It is not that difficult to distinguish between a true Messenger of God and someone who just thinks he is a messenger if one does the necessary research and investigation. One has evidence to support His claim to be a Messenger and the other has jack squat.
I really don’t know what research could possibly support such a claim. Well... except for verifiable miracles. But even that wouldn’t necessarily confirm that the person is a messenger of God. The person could be like an X-man and either pretending or delusional that the powers come from god. Or he could be an alien— so maybe a messenger, but just not necessarily from god.
What comes first, the chicken of the egg? How could you ever know the will of God without a message from God, and if God does not communicate any other way but through a Messenger how could you know the will of God without what the Messenger revealed? Think about it.
How is this helpful if we can not verify that the messenger comes from God?
There will always be winners and losers in life, but only in the sense that some people can achieve things that others cannot achieve. We cannot all be the same. Can we all be attorneys or physicians just because we all want to be attorneys or physicians? No, we have to earn that privilege and some of us are not cut out to be an attorney or a physician or do not have that opportunity or the necessary intelligence.
If God revealed Himself to everyone directly, then some people who did not earn the privilege of knowing that God exists would find out that God exists. That is not fair to other people who worked hard, people who made a sincere effort to search for God and found God on their own merit.
Is it unfair for a teacher to expect a student to earn a grade? Should everyone get an A just because they took the class?
If god revealed himself directly at the beginning of everyone’s life, then the issue of “hard work for some, no work for others” would be resolved. We’d all start out on a level playing field.
As for your student example, I am not sure why Figuring out that God exists should be the test in the first place. Do students have to go searching for a school that may or may not exist before they can even start studying?
The sincerity and effort could be demonstrated in actually doing whatever it is god wants us to do— whether it is to be a good person, or becoming one with everything, or to devote our lives to his worship, or whatever.
All that God expects of people is sincerity and effort. Not everyone will be able to believe in God or in a certain religion because of factors that constrain our free will; factors such as childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances all effect what we will believe. Certainly what we refer to as “free will” has many constraints. Of course an omniscient God understands that and takes it into consideration.
Well, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? If God honors effort, even if we ultimately fail, then ok— it doesn’t really matter that the playing field is unfair. But if God requires success (i.e. belief in him and the correct religion), then the fact that some people aren’t cut out to be “doctors” or “lawyers” is very unfair. Salvation shouldn’t be dependent upon an accident of birth.
Why do you think that communication requires understanding? Would you say that a professor with a PhD in math who teaches calculus could make a first grader understand calculus? It would be meaningless communication to the first grader, but isn’t it still communication even though the child does not understand it?
No, I would not say that is communication, if nothing is understood. Think of the pheromone communication that ants use among themselves. As you destroy their nest, they may desperately aim those pheromones at you— in an
attempt of communication. But nothing would be communicated because you do not understand it.
Communication requires both a sender and a receiver. If the receiver is broken, then the sender is just making noise.
What you need to understand is that we cannot ever understand God directly. God cannot make us understand Him directly because the human mind is incapable of understanding God directly. God would have to recreate man in order to make that possible.
There is no way around the use of Mediators because humans are incapable of understanding God directly. We are only able to receive and understand God’s communication as it is filtered through a Messenger.
Two things:
1. You said “God would have to recreate man in order to make that possible.” So this means it is possible for God to speak directly to us. He would just have to fix us. He’s omnipotent. He could do it right now and make it like that’s how it’s always been. So like I said, it’s not that he can’t, it’s that he chooses not to.
2. I agree that (in its current form) our human minds would not be able to understand all that is God. I also think that we can’t understand all that is anyone, really. God is just orders of magnitude higher. You cannot fully comprehend your best friend, so of course you cannot fully comprehend God.
But.
But you still can comprehend that your friend exists. You can still comprehend some things about your friend. We do not need to be able to fully comprehend God in order to be able to comprehend some things about God. We could comprehend that he exists, for instance— people literally believe that he exists now, so we are obviously able to comprehend that a god-like being exists.
God doesn’t need to dump everything into our brains. The Christians believe he was able to become human, once. Obviously, he’d be able to modulate the information he imparts so that it is able to be comprehended by the human mind.
If he prefers to use Messengers, fine. That’s his choice. But let’s not pretend that an omnipotent, omniscient God can’t figure out how to directly communicate with us.
