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Yet another example if "if you were wrong, then you would be wrong." If religion is false then it is purely cultural, yes. Assuming that it is false, and then using the fact that it would therefore be cultural as evidence that it is false, is extremely common and annoying.
What is common and annoying is people of different religions assuming that theirs is the true one, with quite scant evidence. Even in spaces that are ostensibly concerned about epistemology.
Purely logically, at least 99 of 100 One True Lord Gods must be fake, or all of them are not as One True as the religions teach.
Sure, and the same is true of absence of religion. Logically, out of the set of contradictory belief systems, at most one is correct.
Besides, I don't care what belief systems we're talking about, you can't just manufacture your own evidence out of nowhere like that.
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Even assuming another revelation, how else would it go that the exact same revelation would occur again? Even if the Quran or the New Testament were to be revealed again, the culturally and historically contingent events would not arise in the same way. I think the argument here is more in the definition of "the same religion" here.
I mean yeah there would certainly be some minor differences, the question is how major they have to be before it counts as a new religion. If there is a true religion though, presumably the same religion would arise again, minor differences in beliefs and historical context notwithstanding.
So you're saying if there's a sufficient similarity of values and beliefs it is substantively the same to you?
Hayy Ibn Yaqzun argues the same, that Islam effectively arises spontaneously absent human interference.
Yeah I'd say so, what else enforces religious continuity? The survival of institutions? Seems to me like beliefs are by far the most important aspect of most religions.
I think generally you can count on the belief system, if there is a true one, actively interfering with the world to bring the true religion back. Muslims believe an angel appeared to Mohammed; under their belief system surely another angel would show up to a new guy and share God's word again if that knowledge were lost. Us Mormons believe this has already happened--some of God's word was lost from the bible so more was sent.
In general I think pretty much all belief systems, including atheism, are confident enough about their premises to believe that they would show up again were all their adherents killed somehow.
I'm not sure a second revelation after the destruction of Christianity is, properly speaking, Christianity. Any more than, say, Islam is Christianity.
Well it just comes down to how you define the religion. To be clear I only really think a resurrected Christianity would count as Christianity if Christianity were true. More precisely, both the old Christianity and the new one would be institutions set up by God for his own purposes, and that's way more relevant than any historical context or beliefs of either religion. It's just a question of definitions though so at this point I'm not sure the answer matters either way.
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