tl;dr for the last two comments (Just to help me understand this; if I misrepresent anyone, please call me out on it.)
Yvain: So you believe in multiple factions of supernatural beings, why do you think Jehovah is the benevolent side? Other gods have done awesomecool stuff too, and Jehovah’s known to do downright evil stuff.
AK: Not multiple factions, just two. As to why I think Jehovah’s the good guy.....
And knowing how my life has gone, I know how I’ve changed as a person since accepting Jesus, or Jehovah if that’s the word you prefer. They don’t mention drastic changes to their whole personalities to the point of near-unrecognizability even to themselves.
Don’t you think that’s an unjustified nitpick? Absolutely awful people are rare, people who have revelations are rarer, so obviously absolutely awful people who had revelations have to be extremely difficult to find. So it’s not really surprising that two links someone gave you don’t mention a story like that.
But I think you’re assuming that the hallmark of a true religion is that it drastically increases the morality of its adherents. And that’s an assumption you have no grounds for—all that happened in your case was that the needle of your moral compass swerved from ‘absolute scumbag’ to ‘reasonably nice person’. There’s no reason to generalise that and believe that the moral compass of a reasonably nice person would swerve further to ‘absolute saint’.
Anyhow, your testable prediction is ‘converts to false religions won’t show moral improvement’. I doubt there’s any data on stuff like that right now (if there is, my apologies), so we have to rely on anecdotal evidence. The problem with that, of course, is that it’s notoriously unreliable… If it doesn’t show what you want it to show, you can just dismiss it all as lies or outliers or whatever. Doesn’t really answer any questions.
And if you’re willing to consider that kind of anecdotal evidence, why not other kinds of anecdotal evidence that sound just as convincing?
I discount all miracle stories from people I don’t know, including Christian and Jewish miracle stories, which could at least plausibly be true. I discount them ALL when I don’t know the person.
And yet.… Back to your premise. Even if your personality changed for the better… How does this show in any way that Jehovah’s a good guy? Surely even an evil daemon has no use for social outcasts with a propensity for random acts of violence; a normal person would probably serve them better. And how do you answer Yvain’s point about all the evil Jehovah has done? How do you know he’s the good guy
....
Everyone else: Why are we playing the “let’s assume everything you say is true” game anyway? Surely it’d be more honest to try and establish that his mystical experiences were all hallucinations?
tl;dr for the last two comments (Just to help me understand this; if I misrepresent anyone, please call me out on it.)
Yvain: So you believe in multiple factions of supernatural beings, why do you think Jehovah is the benevolent side? Other gods have done awesomecool stuff too, and Jehovah’s known to do downright evil stuff.
AK: Not multiple factions, just two. As to why I think Jehovah’s the good guy.....
Don’t you think that’s an unjustified nitpick? Absolutely awful people are rare, people who have revelations are rarer, so obviously absolutely awful people who had revelations have to be extremely difficult to find. So it’s not really surprising that two links someone gave you don’t mention a story like that.
But I think you’re assuming that the hallmark of a true religion is that it drastically increases the morality of its adherents. And that’s an assumption you have no grounds for—all that happened in your case was that the needle of your moral compass swerved from ‘absolute scumbag’ to ‘reasonably nice person’. There’s no reason to generalise that and believe that the moral compass of a reasonably nice person would swerve further to ‘absolute saint’.
Anyhow, your testable prediction is ‘converts to false religions won’t show moral improvement’. I doubt there’s any data on stuff like that right now (if there is, my apologies), so we have to rely on anecdotal evidence. The problem with that, of course, is that it’s notoriously unreliable… If it doesn’t show what you want it to show, you can just dismiss it all as lies or outliers or whatever. Doesn’t really answer any questions.
And if you’re willing to consider that kind of anecdotal evidence, why not other kinds of anecdotal evidence that sound just as convincing?
How convenient. When it happens to someone else it’s a lie/delusion/hallucination, when it happens to you it’s a miracle.
And yet.… Back to your premise. Even if your personality changed for the better… How does this show in any way that Jehovah’s a good guy? Surely even an evil daemon has no use for social outcasts with a propensity for random acts of violence; a normal person would probably serve them better. And how do you answer Yvain’s point about all the evil Jehovah has done? How do you know he’s the good guy
....
Everyone else: Why are we playing the “let’s assume everything you say is true” game anyway? Surely it’d be more honest to try and establish that his mystical experiences were all hallucinations?