Tom Facchine – The Comment Section #17 – Superstition vs. True Faith

			If there was a message from the Creator, what would it have to have? What would it look like? And
what if I saw it would be a red flag that I would know right away that this is not can't possibly
be.
		

			The difference between superstition and true religion or true faith is that true faith has evidence
or a superstition does not have any evidence. Some people want to pump the brakes on to say, Well,
wait a second, you can't prove anything. This is about faith. And I'm telling you that your idea of
evidence is poor and overly narrow, because there's many different types of evidence, but you're
thinking of is just empirical evidence. Okay? But even that has a role to play. But we'll get there
in a second. But there's other types of evidence, right? Internal cohesion is extremely important if
somebody comes to me and tells me that the Creator said so and so said this thing, or that thing, or
		

			the other thing, there's any contradiction within that set of instructions that I can infer that
that is actually not from the Creator, either all of it or part of it, right? Because if a creator
is all powerful, and all knowing and wise, and all intelligent, things like that, and the issue, the
instructions that they gave, or the information that they gave about reality will not contradict
itself. Okay. Another important thing is how can it predict events that occur in the future? Okay,
this is something that happens is a revelation that you have the Koran, for example, was revealed to
human beings in the seventh century Arabia, okay? And it predicted things that literally happen,
		

			okay, you have the victory of the Byzantines over this, this oscillates, okay, which nobody saw
coming at the time it even said it was gonna happen within 10 years, and it happened within 10
years. And there's other things right, so how does one account for the fact that there are depending
on how you want to call them the religious texts are divinely inspired texts that accurately predict
future events or specific future events? How are you going to account for that, okay? Conversely, if
there is a document that claims to be revelation, or claims to be divinely inspired and botches it,
right, it predicts something that's going to happen in the future. And it doesn't like the end of
		

			the world or y2k or any of these sorts of things, then we know that that either in part or in whole
is not actually a divine communication. It's not from the Creator, communication from the Divine
also has to be geared towards human benefit. And this is a tricky kind of, there's a middle ground
here because it's not that divine revelation is only about human benefit, as humans understand that
no divine revelation also pushes on human definitions of what is beneficial, what's not. But it's
not just jumping through hoops, okay? Like true religion. True Faith is not just it's not arbitrary.
It's right. I don't, my my, my prayer is not hopping up and down on one foot was patting my stomach,
		

			okay, that's not an expression of gratitude and humility and things like that bowing down and
getting you know, putting my forehead on the floor is an expression of humility, right? It has
meaning behind it. Okay. Staying away from intoxicants, staying away from usury and interest, these
sorts of things have human benefit behind it, it's clear, you can disagree with it, you can say,
well, maybe the benefits outweigh the harms, or this thing or this other thing, but it has human
benefit behind it. It's not just completely taboo, right? We don't understand anything about it.
Okay. And so this is one of the these are just a few of the ways and there's many other ways to
		

			differentiate between what is actual revealed guide guidance, versus what's just superstition, and
people who, you know, you can't put the cart before the horse because some people they just reject
out of hand all sorts of metaphysical or supernatural whatever language we want to use phenomenon.
Well, then you have to wrestle with that first, okay. You can't be talking about the particulars of
religious guidance. If you don't even believe in anything that's outside of material reality. You've
got bigger problems, right? So if somebody wants they've wrestled with that and come to the
conclusion that yes, there are things that are beyond the physical reality. And even physicists,
		

			especially quantum physicists are starting to, you know, awaken to the fact that Newtonian physics
is not just where it's at, we don't have a mechanistically determined universe like we thought we
did. Once you've submitted to that, then you can get into the particulars about okay, well, if I
admit to the phenomenon, or the possible phenomenon of religious guidance, or divinely inspired
communication and things like that, then how am I to tease out because everybody claims to be from
the Creator, every communication or text wants to claim that it's divinely revealed. Well, how do I
sort through those things? Well, first, you have to realize that it's not a proof that they're all
		

			wrong, just that some of them claim that and are wrong, right? Just the fact that one of them or
many of them claim to be divinely revealed, and they're not does not necessarily entail that all of
them are similarly false, right? So you have to go through that process of weeding through them and
saying, Well, how would I know? Okay, and this depends on your sense of theology, Who is Allah? Who
is God? Who is the creator, that's going to affect what the message would look like? And you should
always ask yourself open ended questions. If there was a message from God, if there was a message
from the Creator, what would it have to have? What would it look like? And what if I saw it would be
		

			a red flag that I would know right away that this is not it can't possibly be if you answer those
questions, then you're in a position where you're able to parse out what's genuine revelation and
communication with the Divine and what's just human fabrication.