ayjay on Snakes and Ladders:
There is no infallible means for discerning when a religious believer has been spoken to, directly and personally, by God. However, there is a reliable way to disconfirm such a claim. When a person demands that other people immediately accept that he has been spoken to by God, and treats with insult and contempt those who do not acknowledge his claim to unique revelation, then we can be sure that no genuine message has been received, and that the voice echoing in that person’s mind is not that of God but that of his own ego.
It’s a lovely thought, but suffers from the assumption that your God is good.
This speaks to the importance of objective observation. An objective observation is an observation that anyone equipped with the usual human senses and equipment generally agreed to be honest, that is, not fraudulent, can perform. When it’s objective, we can begin to consider how to measure it properly, and all the bugaboos that go along with that, because at least the bugaboos can be dealt with rationally.
God speaking to your pastor or, for that matter, the trembling dude sitting next to you, isn’t objective. Deciding if it’s the God dude or El Diablo might as well be done while shooting up some meth.
Scientists value objective findings, not subjective findings, although certainly there are certain subjective measurements occasionally, reluctantly, used. For example, measurements of pain are generally reported by patients on a 1-10 scale. This is necessarily subjective, but can be useful in a clinical setting.
But objective measurements are far more useful and trustworthy.
And that’s why private Divine communications, reported by the deeply religious, are not to be trusted. Nod politely and move on. You want that communication to be believed? Have the Divine write it into an hillside while being recorded doing so, because hoaxes are so easy to perform and so hard to detect. Especially now that famed debunker James Randi has passed away.
Or better yet, have the Divine come down and do an interview with Jake Tapper and Sean Hannity – simultaneously. Then we’ll be getting somewhere.
But trying to tell if some private Divine communication is happening or has happened is an exercise for the credulous and fools.
