Competent Theology

The previous post referred to the common belief that God is competent to know the truth. I was raised to believe that with no doubt. At the same time I was raised to be aware of some basis for our beliefs: Thomas saw the nail holes in the resurrected Jesus' hands ... Unfortunately for the common brand of theological epistemology I also became aware of other, more careful, more imaginative, more cautious epistemologies: to whit, science (and to philosophy not beholden to stone age theologies): the evidence must be evident to a group, any individual must be allowed to falsify the creed, experiments must be repeatable ...

So the mass audience trusts God's judgment: if God says the Jews really own the Canaanites' land, then the Jews must really own it: after all, it's really God's land anyway, isn't it? it's really God's everything. But shouldn't God be able to show us some evidence? (And no matter how much evidence God shows, what makes human audiences competent to judge the authenticity of evidence?)

Crazy Horse and his people had been living in the shadow of the Black Hills, at the Black Hills time of year, for longer than any Lakota could remember: how did their land and their sacred Black Hills suddenly belong to Washington DC and to the generals DC sent after Crazy Horse defeated Custer?

We should believe God's Judgment because God created the world! How do we know that? Evidence suggests that the universe came into being way longer ago than ten billion years. (How were "years" measured six billion years before there was an earth? How credible is God's claim to have made it six thousand years ago when it was already fourteen billion years old? Why should we trust the beliefs of any congregation of illiterate mis-readers of group fiction?)

If God says that Matthew Arnold was really the hero and George Washington the goat, does it suddenly become true? Should Matthew Arnold believe it? Should George Washington? Should Martha Washington?

When God tells us these things, will be be "telling" us? with words? in what language? why should we believe that we are competent to understand God no matter what language he addresses us in?
When the federal judge repeated the FBI's lies about me I knew that the federal judge was wrong, that he was a fool as well as a moron (or was he merely another bald-faced liar?)

Fools and morons are always asking me if I believe in God. Why can't any of them ever understand my simple answer: Never mind my relationship with God (It's personal, it's profound, it's direct ...); understand this: it's man I don't believe in! It's human institutions I don't trust.

Never mind how trustworthy I believe my own judgment to be: it's my mistrust of YOUR judgment that's relevant here.