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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