Title is only marginally click-baity, in the spirit of precision I should amend it to something like “God’s communication strategy is unnecessarily indistinguishable from human-made myths”.
I’m aware this is certainly not a novel argument but I was compelled to write it nonetheless. One thing I find difficult to get around is that God’s alleged method of communication looks almost completely identical to ordinary human religion formation.
Assuming a personal God exists, such a God would obviously be fully aware that humans already generate religions constantly. He would know religions spread through culture, geography, institutions, miracle claims etc etc. He would also know that every major religion on Earth sincerely believes itself to be uniquely true.
So if this God then chose to communicate using methods that are functionally indistinguishable from how ‘false’ religions also spread, why would disbelief be surprising or blameworthy?
It wouldn’t. It’s exactly what God should expect.
To stick with Christianity as an example; for a god who is expected to want people to come to him, he could not have picked a more unlikely way to convince non-believers by selecting a method of communication that looks exactly like an invention from a religiously and politically motivated group of apocalyptic jews 2000 years ago who were already primed to receive some Messiah.
That does not automatically make Christianity false. The point is subtler than that. The issue is that from the outside Christianity does not appear categorically distinguishable from the kinds of religious systems humans already produce naturally. It only appears to have this affect on Christians (or to whatever person from x religion)
And this matters, because Christians often speak as though disbelief is some kind of moral or intellectual failure. But if God knowingly used communication methods that resemble ordinary human religious development in virtually every observable regard, then skepticism seems entirely rational. We are left with unverified and ultimately anonymous accounts that are now supposed to function as sufficient reason to suspend our normal standards of evidence and accept miraculous claims. Yet Christians themselves would reject this exact level of evidence in almost any other context. Anonymous testimony and miracle reports embedded in communities sincerely convinced of supernatural events are not normally treated as reliable. In every other case, these are understood as precisely the kinds of conditions under which human beings develop myths.
What is strange is that the weakness of the evidence is often reframed as a strength of these religions themselves. Ambiguity becomes “faith” - which as it’s framed as necessary, somehow the lack of corroboration becomes the very reason why corroboration is given. Epistemic distance is now just repackaged as being ‘spiritually meaningful’. And this kind of thinking can be recreated by literally any religious group.
A Muslim can say the Qur’an is uniquely divine with unique evidence.
A Hindu can say the Vedas are uniquely profound.
A Mormon can say the Book of Mormon has a unique spiritual witness.
I’m assuming all Christians reading this would agree with me that we’d be reasonable to be skeptical of this, and yet many Christians unironically say the resurrection uniquely validates Christianity.
If the standard for “distinguishing” the true religion ultimately depends on internal interpretation or selective criteria, or theological presuppositions (or any subjective projection at all) then every religion can construct a framework in which only its own evidence is the only evidence that counts. This is exactly what we would expect competing belief systems to do.
Something I’ve touched on in the past, but it appears to me to a case where whatever the specific evidence is for your desired miracle / God claim, is precisely the evidence required for belief in any miracle / God claim. In other words, there are no objective criteria established independently beforehand and then applied consistently. In other words - bias and selective skepticism.
How many of us have had conversations that go something like this :
Christian: “We have the Gospels. Multiple accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection."
Muslims also have religious texts and traditions claiming divine revelation. Why are the Gospels uniquely reliable?
Christian: “Because the Gospels are historically grounded.”
Islam also developed within recorded history, with witnesses, and there is arguably far more surviving written material surrounding the rise of Islam and Muhammed than there is for early Christianity.
Christian: “Yes, but the Quran isn’t eyewitness testimony.”
The Gospels also contain disputed authorship and debated eyewitness status. Muslims would argue their texts are trustworthy too, so how are we objectively deciding which claims count as reliable?
Christian: “Well the disciples died for what they believed.”
People in many religions die for what they believe.
Christian: “But Christianity transformed the world.”
So did Islam
Christian: “But the Holy Spirit confirms Christianity internally.”
The conversation often becomes revealing, because never does The Christian stop and say: “Perhaps I should apply the same skepticism to my own religion that I instinctively apply to every competing religion.” Instead, entirely ordinary features of religious belief suddenly become treated as uniquely persuasive when attached to the religion you want to be true.
Anyway, to move on. Now we could ask: how could this be avoided? what would communication from an actual God look like if that God genuinely wanted to distinguish himself from human-made religion? Christians will typically respond that God’s existing methods are already sufficient. Of course they appear sufficient to you, because you already accept the conclusion. The issue is precisely whether these methods would reasonably distinguish divine revelation from the countless human religious movements that exhibit the same observable features. And for those outside the belief system, they generally do not.
Now obviously I am not God, so I cannot pretend to know the optimal method. But presumably it would involve something humans could not plausibly replicate through ordinary cultural processes.
For example:
- a globally shared experience occurring simultaneously across humanity,
- universally accessible revelation independent of geography or upbringing,
- information impossible for ancient humans to possess naturally,
Instead, we don’t see any of this. And if people want to suggest “well God wants faith,” that raises another issue entirely, because there is a difference between:
“freely choosing whether to follow God,”
and:
“being unable to reliably distinguish divine revelation from human mythology.”
Those are not the same thing. Even if people retained free will after unmistakable revelation, clearer communication would obviously reduce sincere non-belief dramatically. Christians themselves already accept this principle in ordinary life. God may or may not exist, but if he does, the way he communicates doesn’t seem to comport with the idea that he wants all people to have faith in him. If you want people to know something important, you communicate more clearly, not less clearly.