National Revelation

The concept that the strongest form of evidence is information transmission from one's ancestors, through the parents, to you (the child).

Parallels of the attacks given against national revelation occur wherever empirical evidence is relied upon, where that empirical evidence is then relied upon to transmit information (or is no longer available over time). there will arise contradictory evidence among the pool of evidence if and when that empirical evidence is no longer available. Examples to follow.

In five million years, we will no longer be able to detect the effects of cosmic background radiation (and therefore prove the universe is, for example, expanding). In every way in which people would need to rely on previous evidence, we rely on the claim of national revelaiton:

• To fake it would require conspiracy among millions of people (nearly impossible)
• No direct physical evidence
• All evidence based on testimony
• No surviving written records from antiquity, only recent history (last ~1000-2000 years)
• Even if the prediction model claims that cosmic background radiation would dissapear, and this was initially seen as confirmation of the original theory, after the fact it would be considered a rationalization or an ad hoc argument in the same sense, as for example, the cessation of prophecy as stated in (malachi) – a convenient just-so story to rationalize why there is no evidence.
• The more time passes after this event the more plausible it seems that the notion of cosmic background radiation was a complete fabrication

In the same manner, we don't even know what a Dodo looks like today because of the discrepancy in dodo art in historical books over the last few hundred years. No people alive today know that dodos existed– and any skeletal remains cannot be definitively identified as a dodo. In fact there is general evidence that the dodo itself was a misidentified species, and that even people who had seen a dodo (such as a certain dodo shipped to England) may have seen some other tropical bird and simply not known if it was really a dodo (but assumed it was out of presupposition or expectation)… etc.

In short there is no available evidence other than ancestral transmission. Empirical evidence cannot be required because it is transient.

Thus we see that the claim of national revelaiton is in fact one of the strongest forms of evidence that it is possible to have, over the long term, across various cultures and beliefs – the constant is the transmission of language and culture from parent to child. It is in this manner that Judaism has transmitted itself over time – in contrast to any other (every other) culture and religion.

it's not “empirical evidence” – it existed before the notion that “empirical evidence” was such a strong form of evidence. We thus find this type of ancestral transmission a stronger form of evidence than empirical evidence per-se; such that at the very least, to the degree that there is no empirical evidence to support a claim and there is no empirical evicence to deny it, the strength of the claim of national revelation is strong enough to drive a claim for ecumenical authority (otherwise known as a “justified true belief”).