



And they think they have this information from righteous people ( tzaddikim ) passed down in a chain of an oral tradition, tracing all the way back to Moses, Abraham, and even Adam (the supposed first-person). And the reason they think there's a god is because these people relayed that miracles have occurred in the past, and that a god did these miracles.





I was thinking recently that all the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) all, essentially, make this claim of an oral tradition, or a mesorah , which they believe gives them authority to express an opinion on whether a god exists.





However, let's cut through all the fluff. Forget about miracles, texts, prophecies, etc.





Let's just go back to a person, or even you, who supposedly experienced god.





So this presence, this voice, appears before you, and says, "I AM GOD."





As any good skeptic would question, you say, "Okay. That's a claim. How do I KNOW you're god?"





The voice says, "BECAUSE I ALWAYS TELL THE TRUTH."





"Okay. How do I KNOW you always tell the truth?"





"BECAUSE GOD CANNOT LIE."





"But why can't god lie?"





"BECAUSE GOD IS PERFECT."





"Right, but how do I know god is perfect?"





"BECAUSE I AM GOD!"





"But I'm not yet convinced you ARE god. See, you're engaging in what's called ' circular reasoning '. It's a logical fallacy whereby you assume the premises in the conclusion instead of DEMONSTRATING said premises."







This made me realize that all the talk about miracles, prophecy, magic, etc. is a way to distract from this very basic fallacy. If a voice suddenly appeared to me, and said it was god, it's ALWAYS going to be engaging in a logical fallacy if it attempts to persuade through its word alone.





Now, most Jews believe that this voice that Abraham, and Moses heard was INDEED the voice of a god. And to prove it ... it did MIRACLES. It suspended the laws of nature. It split an ocean and lifted a mountain. It made people come back from the dead.





However ... how does any of this, if it IS true, prove that a god did it?





How could you possibly be logically justified to believe it was a god that superseded the laws of nature? It could be a warp in spacetime. It could be super-powered aliens. It could be something we don't even comprehend. But none of the information leads us to the singular conclusion that it was NECESSARILY a god that did this. And any Jew who thinks it DOES is committing a logical fallacy. Somewhere in that little circle they have accepted something on faith, or on authority, or accepted a claim prematurely, at the very best.





And the only rational, reasonable answer when faced with all these phenomenon would simply be ... "I DON'T KNOW." I wouldn't know how to process it if I saw the laws of nature being overturned, but it wouldn't matter. I'm confident that, through scientific inquiry, even that "superseding" of nature would, itself, be another law, an unknown law, that would explain things in a perfectly rational manner. One thing that would NOT explain anything would be to listen unequivocally to a magical, disembodied voice that does magic tricks and demands us to worship it as an omnipotent authority ... simply because, "I said so."









News flash for people who don't know: Judaism believes in a god.