Are You Religious?

[James]

To ManipulatorGeneral, on historical evidence and the argument from inconsistent revelations:

[Click to Show Content]

Certainly a valid question; there are a few approaches by which I determine this. I find no historical evidence supporting religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism...(a lot more after this cut for space reasons)

What historical evidence for Christianity can you find? Genuinely curious. I think we've talked a bit about this before...

One other observation I make about the differing gods is the often-cited argument from inconsistent revelations: that all theists experience God, so why should one be any more credible than the other? It is obvious that not everybody can be correct, so the solution is, again, which god makes most sense. I find that positing the Christian God as true, or at least one of the Abrahamic ones, sorts out this problem:

I think you may have missed the elegance behind the argument from inconsistent revelations. People believe or have believed in Allah, the Jewish version of the Judeo-Christian god, the various Hindu gods, the Sikh god, East Asian gods, African gods, pagan gods, Ancient Greek gods, Ancient Norse gods, Ancient Egyptian gods, the Zoroastrian god, etc. - people believe or have believed in these deities just as fervently as you believe in Jesus Christ. People have profound personal experiences with every religion. How can you claim your personal experiences to be valid while simultaneously rejecting the exact same personal experiences that others claim? (My answer to this is hubris, by the way.) The argument from inconsistent revelations shows how extraordinarily easy it is for people to delude themselves with falsehoods. It raises not the question "which personal experiences are correct?" but rather "given what we know about personal experiences, how can we justify labeling ANY personal experiences as correct?".

To Geodave and PB_guy on the subject of "choosing" a religion:

[Click to Show Content]

And MOST PEOPLE do not choose a religion -- they just pretty much stick to the one they are born into.

I believe that you are correct, Dave. Most (emphasis on most) people don't choose their religious beliefs (including atheism), they fall into them culturally, most commonly via their immediate family.

I would argue this is more evidence against religion (specifically, personal experiences). Why, if personal experiences are actually true, can one determine the nature of that personal experience (i.e. which God) by looking at where the experiencer lives on a map?

My parents are atheistic, but they never instructed me one way or the other. They taught me how to think, not what to think. I wish more parents did this. I ended up going from the "null state" of atheism to deism to atheism again to Christianity to atheism a third time(or something like that ). I'm pretty comfortable not only with what my thoughts on the issue are, but the process by which I came to those thoughts. I find it interesting that, what with this being one of the most important issues facing not only humanity as a whole but each individual human as well, that it is one of the least thought about. Critical thought, valued in every other area of life, is discouraged when it comes to religious issues. Perhaps it is the fear of not wanting to insult or disobey God by even considering the possibility that he doesn't exist. Perhaps it is because faith (the belief in something without evidence) by definition cannot be supported by critical thought. Perhaps it is because it makes people uncomfortable to think that they could be wrong about their view of the world. Perhaps it is because people have never even considered the possibility that they could be wrong about an issue such as this. I'd argue it's all of the above, but whatever the reason it's cool that at least some decent discussion can be had on the issue here.

Excerpt from Richard Dawkins' book "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution", Chapter "Before Our Very Eyes", section "Forty-five thousand generations of evolution in the lab", describing in detail an experiment which quite literally shows evolution in action, including the "addition" of "information":

[Click to Show Content]

I'm not typing the whole thing out Here's a .pdf of the book, the excerpt starts at page 56: http://www.tocorre.c...192.7509.lg.pdf (note: it may take a while to load)

To myself:

[Click to Show Content]

Goodbye, 8 hours of my life.

<div class="ipsSpoiler" data-ipsspoiler>
<div class="ipsSpoiler_header">

Wasn't wasted, though.

<div class="ipsSpoiler" data-ipsspoiler>
<div class="ipsSpoiler_header">
Also, PB_guy, I meant the spoiler above this one.