A Pandeist responds to John Oakes' "response to Pandeism"

From time to time, people do come along and write things like this "response to Pandeism" put forth by noted Christian apologist John Oakes. And, well, such things as these, I must answer.

Defining the Problem:

Oakes begins his "response" complimentarily, at least, offering that "Pandeism is an interesting philosophy," and observing that "it is not a religion, but a philosophical/worldview perspective." Additionally he qualifies at several points that he is "far from an expert on this philosophy" and has done "little research" on it. As to his critique proper, Oakes actually begins by launching a volley against Pantheism, describing its premise that "God fills up the universe and the universe is, essentially God", but noting as well that "if God is, essentially, the universe, then the universe cannot have been created." But, Oakes continues:

This is a big problem for pantheism, because science tells us that the universe is not eternal, neither can it be eternal. The universe was created about 13.5 billion years ago out of nothing. It is not an oscillating universe. The second Law of thermodynamics tells us that the universe cannot be eternal. Where does this leave the thinking pantheist? Classical pantheism cannot be supported in view of clear cosmological evidence. Pandeism comes to the rescue.

Now, this is an interesting critique coming from a Christian apologist, in that it inherently throws out the timeframe of the Creation story of the Judeochristian Scripture (a sore point for fundamentalists, who require the story of the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve with the apple to set up the notion of original sin). In so doing Oakes at least hypothetically ought to be allowing for a Creator who has set forth a wholly evolutionary Universe (verily, as Pandeism does). But Oakes eschews this logical step; instead he retreats to his premises and simply describes Pandeism as an "ad hoc and a weak marriage" of deism and pantheism:

The marriage seems to be, as it appears, at first glance, to be self-contradictory. The deist believes in a Creator who created the universe but who is not personally invested in the universe. This Creator does not intervene in the universe. The Creator is not personal but rather impersonal and, obviously, distant. An impersonal universe is certainly consistent with pantheism, but pantheism has an eternal, uncreated universe. The pandeist proposes that there was an impersonal Creator who, after the creation, allowed himself to be absorbed into the Universe. To the outsider, this seems like a patch-up to save pantheism in a world in which creation is clearly implied by the data. What is the nature of this Creator? How can the Creator become the creation? This is hard to explain.

Part of Oakes' problem may lie in his fundamental misstatement of what Pandeism is. For he is hardly the first to mistakenly claim that the pandeistic Creator "after the creation, allowed himself to be absorbed into the Universe" when in fact Pandeism makes no claim of absorption into an already-created Universe, but of the quite distinct act of Creation itself being the singular act of our Creator wholly becoming the Creation itself.

It worth asking, as well, if "creation is clearly implied by the data," ought we not to dispose of all belief systems which fail to follow what is implied by the data? Ought we not dismiss all faiths inconsistent with a Universe "created about 13.5 billion years ago"? And if we are to follow what is implied by the data, ought we not to build our theological model by first examining all available scientific date, and then extrapolating from that the set of logically consistent theological models?

As to Oakes' difficulty with the notion of a Creator able to become its Creation, perhaps this ought to be 'hard to explain' to an atheist, but one would think that a theist would readily acknowledge that their Creator had the power to do such a thing. Indeed, a Creator creating from its own substance, and not needing to exercise an additional power of ex nihilo Creation, is the simplest kind of Creation which can be. If it is indeed "hard to explain" such a thing, then it must be an especially weak and incapable Creator which Oakes would take in place of one which has the power to have set forth our Universe pandeistically.

Argumentum ad populum:

Oakes is additionally quick to raise an argumentum ad populum, contending that "this esoteric philosophy is not held to by any world religion," and to note his knowing of "no influential philosophers or teachers who have publicly called them selves pandeists." As to these propositions, I can only suggest that Oakes make a more searching reading of the Bhagavad Gita. Though Oakes seems content to pigeonhole Eastern faiths generally as pantheistic instead of pandeistic, it is immediately apparent in a full reading of that seminal work, and in others along its same lines, that many strains of Hinduism and other Eastern religious philosophies envision a Creator-deity who has in fact become our Universe, and revels in the sharing of the experiences of lives arising within it.

In fact, many faiths have scriptural passages which may be so interpreted. And, many have sects or scholars which have expressed such interpretations quite explicitly (though perhaps Oakes was looking for somebody to declare "I am a Pandeist," as though the name of the theory invoked some special significance). We need not stand on such ceremony in philosophy -- Benedict Spinoza is universally acknowledged as one of the originators of Pantheism, though he never uttered that word because it had not yet been coined when he set forth his ideas.

An Anthropic Critique:

Back to the critique, Oakes states that "this philosophy was created purely from human thinking in order to solve a perceived rational problem with both deism and pantheism." Yes, but so is all religion. So is theological thought generally. And indeed, so is Oakes' Christianity, and every other theism. But theistic faiths cannot fathom the human capacity for inventing religions except to have faith that their own is true and to propose as to all others that deity-made evil spirits have broken loose and run amuck amongst us dispensing theological falsehoods. And yet Pandeism fully accounts for theistic faiths without making any such contorted assumptions.

It is the honest forms of theology which admit that they are products of human reflection, that there is no reliable proof for a universally true revelation or scripture, and that what theological truth there is must be what can be gleaned and extrapolated from a logical, reasoned, scientific examination of our Universe itself. And Deism and Pandeism happen to accord with scientific knowledge without needing to mutilate facts to meet ancient accounts, nor to posit a deceiver deity who makes things appear other than as they are, or makes and sets upon us superpowered evil spirits capable of effecting this deception by proxy.

A Straw Man in the Mirror:

Oakes closes with the assessment that Pandeism is "self-contradictory," and "a patch-up, created to solve a logical problem, rather than based on any evidence for the truth of the philosophy." But, again, he has early on disclaimed actual knowledge of Pandeism, or study of it, and so apparently speaks in ignorance of what proof is claimed to support Pandeism, and indeed of what Pandeism actually is all about. At the least, he makes no effort to summarize this proof and address it with specificity.

And so, the contradiction that Oakes believes he finds in Pandeism is a straw man born from Oakes' own misunderstanding of what Pandeism actually contends. It is not the sort of contradiction embodied in the claim of an all-powerful, all-benevolent intervening deity who nonetheless watches placidly while children are tortured to death and wars are fought by competing claimants to its name, for Pandeism makes no such claims, and bears no such contradiction.

And, lastly, as to Pandeism being "a patch-up," such evaluation mischaracterizes a genuine reconciliation of coherently compatible elements of systems as to which each is partially explanatory. One might as well call any modern computer "a patch-up," because it combines various pieces of technology initially invented for different reasons into a whole more useful than any one of the things for which such technology was first developed. Perhaps a better example of a 'patch-up' would be a religion built on bits and pieces stolen from other, more ancient mythological traditions -- a flood myth here, a virgin birth there, any number of returns from death elsewhere.

A Closing Suggestion:

Oakes' conclusions need not be further addressed, because his premises are simply entirely wrong. His conclusions simply cannot be reached. I would only suggest to Oakes that, in the future, if he deigns to take on such a topic as Pandeism, he ought to actually study it enough to know what claims are made by it, and what the history of it is, before proposing reasons for which to dismiss it. And, naturally, he ought to take care that what criticisms he gives are not those which are more powerfully directed at the beliefs which he would uphold in the place of his target.

The destiny of the unevangelized, and the incompetently evangelized

One of the strongest objections to any faith system claiming Universality is the destiny of the unevangelized -- simply put, it is troubling to claim that only those who hold a certain belief will reap an afterlife reward -- and those who do not hold such belief will instead be punished with an afterlife of suffering -- where it is demonstrable that some number of people will have lived and died without ever even hearing of the belief. This, indeed, presents one of the major divides within individual religions, with believers fervently arguing for one position on the issue or the other, to the point of schism and bloody internecine religious war.

Perhaps more troubling still, there is the gray area of those who heard some snippet or other of this claimed 'one true' belief, but were presented it incompletely or incompetently, so that they were in no position to form a reasoned judgment about the relative logic of it while they lived. Indeed, where decisions are made based on imperfect information, it must become a very delicate art indeed to assert that one person over another has information perfect enough to make a decision upon.

The idea of admission to the positive afterlife based on "works" at least disposes of the problem of the unevangelised (and the less-discussed corollary of the incompetently evangelised), as one of the major failings of theistic faiths. But, such an idea disposes as well of the notion that one must have the correct belief, and so undermines the notion of one religion especially being the truth. Perhaps more devastatingly, as religious edifices go, it undermines the argument for funding and empowering a lavishly appointed priest-class.

And as to those who hear some piece of evangelism, it is quite possible that more people come to altogether reject the idea of a given "God," or of any especial iteration thereof, due to the offensive showing made by various theistic adherents, than due to any inherent objection which might be made against the idea itself. And just as clearly, there are at least some theists much prefer to experience the smug self-satisfaction of thinking they've won an argument via some fine point of theological wordplay than to experience something like actually helping the needy. So, if there was a God who punished anyone, it ought to first be thought to punish its own errant followers for setting such a shameful and repulsive example that their brutish conceit drives the multitude away from their professed deity.

The problem of the offensive missionary:

Picture this: a young missionary of one of the claimedly universal faiths (and I cite no especial example of a faith -- though I certainly could cite many out of personal experience) steps off the boat and onto a remote South Pacific island, one never before subject to any sort of evangelism. Previous visitors to the isle had only stopped to trade and survey, never to spread any faith, and so the natives are completely unaware that any religion exists other than their own local traditions, most likely some mix of reverence for nature and veneration of ancestors, passed down to them for thousands of generations. The people of this island speak no English; the missionary counts on miraculous intervention to supplement his communications, and so has learned but a few sentences in a language spoken by the next nearest islanders, presumed to have a common root. This missionary immediately takes to berating the natives for their failure to conform to his own moral preferences. Perhaps, based on his own errant religious instruction, he insists that the the natives will be condemned to eternal punishment because they wear nothing above the waist, or because they engage in work on a certain day of the week, or fail to engage in prayer on another. Perhaps this missionary declares that all of the marriages on the island are illegitimate because none, before his arrival, have conformed with his understanding of the appropriate ceremony. But shortly, he has given an absurd impression to the natives, who politely shoo him off their island at the next opportunity, resolved that the belief system peddled by this unprepared interloper is nonsensical, and thusly declining further missionary visitations.

Are these natives now to be deemed well-enough versed in the religion so poorly evangelized to them to be liable for eternal damnation, should they reject it? Are their children so liable, if the previous generation opts not to bother sharing the story? And, would it be at all fair for a deity to punish the nonbelieving native, and yet not punish the missionary whose conduct caused this affirmative state of nonbelief? And this problem is not limited to the isolated islands, for even in the hearts of the populations of crowded continents, there are countless preachers of countless faiths and sects and interpretations establishing a cacophony of assurances and accusations, threats and finger-pointing, enough to propel any sane man to tune out the claims of religion altogether (even those claims which might, on quiet reflection, be reasonable and defensible).

The problem of the isolated planet:

And beyond this, it stands to reason that if it's expectable for a deity to create some people (isolated tribes, etc) who never hear the true word, then it could create an entire planet of people who never hear the true word. And yet, it has been our experience in finally encountering those long-isolated tribes that they tended to have independently developed a theological model all their own, perhaps an animistic or polytheistic one, perhaps one with pantheistic or pandeistic or purely deistic overtones. And, naturally, just maybe, though extremely rarely in practice, it may be one with all the trimmings of monotheism. And so there might be another planet out there where some intelligent life has come to the fore and set forth a civilization with a level of knowledge and technology and sophistication of social institutions to rival our own. And, indeed, such a civilization, though not privy to any of the thousands of 'true' faiths professed on Earth could easily have as many 'true' faiths, as many doctrines and debates and deicides. And adherents to any faith on this alien world might be every bit as assured, every bit as fervent in their beliefs, as any Earthbound believer.

But here's the catch.

If it is possible that a 'true' deity may have revealed itself once, to one group, without bothering to provide for isolated groups to learn the truth encapsulated in its revelation, then perhaps we are as a planet such an isolated group. For one cannot reasonably postulate a deity capable of allowing an entire planet to wallow in ignorance and false faith without confessing that ours might be that planet. And in the same stroke, one ought to admit that, if there is a "one true faith" that all people are intended to discover, then all theistic faiths claiming universality are proved false by those who have lived and died without hearing of such faiths. Instead, what can be called true must be what can be discerned from a logical examination of our world, even by those who have never heard a word of any scripture.

Pandeism has no need

Pandeism has no need for scripture
Pandeism has no need for clergy
Pandeism has no need for temples
Pandeism has no need for prayers
Pandeism has no need for 'sin' or 'hell'
The TRUTH needs none of these
and so
Pandeism needs none of these!!

The Animal Pals Learn About Religion

The animal pals were sitting happily around their picnic blanket on this fine sunfilled day, laughing and singing songs and telling stories, and such, for that is their friendly way. There was the good Dr. Turtledove and Mrs. Turtledove, and their three little turtledoves, who pleased everyone with their beautiful song. And there was diligent Colonel Ram whose ram regiment was known well for its discipline, and his dear old friend Mr. Bull, who had come with his lady Ms. Cow. And then there was Mr. and Mrs. Goat and their kids, and Mr. and Mrs. Pigeon, and Mr. and Mrs. Badger, and various little ones playing in the grass.

And as the day got on into the afternoon, they noticed that wise old Mr. Turtle was sitting under a tree nearby, flipping through a black-bound book with some gold lettering on the cover, and the others asked, "what book is that?" And Mr. Turtle told them, "well this one's called a 'Bible'--"

"Buy bull?" interrupted Mr. Bull "don't know if I like the sound of that...."

"Well," Mr. Turtle went on, "some feller gave it to me. Seemed to be some kind of salesman. Told me to read the stories in it and take 'em as true, and that afterward I'd be kind to get in a habit of giving some money to the group of salesmen he'd come from. Don't reckon I'll do that, but I guess it couldn't hurt to have a look-see at what's in here."

"O, read us some!" the animal pals exclaimed. And so, old Mr. Turtle flipped open to one of the beginning pages.br>
Mr. Turtle read the story which told of the main character -- apparently a lord of some sort, making a garden and creating all the animals in it, one kind at a time (Dr. Turtledove commented "that's just silly, hasn't he ever heard of natural selection?", but was hushed by the others wanting to hear the story.)

And so on he read. There was some odd bit about this 'lord' intentionally putting a bad tree in the garden, and then one of its animal creations, a snake, getting the humans in the garden to eat some of its fruit. A bunch more stories were all centered on humans and their usual boring human troubles.

But then Mr. Turtle read: "Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made." He looked up just a bit as some of the animal pals gasped; then back down to the text. This lord made a flood, he read, and then: "Every living thing that moved on the earth perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth."

The animal pals sat, stunned-- until finally one of Mr. Goat's kids piped up: "What-- what did the animals do to this 'lord' of the humans that made him want to drown everybody?"

Mr. Turtle flipped back and forth through the pages for some moments before intoning, with a sad shake of his head, "nothing. They did nothing wrong at all."

"Well," shrugged Mr. Pigeon with a nervous laugh, "at least he had somebody save a few of every kind, right?" The other animals glared at the comment, so Mr. Pigeon tried to change the subject, asking "So, uh, what happens after this flood?"

Mr. Turtle returned to the book. "Well let's see. Genesis eight: Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he--" Mr. Turtle stopped and blinked hard at the text for a moment, "he sacrificed burnt offerings on it."

"Wait a minute, now" Mrs. Turtledove interrupted, "so out of all the animals he murders, this 'lord' has but a tiny number saved-- and then he lets some of those get killed as well? As a-- as a sacrifice? That's insane!!"

"Yes, the very definition of it. Quite disgusting," Dr. Turtledove agreed.

Mr. Turtle read on, "The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma--"

"What?!?!" cried out several of the animal pals -- "this 'lord' finds the smell of our burning flesh 'pleasing'?"

Mr. Turtle harumphed in agreement with their disgust, and flipped ahead a few pages. "Indeed. Let me see if I can find something less horrific." He began reading from a random page: "And the Lord said to Abraham, 'Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.'" The other animal pals looked on warily. This didn't sound like it would end well. "Abraham brought all these to him, cut them in two--"

Mr. Turtle stopped reading abruptly, while some of the animal pals looked positively ill. He flipped through the book further. "Let me see. Let me see. Oh no, no, more demanding of animal sacrifices." After a pause, "there's a story where this 'lord' tells this human, Abraham, to kill his own son-- the human's son-- but.... at the last moment sends a ram to be killed instead."

"It figures," muttered Colonel Ram, snorting at the insult.

Mr. Turtle flipped on some more, coming to more and more similar instructions of this lord. At one point he read out: "And thou shalt make a covering for the tent of rams' skins dyed red, and a covering above of badgers' skins."

"Hey, what the fuck!!" cried out Mr. Badger. "Oh, really," chimed in his wife.

There was more, much more, and it descended into deep horror. One story-- it wasn't even a story, really, just animal slaughter porn-- demanded a bull be slaughtered right in front of some religious meeting tent, that the bulls blood be smeared on things, and specific organs burnt, again so that the smell of the burning flesh would please this horrible lord's nostrils. Similar instructions were demanded of several rams, with the equally horrific instruction that its blood from its murder be smeared on the ears of certain favoured human children. And the stories went on, demanding the slaying of sheep and goats and various bird for the perverse pleasure of this human lord.

At last, everybody agreed, enough was enough. Mr. and Mrs. goat trotted over and tore and chewed the pages from the offending book. They spat and shoved the remnants of the vile thing into a deep hole dug by Mr. Badger, and after several of the animal pals relieved their bowels into the hole, they at last covered it over with dirt, never to be though about again.

And then the animal pals went back to their usual way, laughing and singing songs and telling stories.

THE END

Response to a counterargument from another blog

A counterarguer has raised some issues in response to another blog against a previous post in this one, Reply to artistdude2's Thketch 001; and this counterarguer complains of this blog's post thusly:

He quickly disqualifies the Bible as having any role in the debate, leaving it at the level of competing assertions. Yet if true, the biblical record quickly answers a lot of his points/objections. The reality that God has self revealed in a direct way and His interventions in history — especially at the incarnation — are huge. Jesus is not just a bridge like a Buddha. He is God in flesh, uniquely conceived, and not just an avatar. This concept is not even minimally discussed.

But there is a reason that the validity of scriptural/revelational assertions are "not even minimally discussed" and it is simple and straightforward. It is that all of them are fully accounted for, and so superseded by, the pandeistic model itself. Naturally it could be claimed that the Old Testament, or the Qur'an, or the Vedas, Book of Mormon, New Testament, Popol Vuh, any one of those would be "huge" and would answer this question or that "if true" -- but this is where Pandeism rises above all of these, for Pandeism answers those questions no matter whether any book is true, and it does so for all the books out there.


Now, I take it as a given that were there empirical truth in any one scripture, this would be perceptible to the truth-seekers abiding in any corner of the world. If for example the Vedas were objectively "true" then all rational people to whom this was explained would quickly come around to believing in the truth of the Vedas; and the same holds true for the Bible and Qur'an and the Book of Mormon and the rest. But, obviously, none of these books is true enough to persuade any substantial number of adherants to any other of them.


And so you have Muslims and Hindus who've studied the Bible and find it unpersuasive; Jews and Mormons who believe parts of the Bible but find the NT account lacking in some respect; Christians and Hindus who've studied the Qur'an and found it unpersuasive. All of which undergirds the proposition that each of these traditions offers something only partial, a glimpse of a higher connecting truth but never that truth itself. And this eventuality is entirely consistent with all scriptures and revelations and visions and oracles and prophecies spiritual dreams and so on and so on simpy being unconscious manifestations -- even as extremly complex and involved as they may seem to our comparably limited minds -- misinterpreted and miscomprehended through the narrow, biased funnel of the human brain.


And that is how Pandeism fully accounts.

The nontheist's prerogative to require a unified scripture

It is the right of nontheists to require theists, generally, to agree on a single scripture and a single interpretation of that scripture before entering upon any discussion of possible scriptural validity. For, until almost all scripture-believers can agree on the truth of one scripture, no scripture held to be universally valid even exists to be deemed fit for discussion as a candidate for being a true account, and hence 'the one true scripture.'

Scripturiosity:

It is well observed that people tend to join the faith hewed to by their parents and most prevalent in their geographic setting. And it is fair to contend that most people who have been brought up in a particular religious tradition, and have been brought up reading the scriptures of that tradition, have not done much in the way of reading the scriptures of other religions. The vast majority of Muslims have never read the Bhagavad-Gita or the Book of Mormon; most Christians have not read the Book of Mormon, the Qu'ran, or any part of the Vedas; most Hindus have never perused the Old Testament. And indeed we may go one further than that and observe that many, if not most, adherents to any one scriptural faith have never fully and thoroughly read their own scripture, and have instead tended to rely upon their religious leaders to convey what meaning ought to be gleaned from it.

But contrariwise, I have personally known Muslims who read the the Bible, Old Testament or New, and at the end of the day expressed the sentimentation that it was an interesting book, but was in error while the Qu'ran was not so. And I have known Jews who read the New Testament and came to the same conclusion. And I have known Hindus who read both Qu'ran and Bible and found both to be errant accounts. And, naturally, I have known Christians who read the Qu'ran, the Book of Mormon, some of the multitudinous Vedas, or other scriptures, and have found all the other works to be in error, with only their Bible being true (and indeed only their particular translation being true). The common denominator amongst all of these was this: people who were born and raised into a particular tradition were inclined to believe that the superior scripture was whichever one there parents or peers had told them about. To this I will add that I have met in my time a small selection of religious converts; those who converted from Christianity to Islam or to Judaism or to Mormonism or to Wicca, as well as from Islam to Christianity, or from Mormonism to Christianity. The proportion of people who have changed faiths in this manner is small overall, and dwarfed by the number who have converted from theistic faiths to nontheistic traditions -- to Deism and Pantheism and Pandeism, and, naturally, to Atheism and generic incarnations of Agnosticism.

But this process seems counterintuitive, for if there is indeed one 'true' scripture, if one empirically stands above the rest, then honest promoters of that one ought to be able to convince honest and studious representatives of all other faiths of the truth of that one scripture. And it is inconceivable that faith traditions with millions of adherants ought not to have substantial numbers of the honest and the studious. And, those studious representatives being converted to the veracity of the one true scripture, the rest of their cobelievers ought quickly to fall into the same belief. For every scripture assigns consequences to the continued teaching of falsity, so if the most dedicated of Muslim Imams were to be convinced by logical explanation of the text that Tibetan Buddhism were true -- and that he would suffer a poor reincarnation and be distanced from Nirvana by continuing to lead others into Islam -- then rational thinking would offer no choice but to convert to that strain of Buddhism, and explain as much to his followers (no matter the consequences to himself of breaking with his previous practice).

But the vast majority of people in the world have rejected each of the scriptures and interpretations of them. Billions of people have rejected Hinduism, billions have rejected Islam, billions have rejected Christianity as a whole and billions more have rejected each of its individual branches, billions have rejected Sikhism. Now it is true that billions, perhaps billions more, have rejected nontheistic faith traditions such as Buddhism and Atheism and Pandeism, but these traditions have never claimed to have God-written books which muct be taken as true on pain of eternal torment. Buddhism for example simply has the observations of a man, the Buddha, self-proclaimed as nothing more than a man who reached a state of understanding. Buddhism teaches that all the scriptural religions in which men believe are simply part of the web of desires which humans erect to justify their continued wallowing in the suffering of want. Atheism and frequently Deism account for scripture-based religions in reductionist terms, as purely psychological and sociological phenomena. Pandeism accounts for scriptural religions as being, for the lion's share, manifestations of man's efforts to comprehend the incomprehensibility of the underlying, unconscious mind of our Creator.

And it is true as well that Buddhism, for example, has the writings of the Buddha, and other traditions have particularly revered writings such as Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason is to Deists. But by definition none of the non-scriptural traditions have or allow for a scripture, a written volume contending to have been inscribed or inspired directly by an intervening deity. And so we reach the crux of the argument, which is that amongst those who believe it possible for their deity to have had an intervening hand in the writing of a book, and who believe that the occurrence of this intervention is evident in but a single one of the many, many books for which this claim is made, then the truth of this assertedly evident intervention would come through the acceptance by most all scripture believers of the one scripture which was 'true,' and of the one most 'true' interpretation (and, even version or edition of that scripture, if more than one exists).

What is left:

Naturally, it is always conceivable that some small number of especially gullible types will be drawn into belief within a cult having a wholly implausible scripture. And so, it can not be required that a single work be recognized by the entirety of the theistic population, as people may reject a scriptural account for irrational reasons (irrespective of whether a rational person might reject such an account anyway). But once we get into faiths having hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, the equivalence of scripture evens out. For such population cannot be maintained without having followers within them who are free to make whatever inquiries they wish into the saliency of the scripture at issue, and inevitably having amongst that selection some whose perception and intellect tower above the average both within that faith and for humanity in general.

Nor is this itself an argument that no scripture is or can be true. It is instead simply an observation, that if one scripture were true, and were rationally demonstrable to be so, then all rational believers in the saliency-at-all of scripture ought to quickly come to acknowledge its truth -- and to do so before those who do not even believe in scripture may be expected to do so. And even if this truth were one only spiritually perceptible, if there were one scripture which was true in that sense it ought to be perceptable in so fair and honest a way that honest and studious persons of a spiritual bent coming from any background would conclude it to be more true than that to which they had heretofore adhered.

It is certainly possible to discuss generic -- that is, nonscriptural -- questions as to asserted proofs of God, even absent an acceptible universality of scripture. The Cosmological Argument and the apparent fine tuning of our Universe, the experience of the ethereal as reported by the mystics, all of these are debateable as proofs of divine creation even if no holy book has any word of truth in it. But if those already believing in the saliency of scripture are unable even to convince one another of the final correctness of one amongst that multitude, then no scripture yet written can be claimed to be the one to which nontheists must accord consideration as having a sufficiently persuasive effect to merit really any drop of nontheistic consideration whatsoever.

How Theists know about their gods.