2/8/06 3:23 PM

Preface: This is surely the first draft of a general investigation into the claims of divine revelations by sundry people. First we will establish the criteria for judging something to be divine as opposed to demonic (or even halucinatory), and then we will examine four allged revelations by Abraham, Paul, Mohammed and Joseph Smith in terms of these criteria. This is obviously merely a sketch and must be greatly developed, but at least the idea is becoming clear.

Medicated and torn by my current ring, the evangelm to the Muslims. This must be conceived, even as Paul finally conceived of the gospel to the gentiles. The point is to get people to wanting to act as Jesus acted (as demonstrated in his protégé Paul) and then it gets easier. And so we must present a good picture of Christ, and which is not sullied by Islamic tell-tales, and this we can do admirably through Paul, the real flesh and blood, no dispute,, man, the man in his own words and in the testimonies of others who knew him (just like the villagers could make testimony of the Islamic Prophet).

[Thought, I think it might be more expedient to present Paul through the eyes of others.???? Paul was known in this way and then in that, and so something had happened. Mohammed was known as a good and fair man who could not be corrupted and others can tell tales of him too. What do the tales tell us? I’m no sure, and I think these must be synthesized into a single concept.]

I think we would be well advised to begin with an investigation, as scientists would undertake, as to what precisely it is that we, and all people, are to look for when we wish to identify a work of God. How do we recognize an act of God? How do we discern that this is a creation and that there is a creator and this creator will intervene into his own creation and appear to his creatures in one way or another?

This essay can only appeal to the intellectual for some preparation is necessary.

in order to persuade our children of the signs of the divine, so that they may be clearly recognized, we must really first of all investigate our own capacity for recognizing anything clearly, e.g., that objects don’t get smaller at a distance but only seem to, they being merely things in our eyes and not things out there in space on their own in the way they appear. If they were as they appear, then they would be getting smaller at a distance. That is how they appear to us. And that’s all that is given to us. Now then, as we work this for a while, what is going on now is this, your mind sees a possible connection, namely you spy a pattern, a repetition of some sort, and that is a possible connection. And then based on this preceedingly given (in our minds) connection, which is the fundamental idea of all thinking in general, we go out past the senses and do something very funny: we don’t get far, but what we do get is the pattern between two senses, touch and sight, but quite distinct and both entirely capable of capturing our complete attention, but we look past this complete attention and we notice something not about either one on its own, but only with the two together, sight and touch together, and this pattern is intriguing to our understanding and we began to imagine connections and go so far then as to test these connections in order to find them, we conceive, we probe and test, and we determine, i.e.,touch and vision are in a sync with each other. Two diversities have been brought together in a unity which is merely presumed by the mind, and used then to investigate patterns that appear in time and in space.


It looks like we are trying to establish the bedrock for the leadership and guidance of human reason in order to see if human reason can be of service to us as we seek to intuit and comprehend the divine.

First then perhaps we should establish that it is impossible for the human to discern with his eye and all of his senses put together what is divine, i.e., infinite (unless it is a Mormon god where "infinite" means only “a lot” “a lot more than any human”!) We can fathom great power and great lengths, but we cannot tell the difference between a big room and an infinite room, a long line and an infinite line, a great force and infinite force. We simply cannot tell by looking.

Now reason tells us that much, that while we can make connections of things given, we cannot recognize the infinite of anything, but can only say the words.

The question then arises as to whether reason can tell us of any way that we might discern the divine. We know it is not be the senses.

Now what does just pure and simple reason tell you? that this world cannot simply have existed without a beginning, it is just impossible. And yet it is simply impossible to imagine a beginning as being possible, out of nothing. And so (and this needs to be developed, but without too much detail) reason on its own, without reference to some given object to connect, cannot say much about what a God would be, either to be spelled with capitol letters or with small letters.

Now we want to get to the question of whether reason might be able to guide us in a practical sense, namely as to what we ought we ought to be doing. Reason does this much. reason conceives of a realm of free beings, who then each themselves, for the sake of general order, would proscribe a common law, namely that all free beings are to be treated with respect and never as commodity.

And so reason itself prescribes the moral law of absolute conduct, namely the worthy and dignity of all humans, and does so by means of the law of the golden rule.

Now it is also a fact that the human being is so constituted in his rational nature that he feels pain at the thought of a violation of the moral law. this is called respect, and this pain arises only as a result of the understanding of what a moral law is, i.e., issuing and proclaiming it as self evident, and appreciating the pain that results to ego and vanity by means of merely the understanding of this law.

And so then the human has that much to guide him. He can say that he knows that he is under the compulsion of the moral law and that this can make no sense whatsoever unless it be the work of God. And so the respect for the moral law which is common to all through their own rationality, before all faith and dogma, is the one guide we have to God. When he is seen it will always be in the shape and likeness of the moral law of universal dignity.

So that much of a guide at least we have: God, when recognized, will be identical with the moral law, for the law can only make sense as a work of God with regard to the existence of the human as a rational being, one who is moved by the moral law. A special breed, and not common to all beings without distinction.

Now we are ready to follow some selected persons who have claimed to been affected by God to make certain declarations, Abraham, Paul, Mohammed and Joseph Smith. I do in fact favor Paul and will seek to be very forthcoming with regard to my thinking and reasoning with all.

Abraham. We have two tales of Abraham, the Hebrew and the Arabian. Both have a father sacrificing his innocent child because the father is very sure that God has ordered such a sacrifice.

[Maybe Abraham is thinking: maybe this God who has been keeping his promises has only been leading me on to an announcement to me, with laughter, as to why God would be concerned about the opinion of a human, as to whether he, God, were a liar or not. Allah needs perhaps to be shaped more into the Mormon god and be as perfect a any human can be, e.g., Jesus. He hardly has any need to care what the humans may think about him or think about anything at all. I don't consider this further]

With the Jewish tale we have Abraham knowing that whatever happened, Isaac was going to have children, no matter what Abraham did, for mighty was his trust. And with the Arabian we have an older child, who consents to die so that Abraham could remain true to his vision or dream. And so here in the Arabian, Abraham is relieved at his son's acquisence and tries to kill his son in the full expectation that his son would be dead (again, there is no notion of child of promise which had not yet been fulfilled on the side of the Muslims).

But for us in this investigation we are not really so much concerned with what Abraham did, for that is between him and God, but rather to the more germane question of how it is that Abraham would ever have thought in the first place that the immoral voice was not God, even though it might sound like it. Abraham is unable to tell from the quality of the voice that it is the same voice, but less that it is the infinite voice, the divine voice, which cannot be superseded because it is infinite and beyond Abraham’s grasp and sense.

But one thing he should have known is this: by the guidance of pure reason we can be sure only that God will be associated with the moral law, and it is immoral to slay and innocent man. He should have said (according to kant): I don’t know whether you are God or not, but this I know, that it is wrong to slay my innocent son and so I will not.

And so it seems: either Abraham is an idiot (the explanation needed for the Jewish tale) or he is a murderer (the sense of the Islamic tale). [The idea that he didn't know killing an innocent person was wrong is belied by Genesis 3:22. in the Jewish Torah]

We reject Abraham, not speaking as members of a faith, but members of the human race. Pure reason is universal: all rational people count and possess dignity, the same source as your own dignity and worth.

Paul. When we turn to Paul, we have only a brief encounter with a vision and a voice, and then we have the strange spectacle of a man who is transformed, as it were, and where it is now is nature to love all people, while earlier it was his nature to persecute those who disagreed with him and who would not do as he said they must do.

The reported experience is fascinating and has been replicated in others in more historic times, e.g., Francis and John Wesley, and many account similar experience and thus attest to the authenticity of this transformation. now the transformation comes to a love of the moral law, or even more,, perhaps, the law of love, where all people are loved and not merely respected, but loved. This love is guided by the Golden rule where all people are considered neighbors (and then there is the additional dimension of some people being fellows in the same faith and endeavor for good works.

And so Paul seems himself to be convinced, for all intents and purposes by the miracle of the blindness and the regaining of sight, and never question whether this were the work of God or of a demon, for he saw, in his blindness, that for the gentiles to be ok and able to remain gentiles, it was necessary for them to subscribe to a single law, namely the moral law. That is the sole guide of the Christian (although Peterians still comply with various degree of externally imposed laws).


Mohammed. When we get to Mohammed we find this determination to have been made. And this is my best understanding of what happen and there may be additional stories. I have heard of two reports.

In one report, the chastity report, Mohammed's wife starts getting naked when Mohammed reports he presence of the being (calling himself gabriel and purporting to be from God) and they notice that the being recedes and withdraws (only Mohammed actually able to see the being, his wife being blind).

In the “Christian” report, Mohammed exclaims that he has encountered a supernatural being and his wife decides it must be an angel and she goes off and consults with a friend or a cousin who may (or may not?) be a Christian. This person confirms the verdict of divinity and Mohammed’s wife then tells him this concurrence of the two women, and so Mohammed decides that the being is angelic.

In both cases it need not be doubted that Mohammed memorized what the being told him and then recited it before scribes. It is not given if he often repeated himself. But the words would be read back and Mohammed would correct the ears of his scribes, God’s Prophet, and would then certify the authenticity of the transcription of the recitation. These were preserved and collated into a single book of five copies and the original transcriptions were destroyed.

And so it is clear that we have in the Koran a good facsimile of the recitations of Mohammed when speaking for the being who would occasionally recite to him. No one else was allowed to be with Mohammed when in the vision.

And so each reader must judge for himself as to the worth of this determination and transmission, or it all depends on whether a demon could be rational enough to withdraw on one occasion in order to be able to rule the world through the minds of its inhabitants.

When we examine Mohammed’s life and sayings and recitations we find glimpses of the very obvious moral conduct, e.g., in giving to the poor. Except we later come to find out that this act of giving to the poor is really nothing more than a tax which must be paid by human beings in order to avoid burning in hell. It is not a guarantee that you will not go to hell anyway, but you will certainly go to hell if you do not pay the poor tax. And so it is all the same to the Muslim as to whether he is giving to the poor or burning up real money and value, the only thing that matters is this is what he has to do to avoid hell. And so this otherwise commendable moral act degrades into shear extortion: do this or else.

Overall,, to try to make the moral determination of the revelation of Mohammed, his entire life and sayings and recitations would have to be examined to fathom a moral core to his faith, so that we could be sure that the revelation were not the work of a demon. And it is not enough to discern that some moral act is commanded, as we have seen in the case of the poor tax, for the demon may possess rationality and have a purpose which guides his action. the only certain thing we can know about the demon that we are imagining is that he not only violates the moral law, for humans do this also, but he does so gladly, and this no human can do. and yet he is rational and so is more interested in corrupting the core of their souls, and what could be more corrupting than to remove the moral soul and replace it with an amoral soul which stands entirely alone, and needs to be ready to sell out kith and kin in a tight.

This is not well expressed yet. There is a danger that the moral law can be disguised as rules of prudence that we lose our ability to make the distinction any longer, and just use the term for its opposite. This, I think and suspect, is the central thesis of Islam, that the individual is responsible for his own acts, he knows the law of the Muslim, and he has no excuse when he refuses to obey. he has no one to thank but himself. This is the clear law. You obligation is to do it, or face the dire consequences of those who presume to openly flaunt a dictate of God. the point is that the devil may appear as an angel of light, at least that was Paul’s counsel to Mohammed, but which may not have been heeded.


Joseph Smith. We shall complete out examination of the bearers of revelation with gazing upon Joseph Smith. Smith is covered with so many visions that he is sort of in the same boat with Paul, i.e., amazed at the immediacy of God. God actually appears to Joseph smith, where Mohammed had only angels, God himself appeared (but like smith, for God is an exalted man, per the revelation), and made himself known by his authentication of the biblical message (with much less correction than required by Mohammed). Furthermore God wanted Smith to see the writings themselves and not trust himself to his hearing, which can possibly go wrong, and so God doesn’t just have an angel memorize them and receive them to illiterate Mohammed, which could be a bit questionable, rather he has the angel bring down the book itself and it is in a divine script and Smith puts on special interpreters and lo the script turns to English in his sight, and smith, who is educated to a certain degree, is actually able to write down all of this in an enormous book of a great history, unknown until now, and did so before this 23rd birthday (while Mohammed, in contrast, did not start his recitations until late in life and after he had matured more than Smith). Furthermore, knowing that people are skeptical, God tells Smith that five people can see the golden pages before being taken back to heaven and put before the throne of God. And so these five people spy the pages, but cannot touch them, and they swear on the salvation of their own souls that they saw these documents, which goes far beyond the reach of Mohammed’s revelation, at least with regard to being published in a book during Smith lifetime, attested to by this God-fearing witnesses.

I cannot begin to probe into the moral make up of the Mormon conception. I suspect it is selfish at core and has everyone wanting to do whatever it takes to get a planet of their own to populate as a god, just like Jesus was elevated to do. If this is so there is really no point in even caring about an absolute moral law as the foundation of the revelation, as its consequence, for like the Muslim it would be immaterial to you whether you acted morally, in accordance with this rule, or whether you killed innocent person, if only it were clear that that were necessary in order to get the planet all your own, where, incidentally, sex is divine.


Conclusions. In making a comparison, Abraham is simply out. Bad move on his part. Not really very smart. Mohammed and Smith have a very similar story so much so that you could almost think that if one were true the other would have to be true also, but that would be impossible since one is polytheistic and the other is monotheistic. And otherwise the only difference is that Smith’s is more convincing than Mohammed’s although it looks almost as though Smith had had Mohammed as a teacher on how to tell a good story.

And in neither case it is clear that the fundamental law with which all divine edicts are compatible is the moral law. That has not yet been made clear to the mind of this teacher of investigators.

With Paul alone is the moral law seen as clearly supreme and so this makes it impossible that Paul was confronted by a demon. He may have hallucinated, but he did not confront a demon, for the result of Paul’s revelation and his experience is the firm establishment of the law of love (the moral law) as the foundation for any and all edicts of God.

Mohammed and Smith cannot both be right, for they contradict each other, and yet we cannot tell which is true and which is false, for indeed they could also both be false, only not both true.

Paul does not so much contradict either as rather speak in a foreign tongue to them, for he speaks of a condition where a man comes to make his own law, and that it is a real law, for it is the law of love, the moral law, and he then complies with this moral law in his condition, be it as a social creature or as a longer, as a slave or as a master, etc. A transformation is the result and promise of this revelation of Paul, namely the follower of Christ will become one with him in spirit and in love and will share his afflictions and his glories. So by virtue of accepting Paul’s revelation an experience is anticipated where a person grows in doing good eagerly and with diminishing remorse, a perfection either instantaneous or progressive.

And so Paul has going for him the stamp approval of all rational being in concept in that his only law for being pleasing to God is a sincere love of doing good, and that God can only be understood in these terms.

In a sense, and this must be developed, Paul proclaims a new morality of self pronouncement, driven by reason (and attested to in Genesis 3:22, by the way). No longer is there any need or concern about rules of conduct, for these have been established once and for all: the moral law.

And then Paul says that it is natural for the Christian, at least the one who follows the risen lord, to come to love as Christ did, and so where the question of reward and cost no longer even seem to matter much anymore.

Perhaps at least this much could be suggested as an interim verdict (until I have time to develop this further). Abraham is flat out wrong. With Mohammed and with Smith it is not determined yet (in my mind) as to whether they are moral or amoral, and so they are both still suspect, and one could as easily be the work of a demon (until the moral core is discovered) as the other, and you can tell between them, a sorry state indeed if a revelation of God is such that it cannot be clearly distinguished from a fake. If either could exhibit a moral core, then that side would at least have that advantage. I would hate to have to choose between them, and if I had to, if there were nothing else, I guess I would choose Mormonism, although I would rather not choose between them.

Paul is the one that every rational person, when free of the confines of a dogma and prohibitions, et.al., would wish to be right, for he embodies the moral law of universal human dignity in the supremacy: love your neighbor as yourself is sufficient and essential to be pleasing to God. And so his result would be a world where people cooperated with each other as though a family and one that wanted to reach out and help all people, and not just the members of the family.

Not only would that be my first choice, I think, but I also have hope that he is indeed right, for he attests to having been an enemy of Jesus and has now become his friend, and says that this transformation will also occur with all you understands what it means and who sincerely want it and join in walking in the Way. And so we would then also have a hope that the realm of universal law of love will become fact for we would see the effect of this spirit in the lives of others and then also within us also.

The Paulian Christians must still cleanse their house and put aside all that smacks of Peterianism, i.e., they must accept the homosexual and the left hander and accept both as something not to even be noticed any more than we might notice the color of a person's eyes or hair, i.e., as an incidental. Paul can easily be interpreted consistently with this premise and so you must wonder why so many would-be Paulians refuse to accept the conclusion of a different reading. But that is another story.


And so over all, we would develop the determinations of divinity or divine revelations and subject all would be revelators to as much questioning as would be helpful in ascertaining the truth of these assertions. We may never be able to tell for sure (until after death), although many Paulians, especially the Wesleyans, believe that the experience of growing in love and the Abba/Father consciousness will be given to everyone who loves Christ and sincerely want to become like him, to become his brother.