The Argument from Locality<\/a><\/i><\/p>\nImagine Moses coming down from the mountain following his first conversation with God:<\/p>\n
Moses: \u201cO Israel, I have received the word of God, and the Chosen People have been revealed unto me!\u201d<\/p>\n
The People: \u201cTell us what God has decreed in His wisdom!\u201d<\/p>\n
Moses: \u201cErm, well, actually\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
The People: \u201cGo on\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Moses: \u201d \u2026it\u2019s the Philistines. I know, I know, but God is that He is, and He says the Philistines are his chosen people. What can you do?\u201d<\/p>\n
The People: \u201cSo what does this mean for us?\u201d<\/p>\n
Moses: \u201cAh. Thought you\u2019d ask that one. Since we are not God\u2019s chosen, and in fact rank rather far down His divine scale, it means that we have to give all our land and possessions over to the Philistines, even unto our women, yea, even unto our goats, and we must devote our lives to the glory of God and His chosen people, basically by becoming their slaves through all eternity. So says the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n
The People: \u201cSod that, we\u2019re converting to Egyptian Polytheism.\u201d <\/p>\n
The absurdity of this scenario is obvious and common sense alone would indicate that a religion based on such a message will not get very far. But that in itself is, of course, instructive on the nature of religion. Supposing God does have a chosen people (as many theists do), why then would he never ever tell anybody else about it but they themselves? Surely it would be to the advantage of his chosen if he made it plain to all other races just who the good guys were? Yet this has never happened.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Ian Gallimore, part of The Argument from Locality Imagine Moses coming down from the mountain following his first conversation with God: Moses: \u201cO Israel, I have received the word of God, and the Chosen People have been revealed unto me!\u201d The People: \u201cTell us what God has decreed in His wisdom!\u201d Moses: \u201cErm, well, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1308,"featured_media":0,"parent":5349,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5850","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n
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