Expert: Austin Cline - 6/14/2011

Question
QUESTION: In relation to the following topic: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/National-Revelation-1.htm  - also I am just a kid so sorry for bad sentences or grammar.

I was wondering whether you could give a plausible way for the creation of public revelation. This is because I find it very hard to imagine that it is possible for people to make up a story involving millions of people who didn't see something, saying that they saw something. This is because when confronted, the story will fall apart as the millions of people do not exist, but as they do exist, this is not a problem.

To summarise my question: How can someone make up a national revelation?

ANSWER: Before a "public revelation" can be explained, we'd first need a clear example of one occurring. We need some actual event to talk about before trying to explain something - otherwise, there is literally nothing to explain.

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QUESTION: Mount sinai in the year 1313 BC would be the only example?

ANSWER: We have no reliable, verifiable information that anything happened there at all, much less something important.

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QUESTION: But how can one make a book which people beleive, if it is not true. You cannot start off the chain of people beleiveing it, for example if someone makes a story up and tells someone that their ancestors were talked to by G-d and the people that heard were all your friends ancestors, then you can verify the story with your friends. You will find that the person made it up and therefore it can't have been started. Please could you give me an example of how the bible could have been made-up and people believe it.

Answer
"But how can one make a book which people beleive, if it is not true."

Do you believe that every book ever printed is true? But they can't all be true because many contradict each other. Ergo, it's possible to have a book which isn't entirely true.

How do you get people to believe it? Almost no one takes steps to independently verify what they read. They accept what they read as true based on the authority of those from whom the book comes.

"You cannot start off the chain of people beleiveing it, for example if someone makes a story up and tells someone that their ancestors were talked to by G-d and the people that heard were all your friends ancestors, then you can verify the story with your friends."

How can you verify it? It's not like people have photographic and film records of every event in all their ancestors' lives.

"You will find that the person made it up and therefore it can't have been started."

People today believe nonsense they receive in email despite the fact that they can learn the truth simply by doing to a website like Snopes.

"Please could you give me an example of how the bible could have been made-up and people believe it."

The same ways that every other made-up story has been created and believed. You can't believe that the Bible is 100% true without also believing that other religious scriptures are false. So you can't base your believe that the Bible is true on the premise that it's impossible to create such a book and be believed without it being true because you deny that premise once you deny the truth of other scriptures.

So you need to have some basis for believing a story in the Bible is true other than "people believed it." That's a logically fallacious reason to believe anything.