Of course, we could imagine a scenario in which we would give credence to the pope's visions, or to our own. If Jesus came saying things like "The Vatican Library has exactly thirty-seven thousand, two hundred and twenty-six books" and he turned out to be right, we would then begin to feel that we were, at the very least, in dialogue with someone who had something to say about the way the world is. Given a sufficient number of verifiable statements, plucked from the ethers of papal vision, we could begin speaking seriously about any further claims Jesus might make. The point is that his authority would be derived in the only way that such authority ever is—by making claims about the world that can be corroborated by further observation. As far as proposition 3 is concerned, it is quite obvious that the pope has nothing to go on but the Bible itself. This document is not a sufficient justification for his beliefs, given the standards of evidence that prevailed at the time of its composition