Sep 27, 2012

Revelation that this Skeptic could accept with a clear conscience

Apparently Justin Brierley and Tim Mawson aren't ready to confess that this whole thing was an immense practical joke, so we'll go back to our regularly scheduled programming.

A recurring question on the APE FaceBook page and on this blog has to do with what constitutes "revelation" from a supreme being.  Justin asked yesterday, what would the participants accept as a sign?  It's a very relevant question, given that my own reason for participating in this project was as an exercise in open-mindedness.

What do we mean when we talk about being "open-minded?"
Does it mean restarting the logical process from the beginning, throwing out past assumptions, and considering all ideas as equally possible? That's too much of a stretch, and I don't think it would be wise for anyone to do.

Open-mindedness is the willingness to consider that we might have been wrong.  Speaking for myself, I could have jumped to the wrong conclusions about what I've seen, heard, and read in the past.  Maybe my memory isn't perfectly accurate, or maybe I was given bad information by someone else.  Did I have confirmation bias that caused me to ignore relevant information that might have changed my mind?  Are there possibilities I haven't considered that might make sense of what appears not to make sense?

I think a revelation would have to spark the realization that some or all of the above have happened, and explain how I was wrong.  My daily prayers haven't asked for specific signs or tried to limit any return messages, except for the following: if it's a coincidence, that is statistically so improbable that the most likely explanation would be an intelligent action; that it not be anything mistakable for the product of my own imagination;  and that it be something no human being could have arranged or manipulated.

I don't care whether I can convince other people with it, as long as I know that I could take it seriously if someone I trusted told me that it had happened to them.

I'll think about it some more, but I think that's the best I can do for now. If something happened, or if I did have a blinding flash of insight, I'd probably question it for a while before accepting it. I'm a skeptic after all. Still, I think a "revelation" that fit those standards is one that I could accept as real without violating my own conscience.


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