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[I'm Wrong]

> So what you are saying with this statement is that the animals in the zoo are fun for children to see, right?

No.

> Am I really allowed to read your statement in any way I wish if language means anything and if communication can be effective?

That's not reading.

> Ah, but these people claim not only divine involvement but also divine inspiration, and that's what we must honestly evaluate.

We, I don't agree that we must, but it does sound like a good idea. What standard should we use? What would be signs of divine inspiration?

[jimwalton]

> That's not reading.

My point exactly. Nor are we legitimately allowed to make the Bible say whatever we want it to say.

> What standard should we use? What would be signs of divine inspiration?

Great question. In the Bible, God confirmed His messages with signs to confirm that it was from Him (say, the burning bush or making Moses's hand leprous). These miracles don't have any durative evidence, so there's no way for us to do a science experiment on them, but it confirm for Moses that he wasn't just hallucinating. So also with Jesus walking on the water on changing water to wine.

We're left to evaluate the writers who wrote, "Dude, I was THERE. I saw it with my own eyes." We have to evaluate the integrity and credibility of the writers.

I have some family who now live in Costa Rica, and several years ago my wife and I were there. While walking through a national forest we saw an agouti cross the trail. I grabbed for my phone to take a picture, but he was gone as quickly as he was there. Should people believe me that I saw it? My wife was there, too, so there are two of us. But should people believe us? I have no evidence. It comes down to whether I am an honest and reliable source of information.

These people who wrote the Bible claim to have messages from God that were confirmed by signs. They claim to have seen these things. There's no way to go back and take a picture. I have to decide on the integrity of the writer and the reliability of the writings.

Secondly, we evaluate such things by whether others, who are also reliable have had the same kinds of experience. Sure, every village has an idiot and we can always blame religious experience on mental illness—but when people across the globe have the same experiences over the course of centuries, one has to wonder.

For instance, right now there are hundreds of Muslims, from different locations and they don't even know about each other, claiming to have visions of Jesus that say similar things. Are they all hallucinating by a script? That's unlikely.

If there is a God, we might reasonably expect that there would be some contact and communication with humans. Many claim to have experienced this phenomenon.

Richard Swinburne writes: "What are we supposing? An experience is a conscious mental going-on. Experiences can be effects of reality (I think I hear a car outside the window, and there is one) or effects of sensation (I think I hear a car outside the window, but there isn’t one). Into which category do religious experiences fall? It could be either: (1) God or an angel may actually appear to me, or (2) I may have a sensation of 'the room going around' or of 'a timeless reality outside myself.' Sometimes the car appears to moving when it is not; sometimes it actually is. What constitutes religious experience? It is an epistemic event where the subject is metaphysical. Experiences can be public (shared by others) or private. One is no less or more legitimate than the other. The important question is the legitimacy and validity of these experiences.

"Philosophers sometimes claim that an experience is evidence from nothing beyond itself, and therefore religious experience has no evidential value. Quite obviously, if you literally walk into a table that is physically there and raise a bruise on your thigh, there is good evidence for the table and your experience with it. It is also verifiable that your experience of reading what I have written is both rational and valid. Perception is how we process reality. In the absence of special considerations, experiences can be taken as genuine, and there is no rational reason to isolate religious experiences as being in a different category. There are substantial grounds to believe in the existence of God. It is intuitively right to take the way things seem to be as the way they are.

"Efforts to restrict religious experience from validity are either unjustified or unsuccessful."

He obviously says a lot more, but I don't want to bore you with a quote that drones on. What are the signs of divine inspiration? Usually that God confirms the message with a phenomenon, that the experience has credibility, that it is confirmed by others, and that it turns out to be reliable and true.