Divine Revelation: The explanation of lowest likelihood

At risk of being downvoted into oblivion, I'll just share my personal reasons for believing in the supernatural. Don't hurt me please.

I'll be the first to agree that divine revelation is the explanation of lowest likelyhood - by definition, any divine revelation would be something intervening and disrupting the "natural" course of events as expected. They wouldn't be miracles otherwise. So of course when using reason, the scientific method, logic, etc, divine revelation would not be expected. The fact that it breaks those rules is why it matters.

Also, I actually think most westernized believers in the divine would probably agree with you. Think about it; I'm sure if their next door neighbor claimed to have heard from God, they would dismiss it with one of the very reasons you list. There are literally uncountable claims around the world of people claiming to hear from God/deity/the supernatural, etc, and depending on what belief system you are in, any given person would likely reject the every last ones that don't conform to their worldview.

  1. This brings me to what I think the heart of Divine belief comes from; it's not about any single instance of intervention. The belief in the divine comes the meta image of inspiration that spans centuries. I can't speak for other religions, but the judeo-Christian understanding of revelation views God as one who chooses to intervene with creation, not to necessarily fix it in this reality (obviously, he'd be a pretty spectacular failure if that were the case) but to give us snippets of himself so we can understand him and ourselves better. The God of the Old Testament by biblical accounts intervened quite regularly, but in the grand scheme of everything, in small ways. He didn't just come down with a 10,000 angels and free the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, he gave Moses the power to perform a number of meaningful miracles. God didn't strike down Israel's enemies, he empowered the Israelites to fight on their own against superior troops with greater numbers and succeed. The Israelites thought when the Messiah came, he would be a great warrior, destroy Israel's enemies, and establish the Hebrews as a world super power. But instead, the Messiah came as a poor carpenter boy, performed miracles for (realatively) small numbers of people, and was killed like a common criminal.

The point is, God by Christian accounts is in the habit of intervening with the explanation of lowest likelyhood.

/r/DebateReligion Thread