quote:
Originally posted by yzend1:
Lets try to make this more specific:-
Apart from foretelling specific natural disasters what else would give it away that a book contained the word of God as opposed to human lies claiming to be the word of God.
LIST OF WHAT WOULD GIVE IT AWAY
1. Fortelling specific natural disasters
Why would God tell us about a specific natural disaster and do nothing about it? It doesn't make alot of sense to me.
2. Help, I've run out of ideas.
Would foretelling specific natural disasters give it away? After all, the technology of a sufficiently advanced extra-terrestrial intelligence would be indistinguishable to magic to us earthlings, so we'd have to discount this possibility first. (There is a corollary to this advanced by Michael Shermer, in that any sufficiently advanced intelligence (SAI) would be indistinguishable from God, which, if it holds (I think it does), implies that there is no way of telling whether any book is from God or from a potentially mischievious SAI).
And in any event, I don't think that being able to predict, say, a hurricane is any indication of Godhood, else we'd all be meteorologists
If we leave aside the SAI / God dilemma and aim for a book that could not possibly be written by a human being (including a future time traveller - but this might fall under SAI), then at the very least I would expect it to provide, in very clear terms, new technologies and ways of understanding the universe, which both agrees with and extends
significantly the total sum of our existing knowledge.
But thats just a first stab - it may flex upon cross-examination.
PE
eduted to add:
PS At a very minimum, I would expect the book to be coherent and internally consistent.
[This message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 01-08-2003]