re yeah right in article mimsy umd edu mangoe cs umd edu charley wingate writes benedikt rosenau writes and what about that revelation thing charley if you re talking about this intellectual engagement of revelation well it s obviously a risk one takes ah now here is the core question let me suggest a scenario we will grant that a god exists and uses revelation to communicate with humans said revelation taking the form paraphrased from your own words this infinitely powerful deity grabs some poor schmuck makes him take dictation and then hides away for a few hundred years now there exists a human who has not personally experienced a revelation this person observes that not only do these revelations seem to contain elements that contradict rather strongly aspects of the observed world which is all this person has ever seen but there are many mutually contradictory claims of revelation now based on this can this person be blamed for concluding absent a personal revelation of their own that there is almost certainly nothing to this revelation thing i m not an objectivist so i m not particularly impressed with problems of conceptualization the problem in this case is at least as bad as that of trying to explain quantum mechanics and relativity in the terms of ordinary experience one can get some rough understanding but the language is from the perspective of ordinary phenomena inconsistent and from the perspective of what s being described rather inexact to be charitable an analogous situation supposedly obtains in metaphysics the problem is that the better descriptive language is not available absent this better language and absent observations in support of the claims of revelation can one be blamed for doubting the whole thing here is what i am driving at i have thought a long time about this i have come to the honest conclusion that if there is a deity it is nothing like the ones proposed by any religion that i am familiar with now if there does happen to be say a christian god will i be held accountable for such an honest mistake sincerely ray ingles ingles engin umich edu the meek can have the earth the rest of us are going to the stars robert a heinlein
