The followers of pagan gods didn't take the position taken by Jews and Christians regarding God or religion. A pagan didn't claim that the god they were worshipping at any particular time was the only god, nor did they believe that all must worship that god and no other. That wouldn't occur to a pagan, nor was it the position of the Empire in pagan times. — Ciceronianus

Well, like I said, the God of Abraham is more "jealous" than the pagan gods, but you are inferring from this that Abrahamic religions necessarily impose their God/religion on everyone else, which is theologically and historically false, although there were certain circumstances in which forced conversions occurred.

and led Christians to kill Hypatia — Ciceronianus

Hypatia's death was largely politically motivated, as almost always holds in these cases. Religion and culture go hand in hand, and therefore political leaders have a vested interest in a unified religious/cultural landscape. The Roman executions of Christians were also politically motivated in this way.

See: Hypatia: Myths and History

So I don't know why you obsess on the fact that Craig does not embrace Catholic dogma. — Relativist

Me neither. This thread began without an OP and continued lackluster.

- :up: I think it's a fair thesis to say that theistic personalism derives from the univocity of Scotism. There is a rather good philosopher who leverages the analogy of being more broadly, Erich Przywara. You might be interested in him. John Betz and David Hart recently translated his Analogia Entis into English, but Betz also has a number of articles overviewing Przywara's position.

For Przywara the analogy of being was encapsulated at Lateran Council IV:

The doctrine of analogia entis was given classic and authoritative formula-
tion by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 (cap. 2): Inter creatorem et crea-
turam non potest tanta similitudo notari, quin inter eos major sit dissimili-
tudo notanda. — Przywara's Analogia Entis, by James Collins

• "between the Creator and the creature so great a likeness cannot be noted without the necessity of noting a greater dissimilarity between them" (Denzinger 432)
• "One cannot note any similarity between Creator and creature, however great, without being compelled to note an even greater dissimilarity between them." (Stephen Webb)

- I don't think either of the two are very good philosophers in general, but I think Harris trounced O'Connor in this discussion. If you watch from about 1:20:00-1:30:00 they get into the thing you are talking about, and O'Connor falls into sophistries typical of skeptics.

I thought Sam Harris did a good job arguing for morality as a form of well-being, along the same lines as this thread:

You don't need to change the text of the Constitution to change the meaning and religions do the same with their documents. — Hanover

I would be wary of pushing this too far, and doesn't this just end up in the Originalism debate?

Even if we say that all rules are malleable, it will remain true that some rules and some traditions are much more malleable than others. Further, when the recipe calls for divine revelation the dish will be a great deal less malleable.

@Hanover, do you follow Reform Judaism?

But suppose that dogma is true. — BillMcEnaney

This is the question that you continue to beg.

Specifically as to a comparison with the Abrahamic religions, I refer to the tolerance of other religious traditions in the ancient Mediterranean before and while Christians began stamping them out. Members of the Mithras cult, or that of Isis or Cybele, for example, weren't prohibited from worshipping other gods or becoming initiates of other mysteries. Rome was generally tolerant of all forms of worship provided they weren't believed to be a danger to its rule. It didn't require that all people within its empire worship Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Jews were considered peculiar, but were allowed to worship their peevish god and avoid the homage demanded by the Roman state as they wished until they revolted against Roman rule and were ruthlessly repressed or exterminated.

The so-called persecutions of Christians have been wildly exaggerated, and were in response to actions, or we might say omissions, of believers deemed to be threats and a rejection of the Roman state, e.g. the refusal of military service or refusal to make an offering generally in form of incense to the well-being of Rome or the reigning Emperor, a problem pagan believers didn't have as they weren't intolerant — Ciceronianus

Well I'd say you are omitting the fact that the Christians, once separated from Judaism, were no longer allowed to "avoid the homage demanded by the Roman state," and this is one reason the relations between Christianity and paganism became complicated (relations between Christianity and Judaism had already become complicated).

It is strange to note the execution of Christians, and then claim that the Christians were executed because they were intolerant, not being willing to venerate pagan gods. "We had to kill them because they intolerantly refused to worship our god and/or emperor." This argument will always fail for a modern mind. It would be like saying, "We had to burn the heretic at the stake because they intolerantly refused to accept Christian dogma." This is backwards.

I will concede that you make a fair argument for the relative intolerance of the Abrahamic religions and their "jealous God." On the other hand, the central cultural dogmas are always non-negotiable, and historically culture and religion go hand in hand. Later Christian cultures very often permitted a latitude that was comparable to the earlier pagan cultures. To a lesser extent this was also true of Islam. But I will concede that pagan gods are less jealous, and therefore there is a sense in which paganism is more tolerant.

- No, that's fair. I don't have any strong objections to the arguments you have offered. I think they are reasonable. I think the difficulty is related to what said, for you are trying to salvage and pacify an exchange between Banno and Hanover that became polemical. That's a tall task.

But even the Pharisees and their intellectual descendants, the Rabbis of the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods would have more-or-less accepted the plain meaning of this text... — schopenhauer1

So on the one hand I think there is a bit of begging the question with respect to the "plain meaning of the text." On the other hand, I think you are correct that obedience is central to the text, as I've noted above. I'm not quite sure what you and @Hanover are disagreeing on. Again, I think Hanover was disagreeing with Banno, and I think Banno's posts have created a thread context where Hanover is suspicious of your claims.

Relativist, Dr. Craig believes that God is simple. But he rejects the absolute divine simplicity that Catholics must believe in. For us, the doctrine about absolute divine simplicity is a dogma. — BillMcEnaney

Arguing from Catholic dogma does not work against non-Catholics, and it does not work on a philosophy forum. Instead of appealing to Catholic dogma, what you need to do is address Craig's arguments:

See the discussion between Bishop Robert Barron and William Lane Craig on divine simplicity. In his response Craig explicitly targets the Thomistic view: Symposium Part 1 - Divine Simplicity. Craig's rejection of divine simplicity is apparently well-known. — Leontiskos

It seems as though, with our one example of this situation on this forum, one has to be willing to see contradictions before one is able to see contradictions. Our one test example on the forum, when faced with the contradiction, can just will themselves out of seeing it — flannel jesus

Yes, "bumping up against" involves noticing. Note that you asked how someone could discover they are bad at reasoning. They could do so by noticing contradictions in their own thought. This doesn't mean that they are guaranteed to notice contradictions in their own thought, or that there is a method which provides such a guarantee.

So what is this debate about? That was the question at hand.. Is this about obedience? — schopenhauer1

Banno began the debate and set the tone, making claims such as, "Faith [...] is obedience even to committing abominations" (). His thesis goes far beyond the simple idea that the text lauds Abraham's obedience.

Speaking for myself, the problem with @Banno's interpretation is the claim that the text is referencing what Abraham would view as an unequivocal abomination. Banno is saying something like, "This teaches us that we should obey even to the point of violating our conscience and engaging in things we hold to be pure evil." In light of the historical period this interpretation fails, for in Abraham's age and setting child sacrifice was not uncommon. Child sacrifice does figure in the text and its reception, but the more prominent aspect of this sacrifice is God's promise to Abraham and Isaac's status given Sarah's advanced age. Obedience is a central part of the text, but not in the way Banno claims.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshat — schopenhauer1

"Peshat interpretations also note the importance of context, both historical and literary."

I think the point here is that the literal meaning of a text isn't necessarily what an uneducated atheist takes away after reading a translation a few thousand years later.

Now, I do think the text lauds Abraham's obedience. That is part of the meaning. I'm not convinced that @Hanover was disagreeing with this.

Where do the Abrahamic religions fall in your genealogy of modern tolerance? — Leontiskos

I'm uncertain what you mean by this. — Ciceronianus

Where does your virtue of tolerance come from? The American Revolution? The French? Romanticism? The Enlightenment? The humanist revival? Christendom? The Roman Empire? Greek philosophy? The Hebrew scriptures?

This would be like you citing a Georgia statute and refusing to consider any other statute, federal authority, prior judicial interpretation, or any constitution, and your insisting your interpretation was correct because the literal text says what it says. — Hanover

Exactly right. It doesn't bother me much that modern atheists balk at the binding of Isaac, but modern atheism does seem to be the flip side of Christian fundamentalism. In each case the text is just a prop for some ulterior end.

Meaning is use.

So, if you wish to know what people mean when they speak, you'll have to endure their translations. They speak a different language than you. — Hanover

:smile:

Thank you Rabbi Banno for that comprehensive and contextualized analysis. Thousands of pages and hundreds of years of interpretation crystallized. — Hanover

An ad hom already. That was quick, even for you. — Banno

How could you construe that as an ad hominem? :chin:

- Makes sense. One aspect of this has traditionally been called natural theology. In the West we do seem to have a difficult time distinguishing natural religion from revealed religion.

Differentiates syncretism (which he likes) from perennialism (which he doesn’t). Describes John Hick as a ‘well-meaning syncretist thinker, not a perennialist’. Sees value in syncretism and says the different faiths complement each other (as did I). — Wayfarer

Interesting. I actually think that is a helpful video for showing why Hart does not follow Hick. I am not familiar with the term "perennialism" as Hart and @Tom Storm are using it, but when Hart here says that Hick was not a perennialist he is more or less saying that Hick is not a proponent of a "cult" (in the pejorative sense). Of course this is true. (Hart's adjective "well-meaning" is a clue that he does not agree with Hick. It's hard to say why the interviewer inserted Hick into this topic. Hart assumes that the interviewer is under the impression that Hick was a "perennialist.")

Some quotes from the video:

That whole tradition [of perennialism] can be tossed in the waste basket.

I am much more interested in... Not trying to deny what differentiates [religious traditions] from one another, and not being afraid to discover what unites them to one another. — David Bentley Hart

Throughout this video Hart is doing something that Hick's thesis does not allow Hick to do. Hart is making value judgments between different religious traditions. As I understand it, Hick is committed to a kind of non-hierarchical religious landscape. All religions are differently interpreting the self-same divine reality, and no one interpretation is better than another. To begin placing religious traditions within a hierarchy would be to begin slipping away from pluralism (and this would require knowledge of the noumenal).

Hart's vision is hierarchical, as is the vision of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism in their traditional forms. I actually think most religions are hierarchical in the sense of believing that some religious expressions are better and truer than others, with the possible exception of something like Hinduism.

It has been many years since I visited the debates that resulted from Hick's thesis, and obviously Hick does try to respond to some of these fundamental objections. But in cases such as this I don't think counterarguments will succeed. Hick is either a pluralist or else he is committed to religious hierarchy. He can't be both, as these are opposed poles of meta-religious thinking. As many have noted, Hick's trajectory must be understood in terms of a reaction against the exclusivist fundamentalism of his youth.

To be clear, the problem in these debates is a false dichotomy: pluralism or exclusivism. This dichotomy was broken down explicitly at the Catholic Second Vatican Council, but it was surely present before the Council in various religious traditions. What the Council proposed (in Lumen Gentium #8 & #16) was a form of religious hierarchy, where both disjuncts of the dichotomy are avoided: it is not that all religions are equally true (pluralism), nor that one religion is true and all others are false (exclusivism). Instead there obtains a hierarchy of religious truth and value.*

* I am aware that this idea is hard for secular folks to countenance, lol. Regardless, in truth I believe the secular mind also ranks religions.

- Yes, and I would emphasize that Hart is not Hick, but it would be interesting to try to find a passage where Hart opines on Hick.

- As far as I know, Hart does not hold that all religions worship the one infinite source. He certainly does not believe that all religious adherents worship the one infinite source. Hart's pluralism is therefore "localized" ().

Is he also falling into Hick's 'barren relativism'? — Wayfarer

I'm not sure who you are quoting, but I just explained why I do not think Hick is a relativist ().

Whether there is one or more ‘sacreds’ is kind of a silly question, which is also the point. — Wayfarer

It seems to me that if there is only one "sacred" then everyone must be worshipping the same god; the phenomenal elements of each religion each derive from one and the same noumenal reality. Metaphysical polytheism is logically incompatible with Hick's theory, no?

- Now we seem to be entering flat-earther territory, and that's where I get off the train.

Either way, yes, I would be inclined to say that there is a natural explanation for it; whatever it may be; for we there have been many examples similar to this that were explained naturalistically. — Bob Ross

Faith in naturalism. Gotta love it.

I already conceded with amendment to my position in my previous post. I already conceded I was using naturalism too liberally. In principle, if a phenomena is seemingly violating the laws of nature; then, prima facie, all else being equal, that counts in favor of supernaturalism. — Bob Ross

Leontiskos, let me refurbish my earlier statement: a phenomena that consistently or demonstrably violates the laws of nature in a manner that indicates divine intentionality should be considered supernatural, all else being equal. — Bob Ross

And how is it that you believe Gideon's test does not do this? Do you believe that the natural phenomenon of dew will affect a fleece and nothing else on one day, and then it will affect everything except the fleece on the following day?

Religious pluralism also suffers from something similar to the paradox of tolerance. Religious pluralism by definition views religions exclusivism to be wrong. So it ironically ends up excluding the great majority of religious people in this important aspect of their faith. Ofcourse, people who believe in religious pluralism won't ever likely persecute those who believe in religious exclusivism, but there is definitely an intellectual confrontation. — Sirius

I think this is a good point, and there is also the fact that religious pluralism universalizes a move that had already been localized by various religions. To give a simple example, some Christians might say that Jews worship the same God they do, but Muslims do not. Hence there is a kind of Christian-Jewish pluralism going on, but which excludes Islam. In the ancient world this was very common, where it was believed that the same god could be worshipped by a number of different peoples and regions under a different name. For example, Zeus and Jupiter.

When you have these very old and developed traditions of discerning when the same god was being worshipped and when a different god was being worshipped, Hick's novel thesis that everyone is worshipping the same god comes across as flat-footed.

I agree. Question for you. Can we say that Hick is a relativist of a sort? Seems to me there's an overlap between pluralism and relativism. — Tom Storm

In some ways we might say that, but in general I don't tend to view Kantians (like Hick) as relativists. The reason is that the noumenal will impose some aspect of normativity on the Kantian pluralism. For example, I am guessing Hick might say that there does not exist any religion which self-consciously worships an evil god, because the one reality that is being mediated by religion excludes this interpretation. Or if we take the analogy of the various colors of light that get diffused by a glass prism, we do not find the color black among the colors dispersed, because the normative form enforced by the light source does not permit the color black. Although in Hick this normativity is very thin and subtle, on my view true relativism includes no such normative form.

The Abrahamic religions are essentially exclusive and intolerant. — Ciceronianus

Where do the Abrahamic religions fall in your genealogy of modern tolerance?

Quite! Your points are well-taken. — Wayfarer

Well, if you're going to give up that easily then I will be forced to admit that there are a lot of important similarities between religions as well. :razz: Folks like Huston Smith have argued this claim closer to the ground. I used to hold to something like Hick's thesis 15 years ago, but I have changed course over time. So I do think the points you've made have merit, and I am not entirely unsympathetic to that approach.

I don't think 'eclipse' them, as much as viewing them in a wider context. — Wayfarer

Well I don't know how long it's been seen you read Nagel's book, but I think Hick does the same thing. So maybe we want to say that Hick is "viewing them in a wider context," but it seems to me that the exact same claim could be made about the kinds of thought that Nagel targets. Your point about a multiplicity of views is something that Nagel addresses directly in the chapter on ethics, and all of the parallel arguments would hold with respect to religion. Because of the multiplicity problem, second-order reasoning is more persuasive when it comes to ethics and religion (I actually think Nagel's chapter on ethics was objectively weaker than his other chapters for this very reason). Still, that seems to be what Hick is doing.

What is the move of Nagel's second-order relativizing? It is something like saying that the claims of first-order reasoners are false, but nevertheless the field of inquiry (including aspects of those claims) can be resuscitated under a different guise and form. So for example, for Wittgenstein philosophy in the traditional sense is impossible and misguided, but nevertheless by examining language we are able to salvage certain aspects of traditional philosophy and solve some of the problems which befuddle us, problems which are necessarily linguistic. Or for Kant, science in the traditional sense is impossible (i.e. study of the noumenal), but by introducing a Kantian theory of cognition we can resituate science in such a way that phenomena rather than noumena form the subject of investigation. Similarly, Hick thinks that substantial knowledge of God is impossible, but that philosophy of religion and the existing knowledge-claims can be salvaged by reconceiving religious epistemology along Kantian lines.

Again, my primary thesis here is that Hick runs afoul of Nagel's project, not that Hick is wrong. Nagel might not even think he is wrong.

The three philosophical traditions that I am at least slightly familiar with are Christian Platonism (my native tradition), Vedanta, and Mahāyāna Buddhism. Certainly, they all differ, but their distinctions can be seen as complementary rather than conflicting. — Wayfarer

They could, but Aristotle's warning about "small errors in the beginning leading to large errors later on" is incredibly pertinent. If we start out with an a priori desire to seek out commonalities, then—lo and behold!—we will find commonalities, and we will come to the conclusion that the similarities are very great. If we start out with an a priori desire to seek out differences, then the opposite will occur.

It seems to me that if we try to remain unbiased, then we are forced to admit that there are significant differences between religions and between religious conceptions of God, even to the point where Hick's thesis fails. For example, it is not coherent to say that God manifests to zealous Muslims or crusading Christians as someone who demands violence and war, and that God manifests to Shakers as someone who demands pacifism. Unless God is schizophrenic, it simply cannot be the same God manifesting to both groups. If we assume that God does exist then one group's belief or interpretation must be more correct than the other, and Hick's idea that both are equally interpreting the same divine reality surely fails. (I think those who have no skin in the game are quick to observe significant religious differences.)

Would we accept this kind of jump in other areas? If we say that Trump voters and Bernie Sanders voters are really just different expressions of the same truth about politics, I'd see this a largely fruitless simplification. — Tom Storm

This strikes me as an apt analogy. It really is possible to see Trump and Sanders through the same lens (reactionary populism, professed opposition to the political status quo, etc.). Nevertheless, stressing that aspect and concluding, "Mostly the same," would not be valid.

Of course Hick does not seem to be engaged in "rationalization." He is not a religious apologist. It would be more apt to call him a pluralist, or a globalist, or a cosmopolitan.

With respect to having rational justification for believing in a supernatural entity in general, I would say no. Back then, we had very limited understanding of nature. Any test I would have been able to, plausibly, come up with, just like Gideon, would most likely be in vain: this is the same reasoning that every civilization has had for believing in their own gods (e.g., if <this-god> exists, then it will rain tomorrow and, what do you know, it rained!) and it is by-at-large very faulty reasoning indeed. However, iin principle, if there was some phenomena that could not be adequately explained naturalistically and has much positive support for it (viz., it is not enough to just posit, as a gap-like explanation, that it is supernatural because we have not explained it naturalistically; instead, the positing of something supernatural must be supported by sufficient evidence of the laws of nature and how the phenomena seemed to have truly violated those laws), then yes. — Bob Ross

It's just hard to take you seriously when you compare this rain example or your jumping jacks example to Gideon. It's like you're not even trying. The irony is that Gideon's grasp of "naturalism" is more keen than your own.

I would say that the rational naturalist will necessarily disagree with you here (and I am certain that Oppy would disagree with you). If naturalism is true then there must be counterfactuals which would demonstrate the supernatural, else the thesis of naturalism is entirely vacuous and unfalsifiable. Or at the very least, that form of naturalism which provides for predictability would become entirely vacuous, and that is what we mean by naturalism in our own day and age.

- Yes, good points. :up:

---

Well, glad to have come across someone who actually knows who John Hick is. (And Paul Knitter.) But I don't necessarily agree that he's guilty of the kind of relativism that Nagel critiques. — Wayfarer

Well, would we agree that Hick has attempted to eclipse first-order religious claims? It is in that way that it mirrors Nagel's target, for Nagel is targeting the attempt of second-order reasoning to eclipse first-order reasoning. Hick posits what he sees as a kind of meta-thesis about all first-order religious claims.

That's not to say I subscribe to the kind of 'many paths up the mountain' approach, either. I think there are genuine and profound distinctions to be made between different religious philosophies. But then, there are also genuine and profound distinctions between different cultures, but they're still human cultures. But, we're called upon at some point to make a decision as to which we belong in, I guess. — Wayfarer

True. I myself don't like Hick's approach, but it is a complex subject with many facets. Perhaps a more obvious way of critique comes from Francis Xavier Clooney, who is a scholar of Catholic-Hindu dialogue. He says, paraphrasing, that today everyone will say that all of the world religions are equal, and are ultimately saying the same thing, and yet no one today seems to know anything about any of the world religions. That is more or less the difficulty I have with Hick. His approach seems more a priori than a posteriori. His thesis cannot be rejected out of hand, but it needs concrete evidence in its favor.

I would again invite you to present an actual argument for your claim, preferably with formal logic. If you try to flesh out your reasoning I believe the invalidity will become more apparent to you. — Leontiskos

↪Leontiskos Don't worry about it, have it you own way...I think you are simply wrong and I've given reasons why I think so...but I have no confidence that you will admit it, so I don't want to expend any more time and effort. — Janus

I mean, you are making implausible claims and then refusing to provide arguments or reasons for those claims. This is a philosophy forum, last I checked.

I can relate to being uncomfortable sharing that sort of thing, because even when I believed I had had experiences of God, I knew in the back of my mind that I really couldn't justify those beliefs in the face of critical thinking being applied to them.

So I'll leave it to the back of your mind, to let you know whether your reasons for believing that you have had experiences of God really stand up to scrutiny. — wonderer1

...but just read this back to yourself. You're a troll, and what you're doing here is trolling, and we know you're a troll, and we know that there is no good reason to throw pearls before trolls. ...but apparently to your mind the religious are simply afraid of subjecting their personal inferences to your superior rational skills, lol.

I would suggest retiring from trolling, at least on a philosophy website. Instead you could take up the practice of philosophical argument and addressing things from a third person perspective.

- It seems to me that the simpler answer is to just note the fact that only the tiniest percentage of religious people have stressed an apophatic approach to such an extent that the cataphatic approach is entirely excluded. Therefore the claim that, "God can only be thought of as a wholly unknowable entity," is false on its face. Neither Maimonides, Aquinas, or even Eckhart believed such a thing. Such strange, contentious claims surely require justification.

1. Do you believe yourself to be somone who has interacted with God on a number of occasions? — wonderer1

Sure.

2. If so, are you willing to talk about how you came to that conclusion? — wonderer1

A third-person example has already been provided: link. Feel free to address it.

(I won't "make it personal," no. That is a terrible approach in general, especially when it comes to contentious religious debates.)


But I'm glad you didn't say, "God doesn't exist," because that would have been begging the question, and it would have followed the sort of lack-of-reasoning that has characterized this thread. For example, <You can't interact with God, therefore you can't interact with God>. The pro-OP side is in need of some actual arguments and syllogisms to support their claims.

- Someone who has interacted with God on a number of occasions is similarly situated to the child. Your objection here is that one cannot have knowledge of that which transcends them (), and the objection fails in a very strong way, as being logically invalid.

I would again invite you to present an actual argument for your claim, preferably with formal logic. If you try to flesh out your reasoning I believe the invalidity will become more apparent to you.

That people might say they know something about God does not entail that they actually know anything about God. They would need to be able to explain how they came to know things about a purportedly immaterial, infinite entity. — Janus

The same way a child draws conclusions about the unfathomable abilities and acts of their parent:

Or has been told by the parents that they fixed the bike, this time and every other time that it needed repair. — Janus

And why wouldn't that method also apply to God? — Leontiskos

Yes, this is absolutely true, I did not mean to imply otherwise; there is nuance here. I was thinking of Gideon in particular and Jesus' words about the value of signs in John. The nature of the asking matters. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, I agree with that. And what I am interested in is the basic rational idea—apart from moral considerations—that if someone claims to be supernatural or divine, then their ability to do supernatural things will tend to justify their claim.

I agree. It is a straw man that Janus is arguing against (most of the time). — Bob Ross

Yes, and it is also a form of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Apparently Janus thinks that 98% of religious believers are hopelessly mistaken when they use the word "God," because on Janus' premise anyone who believes they know something about "God" is not actually talking about God. This is a word game, and obviously Oppy was not directing his argument to some invisible 2% of "true believers."

The problem I have with this example, and most like it, is that I don’t think it demonstrates, even if the events were all granted as having occurred, justification for believing in God’s existence (even if just for that particular subject in the example) because the tests are wholly incapable of verifying the claim. — Bob Ross

Pay more attention to the claim that is being verified. It is not that God exists. It is that God is with Gideon, and will be with him in battle. The OP is not fundamentally about God's existence; it is about any event that provides good reason to posit a supernatural cause. So Oppy would apparently say that, in Gideon's case, naturalism provides the more "parsimonious" account for what occurred.

So the question here is, "Does Gideon possess rational justification for his conclusion that he is dealing with God?" That's not rhetorical. You need to actually answer it.

Let me give you a much easier example of what I mean (that I believe we can both agree on): let’s say I am holding something in my hand, and you say “that’s a banana”. Now, let’s say I do not know if it is a banana or not, and so I respond “if what you say is true, then do five jumping jacks...if you can do five jumping jacks, then I know what you say is the truth”. Lo and behold, you drop down and do five jumping jacks: am I justified in believing that the object in my hand is a banana? Of course not! Why? — Bob Ross

Because your test/sign was incredibly stupid, that's why. The ability to do five jumping jacks has no power to justify the claim in question.

This is an interesting thought. — Bob Ross

Let me make this easier for you. If you were Ahaz in Isaiah 7 (or Gideon), is there some sign you could think of, some test, that would prove to you that you are dealing with something other than natural occurrences?

---

<- this post branches in too many directions. If you like, pick one of the many topics and I will reply.

Declaring it a sign of poor character, to engage in critical thinking when it comes to one's religion, — wonderer1

I actually don't think ' absolute prohibition on asking for signs is Biblically tenable. In the Bible asking for a sign is one of those things that can be done well or poorly, and the opposite error of religious credulity manifests in many stories as well.

Aquinas explicitly argues that miracles are the rational means for establishing the credibility of supernatural claims:

...Wherefore just as man led by his natural reason is able to arrive at some knowledge of God through His natural effects, so is he brought to a certain degree of supernatural knowledge of the objects of faith by certain supernatural effects which are called miracles. — Aquinas ST II-II.178.1

A useful essay by John Hick. He was an English philosopher of religion, notable for his commitment to religious pluralism. Rather a dense academic work, but then, it is a philosophy forum! — Wayfarer

While Hick is far and away more coherent than anything that is occurring in this thread, I would still argue that he represents little more than an academic fad in philosophy of religion. A little over a decade ago I took a graduate seminar on interreligious dialogue, and even at that time Hick was already but a footnote in the history of that field. When we did the historical overview each student was assigned one or two figures to research and present on, and I was assigned Hick along with Paul Knitter.

Thomas Nagel's The Last Word includes no chapter on religion proper, but if it did Hick would be the subject of that chapter. Hick extends the precise sort of relativism that Nagel opposes to the religious sphere, and he is a Kantian to boot. If Nagel had been more knowledgable of religion I think it would have been good to include such a chapter, but plenty of other folks have leveled the same sort of Nagel-esque arguments against Hick.

I think there is a reason Hick's influence waned more quickly than his compatriots in other fields. It is because the sort of a priori second-order argumentation that Nagel targets has always been less effective when it comes to religion. Religion favors the a posteriori, the experiential, the earthy realities like ritual and tradition. Antiseptic a priori systems of philosophers don't often drive religious thought, and the academic religious anthropologists understand this same truth. Hick's thesis has left a more lasting impression on the popular mind than on the academic field (or, one could equally argue, the popular mind and the conditions of modern life birthed Hick's thesis).

If we want to take Janus seriously then he is proposing a kind of apophatic exclusivism, and I admit that this resonates with Hick to a certain degree. But what Hick has said is a great deal more fleshed out and Kantian than what Janus has said. In Christian terms Hick is a modalist rather than a strict apophaticist, and as such his proposal is a great deal more coherent than Janus'. It seems to me that Janus has given voice to an extreme form of cultural secularism, where Charles Taylor's "self" is buffered not only implicitly but explicitly. "Thou shalt not have contact with God!"