Argument from Inconsistent Revelations

The Argument from Inconsistent Revelations, also known as the Problem of Avoiding The Wrong Hell, is often used as an argument against the existence of God. It claims that the existence of God is unlikely because theologians and religious authorities throughout history have produced revelations and doctrines that are entirely incompatible and contradictory. 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.

For example, Christians believe that Christ is the savior of the world, Jews and Muslims do not. Jews believe they are the chosen people, Christians and Muslims do not. Muslims believe the Qur’an to be divinely inspired, Christians and Jews do not.

In addition, even denominations of the same religion often contradict one another. Some believe that God is one person, some don't. Some believe the Bible is inerrant, some don't. Some believe Christ is the Son of God, some don't.

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.

What are the odds?

In mathematical terms, if it were to be assumed that:

1. The existence of some god is certain,
2. There is some number (n) of distinct, mutually exclusive faiths one could believe in,
3. Each of these faiths has a corresponding Hell, and
4. There is no way to tell which one, if any, were true a priori (by reason alone, without empirical observations)

then the probability of having chosen to practice the correct religion (through upbringing or by making Pascal's Wager) cannot be greater than 1⁄n. Therefore, if there are only two distinct faiths, the probability that a person who chooses to believe in either faith has chosen the correct one is 1 in 2 (50% or 1⁄2). Four distinct faiths would result in the probability dropping to 1 in 4 (25% or 1⁄4), and so on.

In practice, there are hundreds of religions in existence, which gives a person less than a 1% chance that the true religion would be chosen. This is especially true if the choice between the religions is made on a random basis that does not take into account the number of members in each.

Conflicting Scriptures

The Argument from Inconsistent Revelations is based upon the many number of interpretations of holy texts and scripture. If scripture was revealed to man by God and God is infallible, then all revelations would be the same, inerrant text (notwithstanding necessary linguistic and, perhaps, cultural differences). But contradictions and vagaries still remain in the Bible and the holy texts of other religions. As a result, there are many different groups of people with many different interpretations.

Thus, God cannot exist in the sense that Christians claim, because his own writings betray his capacity for error. Either God is fallible, or humans wrote the Bible and God was not involved. Needless to say, Christians don't like either of those possibilities.

However, this problem is easily resolved by saying that not all of the revelations are true. Even theists agree that not all revelations are genuine. If one church claims that Christ possesses divine qualities and another claims that he does not, then they cannot both be true. If one church claims that Sunday is the Sabbath and another church claims that Saturday is the Sabbath, then they cannot both be true. Assuming there is a God, then the fact that different scriptures contradict each other is not an issue. It simply means that one must be true while others must be false.

The problem, then, is not whether or not God is fallible or whether He was, in fact, the author of the Bible or whatever other book of scripture. Those two issues are entirely irrelevant. The issue is that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to know which religion is the product of genuine revelation, assuming there is such a thing, and which is not. Even applying the reasoning above we may prove that one is true and one is false, but we cannot prove which is true and which is false.

Prove me now herewith...

So even though we can show that one religion, or a very small group of religions, must be true and all others false, we still do not have a way to discern which is the true religion, so we are still left with the arguments initial statement 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.

The two assumptions here are:

1. Not everyone can receive revelation, and
2. There is no way to resolve conflicting claims by investigation.

I can't speak for other religions, but neither of these apply to Christianity, so the argument fails.

First of all, not only is there a way to resolve these conflicting claims by ivestigation, but we are repeatedly invited by the Lord to do so. In both the Old and New Testaments, we are invited to test the word and judge it by the results we find. In the Old Testament, we have Malachi 3:10, in which the Lord says,

“Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”

Here, the Lord invites us to “prove”, or test, him, to see what results we may get from obedience to a commandment. Again, in the New Testament, the Lord repeats the invitation. John 7:17 says,

“If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.”

The Book of Mormon also echoes this important teaching. In Alma 32:27, we are told,

“But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.”

Even if we do not believe, even if we can do no more than desire to know, we are invited to experiment upon the word. The chapter goes on to compare faith to a seed which, after some effort on our part, will bear fruit, and by that fruit we may judge if the tree is good or if it needs to be cut down. This is generally claimed by Christians to be a repeatable test (over 300k new converts annually to the LDS church alone), and can predict future results (If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine...”).

This process may sound familiar to the scientifically inclined. After all, the process being described here is basically the scientific method. We are invited to ask a question (“Is X true?”), do background research and investigate, construct a hypothesis, test hypothesis by experimentation, analyze results and draw conclusion (“That was great!/That was terrible!”), return and report findings (“X is/is not true.”).

Personal Revelation

Second, everyone is capable of receiving revelation. From the Prophet of the Lord (1 Kings 19) to the most stubborn sinner (Acts 22, Alma 36), anybody can receive a divine witness necessary to discern truth. In fact, not only is it possible for anyone, but it is absolutely essential for everyone. In Christian doctrine, the Holy Ghost is often described as the source of faith. Jesus taught, in John 15:26,

"But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:"

In addition, Paul taught that the Gifts of the Spirit were given to everyone. He said, in 1 Cor 12:3,

"Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost."

Later in that same chapter, he includes faith in the list of gifts we receive through revelation. It would seem, then, that not only can everyone receive at least one type of revelation, but that receiving revelation (faith) is even required for salvation. Everyone capable of being saved (which is everyone) is capable of receiving revelation.

Incidentally, I'm aware of the difficulties surrounding Religious Experience as a credible source of information, but this post operates under the assumption that there is, in fact, a God who does, in fact, commune with mortals, and it operates under that assumption because it was a part of the original argument.

In other words, the argument is essentially, "If there is revelation, then why are they so inconsistent?" and the answer is, "Because not all of them are genuine, but if there is revelation, then it can be used to discern truth from fallacy."

In the last chapter of the Book of Mormon, we find the following promise,

"Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.

And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things."

Conclusion

So it turns out this isn't even an argument against the existence of God as much as it is a complaint that its difficult to find him. The fact that there are many false churches has nothing to do with the fact that one of them is true (which was assumed in the argument). Whether or not God actually exists is entirely irrelevant.

Also, even if this was a valid argument against God, the assumptions it contains make it inapplicable to a Christian God.

But if there's a God, why would he allow such confusion amongst His children?

The Argument from Poor Design

The Argument from Poor Design, also known as the Dysteleological Argument, or the Argument from Unintelligent Design, is an argument against the existence of God, and is a counter-argument to the Argument from Design. The Argument from Design claims that the order and structure of nature, and the universe, could not have come about randomly. There must have been some intelligence behind it. The Argument from Poor Design claims that there are many instances in nature of what seems to be poor are suboptimal design. If there was an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevalent being behind the design of, for example, the human body, then the human body would likely have a very different design, such as greater resistance to disease, etc.

The argument is similar to the Evidential Problem of Evil because it claims to show conflict between the alleged attributes of God and what we observe in the world. Consequently, many answers to the Evidential Problem of Evil may also be applied here.

The argument typically goes somewhat like:

1. An omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent creator God would create organisms that have optimal design.
2. Organisms have features that are suboptimal.
3. Therefore, God either did not create these organisms or is not omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent.

The conclusion here seems especially problematic for a Christian, Biblical God because it attacks the idea in two ways. It seems to be that he either did not actually create all things, which the Bible claims, or he is not omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevalent, which are attributes that the Bible, to varying degrees, claims he has. Either way, the Biblical God seems false.

Designed for What?

This argument makes an assumption regarding the end to which all things were created. Many instances cited as examples of poor design on the part of a Creator are so cited because they involve pain, suffering, or just unnecessary inconvenience. This makes the assumption that the human concept of “optimal design” is shared by God or, at very least, we understand what God had in mind when he created us.

While scripture does give us some indication of what God had in mind during the Creation, at no point does it indicate that pain and suffering would not be a part of it. In fact, the opposite is true. The hardships of this life are described as a necessity for our growth and development during mortality. Through trials and hardships, we allegedly learn patience, obedience to higher principles, persistence, hope, and how to be better people in general.

God uses pain and suffering, in some cases, to teach us to improve in the same way a father uses discipline in raising a child. Hebrew 12:6-8 describes this:

“6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?

8 But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.”

In general, children who are appropriately disciplined by parents turn out to be well-balanced and more tolerable individuals, whereas children who are never punished, but are given everything they want, turn out spoiled and, perhaps ironically, seem generally unhappy and dissatisfied with life.

If this is the case, then instances of suffering and hardship are not mistakes in the design, but rather, they are an essential part of it.

So if pain and suffering are an important part of our spiritual growth, then what about instances where no human growth is involved? For example, have you ever seen a Panda's thumb? It is quite possibly the poorest thumb in the animal kingdom. How do humans grow spiritually from a Panda's poorly designed thumb?

A Panda's Thumb?

Other examples in nature, which do not generally cause suffering or pain, but are nevertheless examples of poor design on the part of a Creator include the human appendix, the coccyx, wisdom teeth, unnecessary wings in flightless birds, and many others.

The idea being attacked by this part of the argument is the idea that animals, as they currently exist, exhibit poor design choices if they were created by some intelligence. However, this makes the assumption that God created said animals as they currently exist.

This idea, that animals appear today in the same form as when God created them is a part of what many refer to as Young-Earth Creationism. There are several variations of this ideology, but, in general, they promote the idea that the Earth, and perhaps the entire universe, is only six thousand years old, the Genesis account of Creation took place in six literal, 24-hour periods, and there is no such thing as evolution, at least when it comes to the origin of life.

The opposite of this idea is known as Old-Earth Creationism, which, in general, holds that God created the universe and Earth over a period of billions of years, references to each “day” in Genesis referred to eras or aeons rather than 24-hour periods, and that evolution was, plausibly, the mechanism used by God to create life.

The Argument from Poor Design assumes Young-Earth Creationism, so it automatically fails as an argument against Christianity in general, since it does not attack Christianity in general at all, but only a certain group within it. In other words, it is an argument against a Christian God that many Christians would actually agree with.

It fails against Old-Earth Creationism because if God does indeed use evolution as a tool than it would not only be entirely consistent, but even expected, to see wisdom teeth and inefficient thumbs in His creations. Evolution is a slow and gradual process, and so it would obviously be the case that we would see animals changing and adapting to a changing world in a way that produces vestigial members on their way to being obsolete and half-formed members being newly developed.

Insufficient Human Knowledge

Some things seem like they have no purpose because

the purpose they have is so specialized.

However, in many cases, though not all, it even fails as an argument against Young-Earth Creationism because it assumes that body parts, etc, that we deem vestigial or useless truly are. In some cases, this has also been shown to be false. For example, for many years it was believed that the human appendix served no purpose whatsoever, yet it has recently been discovered that it serves an important role in the development of fetuses and infants. Endocrine cells appear in the appendix of the human fetus at around the 11th week of development, which produce various biogenic amines and peptide hormones, compounds that assist with various biological control (homeostatic) mechanisms. In young adults, the appendix has some immune functions. Also, it was once thought that tonsils were useless, but in fact they have minor disease-preventing properties. In other words, insufficient human knowledge may make things that actually are useful seem useless.

Conclusion

This argument does not work because of the assumptions it makes. It assumes that pain and suffering were not a part of the original plan to begin with. It attacks only a part of Christianity and so it fails against it as a whole. It assumes that human knowledge of nature, biology and medicine is perfect. While it may show that certain doctrines, such as Young-Earth Creationism, are improbable, it also, ironically, lends strength to the idea that other doctrines, such as Old-Earth Creationism, are entirely consistant with what we observe in the world.

The Cosmological Argument

The Unmoved Mover

The Cosmological Argument is an argument for the existence of a First Cause (or instead, an Uncaused cause) to the universe, and by extension is often used as an argument for the existence of an "unconditioned" or "supreme" being, usually then identified as God. It is traditionally known as an argument from universal causation, an argument from first cause, the causal argument or the argument from existence.

The basic premise is that something caused the Universe to exist, and this First Cause must be God. It has been used by various theologians and philosophers over the centuries, from the ancient Greek Plato and Aristotle to the medieval St. Thomas Aquinas and beyond. It is also applied by the Spiritist doctrine as the main argument for the existence of God.

The First Cause

A version of the cosmological argument could be stated as follows:

1. Every finite and contingent being has a cause.
2. A causal loop cannot exist.
3. A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
4. Therefore, a First Cause (or something that is not an effect) must exist.

According to the argument, the existence of the Universe requires an explanation, and the creation of the Universe by a First Cause, generally assumed to be God, is that explanation.
In light of the Big Bang theory, a stylized version of argument has emerged (sometimes called the Kalam cosmological argument, the following form of which was set forth by William Lane Craig:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The Universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the Universe had a cause.

The idea that the universe has a cause is not often a point of contention here. We understand that something must have caused the change from Singularity to Big Bang. Nothing just is without a reason why it is. Everything that is has some adequate or sufficient reason why it is. This is the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Everything that comes into existence does so for a reason. The universe is a long chain of things that come into existence, with all of the links in the chain eventually connecting to the Universe itself, but does the universe as a whole have a cause? Is there a first cause, an uncaused cause, a transcendent cause of the whole chain of causes?

If not, then there is an infinite regress of causes, with no first link in the great cosmic chain, and the whole chain, no matter how long, would fall.

If so, then there is an eternal, necessary, independent, self-explanatory being with nothing above it, before it, or supporting it. It would have to explain itself as well as everything else, for if it needed something else as its explanation, its reason, its cause, then it would not be the first and uncaused cause.

Why must there be an uncaused cause? If there is no first cause, then the universe is like a railroad train moving without an engine. Each car's motion is explained proximately by the motion of the car in front of it: the caboose moves because the boxcar pulls it, the boxcar moves because the cattle car pulls it, et cetera. But there is no engine to pull the first car and the whole train. That would be impossible, of course. But that is what the universe is like if there is no first cause: impossible.

Peter Kreeft offers another analogy,

"Suppose I tell you there is a book that explains everything you want explained. You want that book very much. You ask me whether I have it. I say no, I have to get it from my wife. Does she have it? No, she has to get it from a neighbor. Does he have it? No, he has to get it from his teacher, who has to get it. . . et cetera, etcetera, ad infinitum. No one actually has the book. In that case, you will never get it. However long or short the chain of book borrowers may be, you will get the book only if someone actually has it and does not have to borrow it."

He goes on to explain,

"...existence is like that book. Existence is handed down the chain of causes, from cause to effect. If there is no first cause, no being who is eternal and self-sufficient, no being who has existence by his own nature and does not have to borrow it from someone else, then the gift of existence can never be passed down the chain to others, and no one will ever get it. But we did get it. We exist. We got the gift of existence from our causes, down the chain, and so did every actual being in the universe, from atoms to archangels. Therefore there must be a first cause of existence, a God."

In other words, dependent beings cannot cause themselves. They are dependent on their causes. If there is no independent being, then the whole chain of dependent beings is dependent on nothing and could not exist. But they do exist. Therefore there is an independent being.

Nature of the Cause

One objection to this argument, and probably the most obvious, is that while it does seem to show that there is a First Cause, it says nothing about that beings characteristics. This cause has an equal chance of being Jehovah as it does of being Zeus, Ra, Buddha, or the Pre-Big Bang Singularity. If there is such a necessary being, than that beings characteristics could conceivably be determined by other sources, but there is absolutely nothing in this argument regarding the nature of the First Cause, only that there must be one.

Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better.

Some object to the Cosmological Argument because any reasoning that can apply to God in this case may also be applied to the universe itself. For example, if it is admitted there must be a first uncaused cause of everything, why must that cause be God? Why can't it be the Singularity? Well, it can. As I've said, this argument makes no claim regarding what the cause was like, only that it must exist.

Who designed the designer?

It is sometimes argued (e.g., by Bertrand Russell) that there is a self-contradiction in the argument, for one of the premises is that everything needs a cause, but the conclusion is that there is something (God) which does not need a cause. This is actually based on a misunderstanding of the argument. It is never claimed that "everything" needs a cause, only that "everything which begins to exist" needs a cause. According to Christianity, there was never a point at which God began to exist. He has always existed and has no beginning. In other words, He needs no cause because he is not an effect.

Why can't there be an infinite regress?

Sometimes people wonder why there can't be an infinite chain of causes stretching off into eternity in both directions. Infinite regress is perfectly acceptable in mathematics: negative numbers go on to infinity just as positive numbers do. So why can't time be like the number series, with no highest number either negatively (no first in the past) or positively (no last in the future)? The answer is that real beings are not like numbers: they need causes, for the chain of real beings moves in one direction only, from past to future, and the future is caused by the past. Positive numbers are not caused by negative numbers.

However, there is, in fact, a parallel in the number series for a first cause: the number one. If there were no first positive integer, no unit one, there could be no subsequent addition of units. Two is two ones, three is three ones, and so on. If there were no first, there could be no second or third.

Conclusion

This argument fails in some ways, but succeeds in others. It does show that there must be some entity which simply always existed and has no cause. However, it does nothing to show that the Biblical God exists. Whether or not this Uncaused Cause is a personal, loving, eternal deity or an inanimate point of matter with infinite density and mass, but zero volume, depends entirely on the success or failure of other related arguments. One thing is sure though; whatever God is, it must exist.