life was written about 70 years after Jesus, death, and it doesn’t mention his supposed Virgin Birth or his resurrection.  These were added in the other Gospels written even later by people who had never met Jesus.  The inconsistencies between the stories in the bible mean that ever word can't be literally true.  In fact we know very little about the life of Jesus or what he really said.

2.     The variety of possible interpretations and the wide range of interpretations actually followed leads us to doubt that there is a definitive interpretation. 

Some people claim that it is good that there is no single interpretation of a revelation, that this somehow avoids fanaticism and is more democratic, but what this view actually means is that we can choose the interpretation we prefer, based on other grounds, not the revelation itself. 

3.     If we can't use the revelation itself to determine which interpretation is best, then we must have other independent standards, so we don't need a revelation to know what the truth is.

4.     The revelations and sacred texts don't demonstrate that they are true.  

Many revelations are false.

The more we learn about science, the more we know that the creation stories in all religions are literally false.  As science learns more, those defending sacred texts have to say that more and more parts of the revelation can't be taken literally, but must be allegories. 

Some true “revelations� are trivial.

Sacred texts do contain some factual information that is true, but often this is just common sense, or we only know it is true because it has been verified by science and history.

5.     No revelations or sacred texts tell us the most basic information we humans needed to live better lives, such as the existence of atoms or germs or electricity.

6.     The revelations and sacred texts generally do include some good moral guidelines, to love one another and refrain from lying, murder and theft.  But as we say in Chapter 1.5, we don't need revelations to work out that these are good rules to follow, and as we show in Part 2 humans evolved to cooperate with each other as well as compete.

The revelations and sacred texts always include some bad, arbitrary, useless and even abhorrent moral injunctions.  Most religions have bad rules about sexual relationships and sexual behaviour, arbitrary and useless rules about the foods we should eat, and abhorrent rules that tolerate slavery and require us to kill others for stupid reasons:

·       According to the vow of Brahmacarya, for lay people, Jains must avoid sex even with their spouse, and must give up sex, if possible, after the marriage has yielded a son.

·       In Hinduism, Vedic Brahmins, Gaudiya Vaishnavas, tantriks and some Buddhist priests abstain from fungi (because they grow at night) and onions (they grow in winter).

·       In Judaism and Christianity, one of the Ten Commandments prohibits any work on the Sabbath, and anyone who does so must be put to death (Exodus Chapter 31 verse 15).

·       Some believe the Qur’an (Al-Tauah, Surah 9 verse 5) tells us to kill infidels “wherever you may find themâ€�, and that this means anywhere, anytime, for no other reason.

We go through the moral rules of the major religions in Part 4.

1.1.5.4 Is the Revelation Authoritative

No-one honestly suggests (except for ignorant parents and incompetent teachers) that we should believe someone simply because they occupy a position of authority – unless they are Catholics or some other religions.  We need to discuss how the authority is determined.

Revelation can also be treated as persuasion by ‘respect’: if some parts accord with the reality we know then maybe the other parts accord with the reality we don't know.  We need to examine if all the parts of the revelation we can test are valid.

Some people suggest that parts of their revelation can be shown to be reasonable and consistent with science and history, while other parts cannot.  They suggest these other parts are at least not inconsistent with science and history.  This is especially true if we take many sections, such as their stories about the creation of the world, as allegories, tales with a moral, not the literal truth.

This is how most of us treat an expert advisor.  If what we hear from an expert appears to make sense and is consistent with what we know from other sources, then we are more likely to believe them when they tell us something we don't know about.

In fact we can show that the parts of the sacred texts that we can check for their truth and goodness don't inspire us to believe the parts we can't check.

·       When ancient sacred texts discuss scientific matters they are usually wrong – science has learnt a lot in the last few hundred years.

·       When ancient sacred texts discuss moral issues they are usually obvious, in the sense that don't need sacred texts to work out good moral guidelines, or they are bad, because they cause unnecessary suffering.

Even if some parts of some sacred texts were true and good, it doesn’t follow that we should believe the other parts. 

·       Some of the people who wrote the sacred texts were clever and made some good points.  It is reasonable for us take these points to heart, provided we have used our own independent means to verify that they are indeed true and good.

·       Much of the religious writings that we can't check is about the fundamental nature of the world, God , the afterlife and souls, which we address in Chapters 1.2 (metaphysics), 1.3 (theology) and 1.4 (mind-body problem).

·       Accepting that some religious stories and insights are true and good doesn’t mean we have to accept the religion as whole.  We always have to face the problem of which revelation (if any) to believe, and which translation and interpretation to follow.

·       We may choose to listen to a stock broker giving advice about stock markets, but their expertise does not extend to medicine, morals or mental health.

1.1.5.5 Is it fair to punish non-believers?

If there are no independent criteria to prefer one revelation over another – whether it be the Tanakh, the Bible, the Qur’an or some other text – then choosing to follow a revelation would be, by definition, arbitrary and unreasonable – because it is not based on any independent criteria. 

There is consequently no justification for punishing non-believers – those who don't follow the same revelation – or apostates – those who stop believing in it.

It is similarly unfair to punish people for making reasonable criticisms of a revelation.

The grounds for choosing to follow a revelation are too slim to warrant such extreme behaviour.

This is a point well worth making, because in some countries, especially in the Muslim world, it is illegal under national or state law for a person born Muslim to reject Islam, to become an apostate.  In some societies still, or in some contemporary terrorist organisations, Muslims take the law into their own hands, and murder people they accuse of being unbelievers, blasphemers ot apostates.

But religious intolerance didn’t begin with Islam in the 7^th century CE.  The Romans persecuted Christians for the fist few centuries of Christianity.  Christians have persecuted each other as well as Jews throughout their history.  Religious wars, or wars where religion is a significant factor, have been fought throughout history, between Catholics and Protestants, Sunnis and Shiites, Christians and Muslims, Muslims and Hindus, as well as Christians against Mayans, Incans and the indigenous religions of native Americans, Africans, Australians ad Islanders.

In many countries, in the West and the Rest, blasphemy is still a crime: offenders are punished, perhaps jailed or killed, for openly criticising the local religious orthodoxy.

 

1.1.5.6 Is the Revelation a Good Starting Point

There are so many options available to us, different religions, non-religious approaches, and all the variations of each of these, that the choice is almost overwhelming.  We need to start somewhere.  We all need to assess our starting point, whether it be revelation or reason.

In these pages, we are suggesting that we should start by trying to be reasonable – to be able to explain why we adopt certain belief or choose certain values.  This reflects that we live in a world with other people and we may wish to be able to explain our views, especially to our children and those we care about.  This decision is initially a leap of faith that we can also explain and justify.

We address this issue when we discuss coherence in section 1.1.7 (Reasoning Techniques).  If we initially decide to be reasonable, when we examine all the other issues in philosophy, science, history and religion, we can reach conclusions and adopt values that are internally consistent and comprehensive, and they also, incidentally, accord with common sense notions of truth and justice.

Adopting “being reasonable� as a starting point is a fairly simple choice: it doesn’t initially imply anything else.  We need to work through a lot of issues to work out what is in fact reasonable.  This is the process we taken to work out this Reasonable Global Way.

On the other hand, an initial leap of faith to believe in some revelation becomes more and more difficult as we learn more.  Each revelation is different, so the ways in which problem arise in each of the world’s major traditional religions is examined in detail in Part 4 (Religion). 

Adopting a revelation as a starting point involves adopting a large set of complex statements and rules.  It looks as though the major issues are addressed in the revelation, so there is less working out for us to do.  Unfortunately, all the revelations of the traditional world religions are incomplete: they don't address key issues, and they don't seem to apply to the world as it is now.

All of them contain internal inconsistencies, statements that can't all be true or rules of behaviour that conflict.  Many sections of sacred texts, if taken literally, conflict with science and history.  It seems inconsistent for a competent and compassionate god to make their revelation so confusing.  Many rules, regarding food and sex seem to be arbitrary, useless or harmful.  While some moral guidelines may obviously be good, some seem to be more cruel than we would expect from a loving god.

The differences between revelations are so great that this is the first major hurdle in adopting one:

·       Which revelation shall we choose: the Vedas, Guru Granth Sahib, Tanakh, New Testament, Qur’an or yet another?  On what grounds can we accept one and reject the others?

·       Which version of the sacred text shall we use, which translation?  Do we use the King James version of the Bible or the Latin Vulgate version, the Noble Qur'an translation sponsored by the Saudi Arabian government or the original Arabic version? 

·       Which interpretations of the sacred text do we use: those of the Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox, or the American Episcopalian; those of Al Qaeda, the Sufis, the Shiites or Sunnis?

·       Which sections of the sacred text will we interpret literally, and which ones as allegories?  There are two inconsistent stories about the creation of the world in Genesis: which one shall we believe, or shall we treat both as allegorical and accept the scientific version?  The Qur’an itself says (in Sura 3 verse 7) that some of it is allegorical, but we need to decide which parts.

 

1.1.5.7 Can learning about revelation be bad?

Leaders of exclusive sects are well aware that when followers learn more, and understand the implications of their current beliefs, they are liable to change their minds.  It is for this reason that some religious sects discourage learning, and restrict access to the outside world. 

None of the leading world religions explicitly promote ignorance.  In fact they all seek the truth. 

So some religious leaders tell their followers that the truth can be obtained only in certain narrow ways – especially by reading the sacred texts.  They also tell their followers not to listen to “outsiders�, and in extreme cases, to shun them – avoid any serious interaction.  Many sect leaders say that contact with outsiders or with other teaching will lead to temptations that our weak wills will be unable to resist, and so we will fall from grace and suffer exclusion.

All these rules and behavioural control techniques are designed to keep the sect’s followers ignorant.

The exclusion of outside views also prevents the sect from examining some of its own flaws, and without such examination the flaws continue or get worse.  Isolated communities cannot learn and grow as well as connected communities.

Isolated communities, and other institutions that are thought to be above questioning, are also more prone to abuse their followers.  This happens not just in small weird cults (like Jonestown) but also in institutions of the major world religions, such as the Catholic Church, the Salvation Army and Buddhist monasteries.  (Abuse also happens in secular institutions that are, at the time, held, by some at least, to be above questioning, such as various hospitals and prisons, as well as detentions centres such as Guantanamo Bay and Australia’s refugee seekers held on Manus Island and Nauru.)

The fear of openness that many sect leaders have is, as explained above, inappropriate and self-serving.  It is also self-defeating, because followers will inevitable learn about the outside world, and if the sect fails to adapt it will fail.  Open religions allow and encourage criticism and analysis, and continue to be viable, though their message changes over time.  (See for instance Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism in India, the Jewish Reformed church, the Anglican Church in England and its sister organisation the Episcopalian Church in America (but perhaps not some Anglicans in Africa). 

Followers who can examine their beliefs will either leave or become stronger in their commitment.  The more informed core of followers remaining is surely more worth having than ignorant supplicants.

If we allow our followers to examine all our beliefs and values we are more likely to remove the flaws and hence more likely to approach the truth.  This is what happens in modern, open religions, as well as in philosophy and science.  This is what we promote as part of this Reasonable Global Way.

 

1.1.5.8 Can we judge God’s revelation?

We can't question whether we can judge god’s revelation without knowing it is in fact from God!

In the previous 7 sub-sections we have established that:

1.     Revelations differ between themselves: we can't adopt one randomly.

2.     Claims that prophecies prove the truth and goodness of revelations aren’t supportable.

3.     More generally, revelations can't be shown to be true and good.

4.     Revelations are not authorative: we know the sacred texts are wrong in many areas

5.     Because following a revelation is arbitrary, it isn't fair to punish non-believers or apostates.

6.     Revelations are not a good starting point for evaluating out world view.

7.     Learning about the implications of any revelation we are tempted to follow is a good thing.

Even if we had not established these points, if we still wish to choose revelation as the ultimate source of knowledge about the world, we still need to have some criteria to choose between the different revelations on offer.  We also need criteria to decide that the revelation we prefer is in fact true and good.  These two sets of criteria, whatever they may be, precede adopting the revelation.  They are the ultimate grounds for adopting the revelation.  So the revelation itself cannot, can never, be the ultimate source of knowledge about the world.

Yet it would be unreasonable to adopt some revelation over another without knowing why and without knowing that it was good.  We do not want to follow an evil spirit or do more harm than good.

So it seems inevitable that we have to, more or less reluctantly, make up our minds, without relying on revelation as an ultimate source of knowledge.

 

1.1.5.9 Is any Revelation Helpful at All?

The ultimate question is whether the revelation provides useful answers to our ultimate concerns.

We cannot justify choosing one set of revelations over another, and we certainly cannot justify a literal interpretation of any sacred text.  It turns out that attempts to do this are not coherent.

Many insights and stories in the sacred texts have inspired many people.  For instance,

·       The story, in the Bagavad Gita, of the warrior Arjuna and his charioteer Krishna as they face a battle discusses the path to devotion, selfless action and duty – although in this text one’s duty is defined by one’s class or caste – not human rights.

·       The story in the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), of Moses leading the Jewish people out of bondage in Egypt shows courage, fortitude, strength and commitment, although in this text we see the slaughter of innocents to achieve (worthy) political aims.

·       The parable, in the Christian Bible, of the Good Samaritan, who helped a stranger who had been mugged on the road is a laudable example of how we should care for our neighbours, although other parables from Jesus are not so laudable.

The supposed revelations in the sacred texts have been popular for millennia for good reason.  We need to sensibly assess each part of each sacred text, using our independent guides for what is true and good, to discover what we can learn from them.