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Many of the world's religions are based on a book or text that adherents claim to have been written by or directly inspired by a god, perhaps omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. My question is whether there is anything, in principle, that could be written in a text that would convince a rational person that the text must have been written by a god, and in particular, that it could not have been written by a human being, even a very insightful one? |
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To convince me that a book is written by God, it will have to contain information only God could know, but which can still be verifiable by me. This is likely impossible. For example: A list of all major global future events of types that are not possible for anyone but god to influence, like a complete list of all volcano eruptions and earthquakes for several years, with magnitudes and death tolls is not enough. These events are not possible to influence, but a book from the future could record them, so this does not exclude time travelers. A detailed list of local weather changes everywhere I go for months would also be impossible to predict, and to control. Temperature to the centigrade, exactly when rain stops and starts, and thunder claps, recorded to the second. That excludes everything except somebody who secretly follows me around for months to record this, and then sends the book back from the future. Let us say that the book included things only I could know, such as private information about me and my thoughts. But that still doesn't exclude a cooperation between time travelers and a future me, and this is where it gets tricky. Lets say somebody has small technological insects that monitor me, and record everything I do, and everything that happens including major earth quakes and my local weather for years. They then compile a book of this, and cooperate with a future me that adds information only a future me would know and sends that book back. I do not see any way to put information in the book that a combination of a future me and these time hitech travelers would not know. Hence, I can not find anything to put in a book that only God could know that would still be verifiable by me. |
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Blaise Pascal, who I consider a rational agent, said:
Therefore, his view of the Christian scriptures is that a rational agent could reasonably believe or disbelieve the "proofs of our religion". This is also the view of Alvin Plantinga and it seems the authors of the Bible as well. Other religions, particularly Islam, believe that their scripture is self-validating:
Here's an example of the argument:
I don't have any particular evidence that people who believe these sorts of statements are not rational beings. My personal experience with people who make these claims is that they are rational. It would be unfair of me to claim they are irrational so that I can dismiss their claims as irrational. I believe that I am a rational agent. I believe the Christian scriptures were "breathed out by God", which doesn't quite mean they were written by God, but that they were directly inspired by him. This isn't really the time or place to defend that belief, but the basic outline looks like this: 1) The Bible, when it treats historical subjects, broadly reflects historical reality. 2) The historical events treated by the Bible, particularly in the life and death of Jesus, are strong evidence of a God not anticipated or invented by humanity. 3) History since the events of the Bible shows rational men and women clinging to their belief in the truth of the Bible even to the point of death. I don't expect anyone to be persuaded by this sort of argument (point #1 would probably be impossible to prove to someone who firmly rejects the Bible), but I would hope other rational agents could imagine how I might rationally be convinced of this. Update: To answer JDH's comment, there are essentially two questions that I see: the explicit and the implied. The answer to the explicit question seems to be "No". (Other answers bare that out, I believe.) For the Bible, at least, there's even an expectation that it will be seen as foolish:
That's a restatement of the first section above. But there is also an implied question: "If there's nothing that can written in a text that would convince a rational person that it was written by a god, can a rational person believe a text was written by a god?" It is a question of what Dr. Plantinga calls Warrant which loosely defined is that property that separates knowledge from belief. One might extrapolate that since evidence for god-inspired texts isn't absolutely convincing, that belief in god-inspired texts isn't warranted. I pointed out in the second section, that some do hold that some holy texts are self-validating, but you can't dismiss the claim out of hand. The specific evidence for the claim must be dealt with. It would be invalid to hold that people who believe a particular text is god-inspired can be written off as arational agents. I think the evidence for the Qur'an is a bit thin, but until I deal with it directly, I can't say that belief in its god-inspired status is unwarranted. That would be an invalid shortcut. The third section deals with my personal belief. I'd be happy to defend it1, but it would be time-consuming and of perhaps limited interest. Even though I feel the evidence is strong, I know that each step would be hotly contested and at the end of the day, my view would be rejected by some (and probably all who don't already agree with me). But the point is the evidence itself must be evaluated, not the person making the claim. Footnote:
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If it were written in a language not known by man on Earth but was easily comprehended despite not knowing or understanding the language by all. Such comprehension would be universal and the understanding of it consistant. The content should be such that it advances concepts previously unknown as any creation of an all powerful being is going to be for a purpose. Any demand that people not seek to understand or clarify would tend to steal credence for such demands are clearly signs of insecurity not of a creation of an all powerful being. |
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Abstractly you want an interaction between two parties that will show to the first one that the second one is God, i.e. an interactive proof by God for the verifier who is our rational person. Answer depends on what you mean by God (prover), what you mean by a rational person (verifier) and what you mean by convincing (what kind of interactions/proofs are allowed?). Let me explain. To show that a book is from God you need to show that the book could not be written by anyone else. This sentence has a universal quantification that can not be checked empirically, so we need to argue that logically. To do this we need to use what we know about God and argue that no one not satisfying those conditions could have written the book, or at least show that this is very unlikely. Most arguments would only show that the prover has certain properties, but this may not mean that the prover is really God, e.g. it does not rule out directly the possibility that it is written by an alien creature with super-human powers. Same with verifier, our rational person. What kind of actions that person can perform? What are his assumptions about the properties that God has? etc. The kind of interaction is also important. Sending a book or a written text is one possibility, but there can be more complicated interactions, e.g. other kind of miracles. A text by itself can be a miracle and theoretically a proof that the other party posses very high computational power that is unimaginable that a human can have (here we need to argue what are the capabilities of a human being). It is plausible that the prover is capable of solving a computationally undecidable problem, a problem that we know no computer can solve. But the verifier needs to be able to check the correctness of the proof. A more interesting case is for example a problem that does not have simple algorithms to find an answer but if given an answer the verifier can check its correctness (a.k.a. an NP-complete problem in computer science). If we repeat this process enough times we can be sure that the other party is capable of solving NP-complete problems very quickly, and if you believe in something like Extended Church-Turing thesis, then that should be very convincing. Interestingly the proof can be very personal and not intersubjective, i.e. God can convince you that a book is from him, but you cannot show this fact to any third party (this is what is called a Zero-Knowledge proof in computer science). I concentrated on the computational power of God, but one can use other capabilities of God that the verifier believes no one else is capable of like omniscience or omnipotence, e.g. if God raises mount Sinai over my head and I hear a voice that says Torah is from God a few thousands years ago, I would be convinced (though others might not since they believe that what they see and hear is not enough, it might be magic or something). Interaction can increase the possibility of a proof considerably, i.e. it is much easier to convince if there is a two-way communication, e.g. verifier asks questions or make requests and God answers them. A book can perform as a common knowledge between two parties. For example, if the book is very long and although contains an answer to a question, finding it might be impracticable. But the verifier can ask for a proof of say NP!=P and God would say look at page X of the book. This is probably going to be a much shorter communication than a full proof of P!=NP (you can interpret this as what some people consider signs from God which directs them to answers to their problems or questions). I again focused on computational power of a human, but if a verifier has other capabilities they can be used also, they don't need to be computational. The previous part deals with what is called authentication, it does not mean that the book has not been altered, i.e. its integrity. One last point. Most rationals have been heavily influenced by science and only accept arguments that look scientific and are intersubjective. Say a personal interaction with God which is not intersubjective and reproducible might not convince such persons. Also arguments which appeal to other capabilities of humans which science does not understand well at the moment, a poem or a picture or a natural even can have a very strong effect on a human, but because science does not certify it they would reject that as a reasonable argument. But it seems that the sender/author of books like Torah or Quran does not share their idea and values psychological and literatural effect more than a scientific argument, maybe it is because science changes too quickly too much, or probably he has a better understanding of how a human-being's mind works. Probably, these books should be analyzed from that perspective. |
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If I were aware of a book that had been "written" by a spiritual being and wanted to convince a rational person that the book was divinely written, I would tell/show them the following: First, we would have to agree that the book was not actually hand-written by the divine being, and that a human, who was able to communicate with the being, had transcribed the true author's meaning. Then, I would introduce the rational mind to the human being which had communication with the spiritual being so that we might gather evidence. If the human transcriber was unconscious and clearly on an ego-trip, then we would dismiss the case. If the human communicator was clear- headed and aware, then we would continue to look for clues. We would continue to be attentive and observant of the transcriber. We might look for whether the human transcriber has a political or moral agenda (and drop the case if so). Next, we would read the book. We would read the words and feel intuitively whether or not the words are beautiful. That is, the rational mind and I would take a moment to use our other facilities, that of intuition, to get a larger sense of the book. Then, we would discuss, in detail, the contents of the book. What is the book about? Is there a new archetype which is trying tell it's story? If so, what is the story it is trying to tell and does it help humans to understand the larger picture and answer questions like "Why are we here?". Do the words evoke fear and division (if so we dismiss the case)? By reading the words and talking with the human transcriber, the rational mind and I would hold an image of the divine being. We would discuss what this non-physical essense is trying to communicate and why. We might again use our transcendental ('right-brain') abilities to open ourselves up to the possibilty of having a conversation with the being ourselves. We might imagine asking the being questions and listening to the answers. If we succeed, we would discuss whether the words written by the transcriber accuately reftect the astral being's meaning. If we hold different images of the being, or hear words of hate or distress then we drop the case. If, after much discussion we feel a sense of the being and find the words as accurate as possible, then perhaps the rational mind will feel at ease knowing that a divine being "wrote" the book. |
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Assuming the rational agent has a brain, there should exist a state where the neurons and molecules are arranged in such a way that the agent believes that a book has been written by or directly inspired by a god. So, an intermediate translation of the original question is: "How can one change the brain of the rational agent so that the agent believes that a book had been written by or directly inspired by a god? The answer would be totally dependent on the rational agent. A brain operation could be enough. Chemicals might do it. Rational arguments may also work. I think this answers your question, but I assume what you're really looking for are the rational arguments that could convince such a rational agent to believe such a thing. If you could start out showing, with rational arguments, that things aren't always rational, I think that would be a good start. (ref the incompleteness theorem) |
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There seems to be an equivocation between "rational" and "believes only in things which are 'true.'" This is not at all what "rational" means:
Suppose someone offered you a billion dollars to believe that the moon was made out of cheese. It would be perfectly rational for you to start believing in the cheese-moon hypothesis, assuming you valued the billion dollars more than you valued the 'truth'. So what would it take for a rational agent to believe God wrote a book? Like everything else, the solution is large sums of money. A harder question to answer would revolve around defining 'truth'. We might suggest that to assert "X is true" means something like "it is useful for one to believe X". We could point to an increased sense of community among believers, for example, as evidence that belief in a divine being is useful and therefore true. This is a (poorly phrased version of a) tack that James took. And of course there's the nuclear option - denying the value of "truth". Consider the Knight of Faith. One of my favorie Kierkegaard lines:
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Nothing written in a book could convince anyone that it has been written by god. 3 reasons: Because any extraordinary written stuff could have been coincidentally written. A book with thousands (or more) of different ideas (not necessarily predictions) has a good chance that some of them could later be interpreted as real predictions or as ahead of its time impossible scientific discoveries. Because any book can be written randomly by a computer. A book is only a combination of limited letters (or symbols, ideogram etc. depending of the language) and any powerful machine can randomly create all possible books (if the book is not unlimited). So if you showed me a particular book and you told me it has been written by god, then I'd respond that a machine could have written this book or similarly that a human could have randomly created the book. The designer of the ideas in that book would then be chaos/chance/randomness which is far away from any god definition. Because we could live in a simulated reality in which any data could be produced by a super intelligent being in order to manipulate us. In this case, any extraordinary content displayed in the book (as predictions) could be explained as manipulations from the super-intelligent designers of this "matrix". |
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I think we are all touched by facts for which we hardly find an explanation that falls under our life and spiritual experience. For example, a very precise prediction of a very particular fact is often destabilising and indeed it is difficult to measure, even a posterior, what was the knowledge of those who wrote the book (possibly god) and hence what was the probability of the prediction to be right. That would make me think that a precise fact is not enough. Maybe I would find more significant an exact prediction of a complex system of precise facts. Also this happens every day in plays and I would need a prediction for natural uncontrollable system of very unlikely events. It might be difficult for god to make his way through prediction. Maybe I would be more convinced by two unexpected lines of insightful poetry changing abruptly the rest of my life. In the end, asking the question "what would it take from a book..." might show that you have not understood what religon and god was all about, I would not say I am much into religion, but from what I understood god is not to be found in books (that would be weird to think it can, and your question and the associated answers show it is indeed) these are to be found digging into your soul, aren't they ? books are finite, but the source of your spiritual life is infinite isn't it ? |
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The book itself would have to have the following properties:
While this wouldn't prove that the book was written by an omniscient, omnipotent being that created the universe, it would definitely prove that the book is not written by man. So it's written by a being that is at least godlike. An edit, based on muz's comment. It occurs to me that the questioner mentions "a god" as opposed to "God". In that case I suppose we could have many such books, and the best way for a rational person to be convinced that it was written by a god would be for the god to claim credit. For example, if there actually were an Athena and her powers and attributes were sufficient to demonstrate her godlike nature, then if she appeared on the Daily Show to promote her book, there wouldn't be a rational reason to doubt that she wrote it. My first answer is based on the assumption that the book itself has to be proof of the existence of the god in question. A further edit in response to sehe's comment. The properties I'm listing in my first answer are not properties of an intangible thing, or forces of nature like gravity. I'm saying that in order for a book to convince a rational person that it was written by a god, the book itself--the thing written on parchment, stone tablets, clay, or other media--would have to have those properties. I'm saying that if I wanted to read part of the Book, I would have to be able to reach out into thin air and conjure a copy of the Book, and that I couldn't conjure any other book. That's criteria 4. Criteria 3 means that whenever humans discuss the book, they agree. No exceptions, not even between teenagers and parents. The book is also a source of unlimited electrical power, because it can be conjured and burned indefinitely, but depending on the contents people might or might not do this. |
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If it were possible for a human to understand what was written in the book, then it would have to be possible for a human to have written it. So the only thing that should be able to convince a rational agent that it wasn't written by a human, would be something that no human can understand. That could be, for example, as robin suggested, an exact prediction of a complex system. Say the book contained a precise explanation of how to build a spaceship that could travel faster than light, including explanations of all the physics involved, none of which were known to anyone on Earth, and which took our brightest physicists and engineers years to grasp before the ship could actually be built. However, in that example the more likely explanation would be that the book was written by an alien civilisation more technologically advanced than ours. |
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I find this question somehow similar to this one: What should a rational person accept as a miracle? In such a way, I do believe that the answer goes pretty much in the same way: it all depends on what you define by "rational" and what you define by "God" (although... do'h, that's totally breaking your question apart). The point is that if a rational person would not accept God-inspired-books because it's just not "rational" to accept or because there are no direct proves for that, then you're defining being rational by being proof-based. Then, any proof of non-human inspiration could be the proof for God-inspired (but this may not be not actually correct) and the source of an inspiration can be definitely subjective. Pretty much in the same way as what do we consider a miracle and what do we consider extra-human-inspired, it is so subjectively accepted that there's no easy "rule" to define what's into it and what's not. |
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Although the future-humans-of-considerably-advanced-technology possibility raised by Lennart is indeed formidable, I think there is a fair leeway for a rational person to be convinced that a book having been written by some sort of omniscient/omnipotent entity is the best explanation currently available to them, and on that basis become convinced until further information should present itself.
For me, if a book described some sort of one-way function built into the physics of our universe, a Grand Unified Theory within which to thoroughly test said function, and a substantial set of predicted output from that function; combined with complete working instructions for a time machine in order to verify that the one-way-function changes its output under time travel; and then after verifying all this personally and traveling forward in time to the end of the universe to see that none of this technology is ever discovered by human beings (presumably the book instructs me to destroy the included knowledge after doing all this); then I would consider it highly rational to believe the book was likely written by some sort of omniscient/omnipotent entity (with respect to my universe at least) until or unless contrary information of some sort became available to me. Under the circumstances, it would be the best explanation currently available to me. |
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This is an amazing question. If we restrict ourselves to the contents of the book alone, i.e. we can think of the book as an actual, finite letters-on-paper object made of earthly materials, then wouldn't we surely find this book in the Library of babel? Generated simply by a permutation of all possible symbols, purely by chance? And if there was this book that "proved" god A, wouldn't we find a similar book that is able to prove a different god B? Now how can we know which one is correct one? By this argument, one can never be absolutely sure that any book was truly divine. A sufficiently well-written book could of course, I'm sure, trick the most rational people into believing in it, but we were talking about irrefutable proofs. If we allowed for qualities other than the text alone, Borges' Book of sand could probably be the best example of a truly divine book: The book that is all books! As you might have noticed, the question in general reminds me very much of the works of Jorge Luis Borges, who often explores concepts of books, god and revelation. For example
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I wonder if it would be possible to convince a truly rational person person about the existence of God at all (i.e. including not only books, but miracles and whatnot)? At the very least, it is impossible to differentiate between a supernatural agent having complete control over you and your surroundings, and a natural agent having the same control (some brain-in-a-vat situation), and the second needs less premises, and is thus favored by Occam's razor. The same is even more true for a book. Anything that can be understood (not to mention validated) by the quite limited humen intellect certainly would not require an infinite intellect to produce (assuming for the sake of the argument that the term "infinite intellect" even makes sense). A very powerful AI capable of simulating a huge number of human beings could, for example, produce every string which is short enough for a human to read in its lifetime, then simulate all the efforts humans could muster to validate such texts, and throw away those which the simulated humans would not find godlike, thereby producing a godlike text (if one exists at all) while not being God. On the other hand, it is not hard to imagine a book which could not have been written by a human being. One which asks you on the first page to get a coin and lists the results of your coin throws on the next few hundred pages would suffice. (It does not rule out time travellers, but then time travel has contradictions of its own.) If predicting future events is disallowed, then listing the solutions for all current hard problems of math, physics, biology etc. would still prove it was not written by a human. |
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Although hardly a religious person, I m sceptic of.. sceptics. Ridiculizing scriptures respected by millions is hardly a wise thing. Granted, religions are responsible for most wars and miseries, at least being a trigger for most geopolitical conflicts to date. However, could any sceptic reply, what would our society be with abiding to any ethical (supernaturally provided, for obvious reasons) framework? Would people ever abide to just "logic", "rationalism", "balancing nature on a scale"? Maybe our life would then be more misrable and catastrophic. What do you think? |
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No. I will hazard that rational individuals have little to no idea of the full capabilities of people in terms of insight. Consequently, it makes no sense to rule out that a book absolutely could not have every gotten written by a person or group of people. A text written by a supernatural god, by its very nature, rules out such a possibility, and thus makes no sense to any rational person. |
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I understand you want a holy book prove of existence of God. Is the God you want to prove a necessary God? Before you know how a holy book's hypothesis can prove a concept like God you need a proper description of God's nature. If God is something beyond proper description with any of the concepts or properties that we can employ, a being that defies comprehension, it cannot be clear to even the believer what he believes, or whether his pious belief has any content at all. There has been no unanimity in human conceptions of the divine. There is little evidence of common consent here. On what possible grounds can it be asserted that these seemingly radically different concepts are, at bottom, the same concept? If there is a same concept, what it would take for an idea of the divine not to share in that same concept? To a holy book's hypothesis to be a proof of God it must cohere with our other beliefs, the scientific theories. It would be necessary that a God hypothesis would not be superfluous to explain and understand better the workings the world we observe. The God hypothesis may be challenged if it make no contribution to the predictive success of actual science.The history of science gives us reasons to be wary of committing ourselves to the existence of the unobservables postulated to explain observable phenomena. Since there are many ontologically incompatible yet empirically equivalent Gods, some ‘principle of privilege’ is required if we are to think that a holy book's hypothesis that we can have under consideration will is the true hypothesis. How we can know that none of the other possible God's we have not considered until now is not better than the best that we have now? Obsolete Gods, which no longer have active adherents, are evidence that holy books are not so eternal. Of all holy book's possible proves, a deduction is the strategy that we would expect to be successful were there a necessary God. As there isn't a valid deduction of any non logical existence, we can conclude that there is no necessary God. |
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The question is unclear, because it is not clear what 'god' means. Assuming some common meanings of 'god' like 'mythological and religious figure with supernatural, mystical, or otherwise currently unexplainable capabilities', the book would have to be able to convey intimate knowledge of such capabilities, including perhaps how to perform alleged miracles or otherwise making it plausible that they are possible. However, there is a catch. It is well-known that when a civilization with very advanced technology encounters a society with a much lower technological development, the members of the latter might consider those of the first gods, especially if they are prone to superstition. But they would be wrong. A rational person will likely be aware of such examples from human history. If so, he or she would probably not believe that such a book was truly written by a god, as from this perspective it would be more reasonable to assume that the book had been written by the member of a technologically highly advanced society, where 'technology' is meant to be understood in a very broad sense. Hence, unless you think high technological advancement equals to being a god, nothing a book would say or predict ought to convince a rational person that it has been written by a god in the mystical or religious sense of the word. |
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Everyone seems to take certain knowledge of a proposition as meaning that it's negation must be logically impossible. As Wittgenstein argued if the negation of a proposition is logically impossible so also is that proposition, that is to say one is not really dealing with a proposition at all in such circumstances. To know x, not x must be logically possible or else there is no x to be known. It's logically possible a God planted fossils to test our faith. That doesn't mean we can't know he didn't. In fact it must be logically possible that he did before we can know he didn't. Would we say we can't know it's raining because it's logically possible millions of demons are spitting on us? |
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We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer: please explain why you're recommending it as a solution. Answers that don't explain anything will be deleted. See Good Subjective, Bad Subjective for more information. |
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I mention one reason. This reason is brought forward by Quran. Write something similar Now, if you (or anyone else) can write something similar, then screw God and be happy, because you have proved that the book is not by God. But if you (or anyone else) can't write a similar book, then ... |
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We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer: please explain why you're recommending it as a solution. Answers that don't explain anything will be deleted. See Good Subjective, Bad Subjective for more information. |
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Quran gives such a test of authenticity of authorship. Quran says in verse 82, Nissa chapter, Do they not study Quran (with care)? Had it been from other than Allah (God), they would surely have found therein much contradiction. Quran contains many logical arguments regarding the necessity of a creator and that the creator must be unique. This kind of logic in the Quran is a higher order logic. Quran does not ask for a blind faith. Quran wants the believers to examine the facts and then make a decision to accept or reject. So, my advice to you if you want to know, read Quran and make up your mind about who wrote the book. Here is my own experience. I consider my self a rational man of science and I earned my PhD in computer engineering. Every time I read Quran I get more convinced that Quran is not written by any human and Quran is the words of Allah, my creator. One such example of knowledge of the type you are looking for in the Quran is the statement of the Quran that everything is created in pairs which is only understood just recently when we discovered that elementary particles come in pairs which we call matter and antimatter. For instance, electron and positron pair. If Quran was from any source other than Allah (God) then we would find many logical contradictions. These contradictions could be internal between different parts of Quran or external with indisputable facts. For instance, many claimed that there are contradictions in Quran. For example, they cite that Quran states that ants talk to each other in the story of Prophet Solomon with ants( Ants chapter, verse 18). Just recently, scientists discovered in 2009 that ants "talk" to each other using sound produced by its abdomen. See this ABC News clip about the discovery. |
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