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Series Code: GFF
Program Code: GFF000009S
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00:01 ♪ ♪ Subodh K. Pandit, M.D.
00:54 So welcome again, this time to Session eight. During this 00:59 session we are going to look at two features of these writings. 01:03 Number one: The authenticity, a specific test for authenticity. 01:08 And number two: A top feature of these writings. I think you will 01:12 enjoy them. So the question of authenticity first. Here's the 01:16 question: Does the writing and literature contain and describe 01:22 a test that an inquirer could use to determine its 01:25 authenticity, meaning evidence that the message came to the 01:30 human race from a source that could be classed "supernatural" 01:33 in nature and quality. You see these messages claim to have 01:39 come from the other world, the other dimension. You and I can't 01:44 go there. We've never been there so how do we know these messages 01:49 came from there, from the other supernatural dimension. So the 01:53 question here is, is there anything in the writing that 01:57 describes a test within the writing to help us determine 02:02 whether it's authentic or not. We will look carefully at 02:08 whatever the claims are. So let's look at the literature in 02:12 terms of its authenticity or whether it gave us an authentic 02:17 test. Hinduism, here are the words: "...we have to accept it 02:21 as it is; otherwise there is no point in trying to understand 02:26 the Bhagavad-Gita and its speaker, Lord Krishna." 02:29 In other words, the Hindu literatures do not describe a 02:34 test within the literature. It's there for you to take or if you 02:40 don't like it, discard. Check it out with you own ideas. But 02:46 there is no real test that is described there. How about 02:50 Buddhism? "...genuine realization of the emptiness of 02:54 the phenomenal world is...a direct intuition of the highest 02:59 truth. Absolute truth...is unconditional undeterminate and 03:03 beyond thought and word." Did you notice the word intuition 03:07 and the fact that it is beyond thought and word? So Buddhist 03:11 literature also does not describe a test within the 03:14 writings. So both Hinduism and Buddhism do not describe a test 03:19 inside the writings. However, they do describe a test and that 03:23 is a test of experience. This is what they say. Go ahead and 03:28 check it out in your experience. See how it pans out in real life 03:32 and then you know how authentic these writings are. It's a good 03:37 test and actually quite a bold test. The problem with that test 03:42 is that every other religion also has the same test. I've not 03:47 found any religion or religious writing that said just read it 03:51 and you'll get to the destination. No, every writing 03:56 describes a test which you are supposed to put into your life 03:59 experience and then you will get to the next step and the next 04:04 life. So Buddhism and Hinduism do not describe a test within 04:10 the writings. How about Islam? We do have a test. It says: 04:15 "Produce one chapter comparable to it. [to the Quran] Call upon 04:20 your idols to assist you, if what you say is true... But if 04:24 you fail (as you are sure to fail),... In fact, "If men and 04:29 jinn [jinn are a type of creatures in between humans and 04:33 angels.] "If men and jinn combined to produce a book akin 04:39 to this Quran, they would surely fail to produce it's like." or 04:45 even "ten chapters" and maybe even "one chapter," it says. 04:49 in Surah 10 and ayat 38. So here's a test. And so I was 04:54 quite pleased with that. I said wow, that's a good test, let me 04:56 go and check it out. But the moment I tried to do the test 05:00 four things I see blocked the test. Here are the four: It does 05:05 not describe what aspect to be equaled. If you ask me to equal 05:11 so and so, the first question I will ask is what aspect should I 05:15 equal; in looks or in height or complexion or in intellectual 05:21 ability or in grades or physical prowess? What aspect? It does 05:26 not mention the specific aspect to be compared. Number two: 05:32 What would be the method of comparison? How shall we do the 05:37 test? Is it a subjective method or objective method in which we 05:41 give grades so that this one gets 20 and that one gets 25, so 05:45 25 wins. It does not describe the method of comparison. 05:50 It also does not say who will be the judge. Will it be the 05:54 individual reading it? Will it a certain Iman or a mullah or 05:59 one of the musjid? Will it be a group or a committee like maybe 06:02 from the United Nations? Well it does not describe who will be 06:07 the judge. By default then the person who is reading and doing 06:12 the test is the judge. If that is the case, then if you ask me, 06:18 I feel that there are other writings which I cannot ever say 06:23 are inferior to the Quran at least in its beauty and its 06:27 prose and its meaning and the message that it brings. Erotic 06:33 writings too. Kahlil Gibran, Jalal Huben Humi are to name a 06:38 few. Beautiful writing. It's hard to say that it's worse than 06:41 the Quran. So who will be the judge? Not very sure. The last 06:47 of the four points that blocked the test is the language. 06:52 The Quran is the Quran only in the Arabic language because the 06:57 claim is that this Quran came down from Allah from his mother 07:02 book which he keeps in heaven and that book is in Quran, a 07:07 that book is in Arabic. So Arabic is the only language in 07:12 which you can describe the message from Allah. It's not 07:16 just the words, it is the sound of the words and the rhythm and 07:20 the rhyme that it produces. That is what is Arabic and that is 07:26 what is really the language of Allah. So how many people on 07:31 earth know that kind of an Arabic? The fact is the spoken 07:36 Arabic in the Arabian peninsula is not really the Arabic of the 07:40 Quran. It is very literal. It's beautiful. So how many people 07:45 know that? Less than one percent So more than 99 percent of the 07:50 human population does not know that Quran. So the test cannot 07:54 be done by all of us. Therefore it loses its universal test, the 08:02 universal quality of that test. So I could not test the Quran. 08:06 So I went to the Judeo-Christian scripture. I put them two 08:11 together, the Judaic and the Christian scripture and you'll 08:15 see the reason why. But before I get to that, I would like to 08:19 describe a certain statement by a French atheistic, brilliant 08:27 scientist. His name is Pierre- Simon Laplace. He described many 08:31 many, many years ago what he called as scientific determinism 08:36 Here's what he said: "We may regard the present state of the 08:41 universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its 08:45 future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all 08:48 the forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all 08:53 items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were 08:56 also vast enough to submit these data for analysis, it would 08:59 embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest 09:02 bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an 09:07 intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just 09:12 like the past would be present before its eyes." It's amazing 09:17 that an atheist would use the word intellect apart from human 09:21 intellect, and also give it some human characteristics like 09:26 seeing and eyeing but he did it. So what we are looking at is 09:31 this claim: That if there's an intellect that knows every 09:34 particle in the universe, knows every property of every particle 09:38 knows every law that governs every particle then to that 09:43 intellect nothing would be uncertain. He would look past, 09:48 he'd look to the future and he would know everything. For 09:51 example: If he looked at the atoms that make up this pointer 09:56 this intellect could go back 200 years and tell us exactly 10:01 what red each atom was and what happened in the 200 years to 10:06 make it into a pointer. Further he could look future, into the 10:10 future, 200 years say, and say where every atom from this 10:15 pointer would be 200 years from now. So he could, for example, 10:20 predict the future. Suppose the intellect sat here. How would we 10:24 test that intellect to say yeah we found that you are the 10:28 intellect? Well one way would be to ask him or her, it, that 10:34 intellect, tell us what will happen next week. And then maybe 10:39 next month. And then maybe next year or five years from now, 10 10:43 or 50 years from now. And then keep a record and find out 10:47 whether those predictions came true and if all of them came 10:50 true well then we might have identified that intellect. 10:54 Do you know that that is the exact test that is found in the 10:59 Judeo-Christian scriptures? Here is what it says: 11:02 "Present your case" says the Lord...bring them forth "and 11:05 show us what will happen... declare to us things to come. 11:10 Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that 11:14 you are gods." Isaiah used the word gods. You could easily put 11:19 the word intellect, that we may know that you are that intellect 11:22 It's called predictive prophecy. But just any prophecy or any 11:28 prediction is not really impressive as a predictive 11:30 prophecy. So here are five points that Douglas Krueger says 11:36 will point to a real genuine prophecy. Number one: It should 11:40 be clear, with enough detail to specifically describe the event 11:44 to be fulfilled. Number two: Should be unusual or unique and 11:48 not a common everyday occurrence Number three: It should be made 11:51 prior to the event that was supposed to be its fulfillment. 11:54 Number four: It should not be the sort that could be the 11:58 result of an educated guess. And number five: It should not 12:01 be staged or manipulated to intentionally cause its 12:05 fulfillment. So with these criteria, let's look at one 12:09 prophecy that's written in the Bible. Jeremiah was a prophet 12:14 and he wrote about Babylon. He said, "I will make her springs 12:19 dry." And also that "Babylon shall become a heap...without 12:24 an inhabitant." He wrote this about 595 B.C. when Babylon was 12:28 at its zenith, the most fortified, the most strong city 12:32 in the world. Now Cyrus the Medo-Persian was winning all his 12:37 wars until he came to Babylon. He eyed Babylon because he said 12:42 if he gets Babylon he would be world emperor. So his aim his 12:47 ambition was to get Babylon. But how would he defeat 12:50 Babylon, that fortified city? You know how wide the walls of 12:55 Babylon are? Our walls are about 18, 24 inches thick. The walls 13:00 of Babylon were double walled. And today when you look at the 13:05 archeological finds they say it's up to 87 thick in width. 13:11 A wall that big. How can you break down that wall? How high 13:15 did the wall go? Anywhere from 175 to 300 thick. So if you want 13:21 to climb over the wall you would have to get a ladder close to 13:23 the wall and you can't get a ladder close to the wall because 13:26 it was surrounded by a mote and the volume of the mote was equal 13:30 to the volume of the wall. Well the only way to win against such 13:35 a fortified strength of a city was to lay siege. But if you 13:39 must lay siege, that means keep your soldiers at the gate and 13:43 don't let anybody go in and out because the food has to come 13:46 from outside the city into the city for the people. And you 13:50 just pay your soldiers to sit and watch the gate. And you must 13:54 be extremely rich and have a lot of money in your coffers to pay 13:59 your soldiers just to sit and watch. So it's hard to have a 14:02 long drawn out siege. One year, one-and-a-half years, maybe two 14:08 years, two-and-a-half years maximum. Do you know why the 14:11 people inside Babylon would laugh to anybody who wants to 14:14 lay siege to it? Because they knew the store houses in Babylon 14:19 there was enough food for every one of its inhabitants for a 14:22 period of 20 years. Now how are you going to beat that kind of a 14:27 city? But it fell. You see Babylon was situated on the 14:32 river Euphrates. It ran from one end and out the other end of the 14:36 the city. It was the water supply of the city. Cyrus, the 14:39 Medo-Persian, according to Herodotus the historian, was 14:43 looking for a way into the city. One day his horse, as he passed 14:47 through one of the rivers, drowned in the river. He was so 14:51 upset. It was the river Euphrates. He called his 14:54 generals and he said, This river killed my horse. I want this 15:00 river dry. So do you know what the generals and the soldiers 15:03 did? They actually got together and dug anywhere from 80 to 300 15:08 canals, aqueducts barreling into the Euphrates and drained 15:13 it. What happened with those drains. Cyrus saw his way into 15:17 the city on the river bed and Babylon fell in one night 15:23 without a single drop of blood shed. Wow! After that Babylon 15:29 gradually deteriorated until today it's just a heap of ruins. 15:32 Here's what Smithsonian says: "Few words invoke as many images 15:39 of ancient decadence, glory and prophetic doom as does Babylon. 15:42 Yet the actual place, 50 miles south of Baghdad, is flat, hot, 15:47 deserted [and] dusty." That's amazing. You don't have to be a 15:52 believer. Just get a ticket to Baghdad and you can see the 15:55 ruins even today. So did the prophecy come true? Her springs 16:01 were dry. That was a prophecy. And even today it's a heap of 16:07 rubble. Nobody lives there at all. Two thousand five hundred 16:11 years and that prophecy still stands. How about another one? 16:15 The description of where somebody would be born. The town 16:20 was named, Bethlehem. The fulfillment is described in the 16:24 New Testament, Bethlehem. Prophetic date was 500 B.C. 16:29 And it occurred in four B.C. more than 500 years. How about 16:33 yet another prophecy. Psalms, which was written 1000 years 16:37 before Jesus says: "And for my thirst they gave me vinegar to 16:43 drink." And the story in the New Testament says, about Jesus: 16:47 He "said I thirst...and they filled a sponge with sour wine 16:52 ...and put it to his mouth." Same as vinegar. One thousand 16:57 years earlier. Scholars report that they have identified 600 17:02 prophecies in the Judeo- Christian scriptures, 322 refer 17:06 to a single individual, Jesus the Christ. Twenty-four of them 17:10 were fulfilled over just one weekend (the last weekend of his 17:14 life.) Now how many would impress you? I had thought when 17:17 I looked at that in the beginning 10 or 12 would be more 17:21 than enough, but look at how many there are. Look at the 17:24 statistic: "Peter Stoner considers 48 prophecies and 17:29 reports, 'we find the chance of any one man fulfilled all 48 17:33 prophecies to be one chance in 10 to the power of 157. That is 17:38 a really large number. We saw earlier that the total amount of 17:44 chance this universe provides is 10 to the power of 122. So the 17:49 total number of chances provided by the entire universe since its 17:53 inception is 10 to the power of 122 and we require 10 to the 17:59 power of 157 chances to have this done, 48 in just one 18:06 individual. It would require a series of 10 to the power of 35 18:11 consecutive UNIVERSES, one followed by 35 zeros. That many 18:17 universes to have this deal and this event actually take place 18:23 by itself. Therefore the prophecies were real, not by 18:27 chance. Look at this statement, two statements, one by 18:31 Pierre-Simon Laplace and the second by a respected believer 18:35 Ellen G. White who was acknowledged as the most 18:39 prolific nonscience writer in American history. Look at the 18:43 highlighted words: "For such an intellect" says Pierre-Simon 18:47 Laplace, "nothing would be uncertain and the future just 18:50 like the past would be present before its eyes." And the next 18:54 statement by the believer: "He that ruleth in the heavens [can 18:58 you imagine intellect] is the one who sees the end from the 19:01 beginning, the one before whom the mysteries of the past and the 19:04 future are alike outspread." Same words. So multiple sources 19:10 say the same thing. A brilliant atheistic scientist saying the 19:14 same thing as a respected believer. The words are found in 19:18 an ancient sacred literature and is verifiable by today, present 19:24 day secular history. That's amazing. So what about the 19:27 Judeo-Christian book so far? The New Testament is the best 19:31 historical literature, least gaps in time, greatest 19:34 manuscript evidence, we saw that and the authors were part of the 19:38 story. And today, the only writing, the Judeo-Christian 19:41 scriptures, that permits an open test for possible supernatural 19:47 origin. And now for the top features of these different 19:52 writings. The language of the Quran in Islam. It's stated to 19:59 be exquisitely beautiful. The prose go and the rhythm and the 20:05 way, it expresses its truth: "When they listen to it they 20:09 feel enveloped in a divine dimension of sound." One day 20:13 Umar Al-Khattab was so upset with Muhammad that he took his 20:20 sword and he wanted to kill him. Because he thought he was 20:23 reading heresy to the town. Before he went there, somebody 20:27 asked him to go back home and when he went back home there he 20:30 found the Quran being read in his own house. He was so upset 20:34 and angry that he physically and forcefully chased them out. 20:38 They ran helter-skelter leaving the Quran on the floor. 20:41 He picked it up and he read the 20th chapter to which it was 20:47 open. He read carefully and this is what it said: "How find and 20:51 noble is this speech, he said wonderingly, and this Muslim was 20:55 felled...[brought to his knees] by the beauty of the Quran 20:58 which reached through his passionate hatred and prejudice 21:01 to an inner receptivity that he had not been aware of." He put 21:05 the sword back in his sheath, walked down the streets to 21:09 Muhammad declared that he was now a converted Muslim on the 21:13 spot within the hour because of the beauty of the Quran. Did you 21:18 say wow to that? I hope you did. Because in the Quran Muhammad is 21:23 often called the Ummi Prophet the Unlettered Prophet. They say 21:27 he was not so literate. He could not read and write prolifically. 21:32 So the language of the Quran as he admits, exquisitely 21:36 beautiful, possibly supernatural How about Hinduism? One of the 21:43 top features is its deep philosophy. This is what 21:47 National Geographic said: Hindu sages gave to mankind one of 21:52 the most sophisticated systems of philosophy ever devised." 21:56 It contains a blend of religion, ethics, civil codes, medicine, 22:01 mathematics, astronomy, and other natural sciences. Do you know, 22:07 they wrote this law thousands of years ago. But here's some 22:11 details. For example, they describe a unit of time, it's 22:16 called Kalpa. It's 4.5 billion years, one unit, huge, long. 22:24 There's another unit of time on the other side is called a kashta. 22:27 That unit of time is bitty, it's a hundred millionth of a second. 22:33 How would they calculate and how would they gage such times 22:39 thousands of years ago? We don't know. But it's absolutely 22:43 amazing that thousands of years ago this literature would write 22:47 such detail and such deep philosophy and put them all 22:51 together as the writings show today. Amazing Hindu philosophy 22:55 and information, amazing, deep and brilliant. 22:59 Buddhism: There are three factors, 23:02 vast, detailed and mysterious. Let's look at 23:06 all of them. "The Pali Canon... [Pali's a language, it] fills 45 23:10 huge volumes... The Chinese scriptures consists of 100 23:14 volumes of 1000 closely printed pages each, while the Tibetan 23:19 extends to 325 volumes." The Buddhist literature is easily 23:24 the most vast literature in the religious world today. 23:29 Hundreds of thousands of pages. Half of them have never been 23:33 translated yet. What about detail? Look at this: 23:37 "The lord's body had 32 marks of a superman,... adorned with 80 23:41 subsidiary characteristics. He was endowed with 18 special 23:44 dharma's of a Buddha, mighty with 10 powers of a tathagata and in 23:48 possession of the four grounds of self-confidence." Detailed. 23:53 "The monks were subject to 250 rules known as Pratimoksha rules 23:58 How about one of their prayers? "May I be freed at all times 24:01 from the four states of woe, the three scourges, the eight wrong 24:04 circumstances, the five enemies, the four deficiencies, the five 24:08 misfortunes and quickly attain the path..." Detail. How about 24:12 mysteriousness: "The bulk of this literature is couched in a 24:16 deliberately mysterious language which would convey nothing to 24:19 the average reader." Here's one: "Suchness (reality) is neither 24:25 that which is existence nor that which is non-existence; neither 24:29 that which is at once existence and non-existence; nor that 24:33 which is not that at once existence and non-existence. 24:37 it is neither that which is unity nor that which is 24:40 plurality; neither that which is at once unity and plurality, nor 24:44 that which is not at once unity and plurality." Do you really 24:49 understand? It's really hard. How about another one? "The 24:53 realization that undifferentiated emptiness is 24:55 the sole absolute truth. Nirvana is therefore that mental state 24:59 in which one realizes that all things are really non-existent." 25:04 You're not supposed to understand it because it is 25:07 mysterious. You're supposed to use your intuition to understand 25:10 it. So Buddhism? Amazing, awesome, mysterious in its 25:15 vastness, detail and the mysteriousness of it. And of 25:19 course, you can say this possibly then "supernatural." 25:22 How about the Judeo-Christian writings. We put them together 25:26 because of this: This is a complex book consisting of 66 25:31 individual books written by about 40 human authors 25:34 over a period of 25:35 1400-1500 years. The spectrum of authors defies any coherent 25:40 classification for there were kings, military generals, 25:42 peasants, philosophers, fishermen, tax collectors, poets 25:46 musicians, statesmen, scholars, shepherds, farmers, etc. 25:49 But here is one thing that defines it: There are attesting 25:53 cross-references: Between authors of the Old Testament 25:56 for example: "I," [says Jeremiah] "I, Daniel understood 26:03 the number of years specified by the word of the Lord through 26:06 Jeremiah..." Between authors of the New Testament: Peter says, 26:12 "...also our beloved brother Paul, according to...wisdom 26:14 given him has written to you..." Between authors in the New 26:17 Testament and the Old Testament: "So all this was done that it 26:21 might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the 26:23 prophet Isaiah..." These are the words of Matthew. So each of 26:26 them is saying, The Lord gave me my message and this Lord also 26:30 gave him his message 500, 400 years ago. So This 'Lord' was 26:36 the source throughout the writing of the Bible. Therefore 26:40 this source had to live then at least 1400-1500 years because 26:45 that's how long it took to do the writing of the whole book. 26:49 Therefore this is humanly impossible to live for 1400 26:55 years. The most anyone lives today is about 120 years or so. 26:59 So all the top features are amazing and highly impressive. 27:04 They all get excellent marks. So when we review there's what 27:10 you find: The New Testament is by far the best attested ancient 27:14 historical piece of literature in the world. Number two: The 27:17 Bible is the only writing to possess an open test for 27:20 possible divine origin. And number three: The cross- 27:24 referencing by multiple authors points to a possible 27:27 supernatural feature. Could these point to a red marble? 27:32 If you have enjoyed this presentation with Dr. Subodh 27:36 Pandit and wish to watch more of this unique 13 part series for 27:40 free online visit the website GodFactOrFiction.com. That's 27:47 GodFactOrFiction.com. If you would like to order this 27:50 fascinating series on DVD it is now available from White Horse 27:54 Media... 28:02 Dr. Subodh Pandit has written two eye-opening books entitled 28:05 Come Search With Me: Does God Really Exist? and Come Search 28:10 With Me: The Weight of Evidence which further explore the topics 28:13 evolution, theism, atheism and religion. 28:18 ♪ ♪ |
Revised 2021-08-30