A powerful argument against any specific religion

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The only thing I meant was that a world that has sentient beings has a pretty low probability for Christianity to arise, so I didn't think it could be compared to general ideas like capitalism, socialism and atheism. Do you understand me now?

Very good post. Personally, I have no problem with people believing in religions as long as their relidiocy doesn't affect others.

The argument doesn't say anything about 1+1=3, since nobody teaches it. But it does debunk 1+1=2, which as we all know is believed because it is taught in schools.


Not really. I'm saying that you need some degree of faith in an opinion in order to even be able to maintain that opinion. Perhaps I chose the wrong word here, since faith has multiple definitions. The meaning I was referring to was constancy of opinion in the face of doubt and/or opposition.


There is a main stream of Christianity. Most of those who aren't in the mainstream are at least fairly close. Some things are much more core beliefs than others.


To him, yes. But if you have to prove that you're right before you can prove to someone else that they're wrong, why not just prove you're right and leave it at that?


The problem with arguing against this subset of Christianity is that you open yourself up to charges of making a strawman argument when you argue with any other subset, or even a non-typical member of the subset.


I don't really reject objectivity, just the idea that you can prove that you've found it. And as I mentioned, not that heavy on belief for belief's sake.


A will isn't random, but it isn't deterministically predictable either. If you've ever heard of Chaos theory from mathematics, it's kind of like that.

Yeah, I guess I'm still not connecting the two. The only two ways I can think of that your going with that are either a) Christianity is too esoteric and arbitrary to be of purely human origin or b) that people who practice codified religion are something almost pre-human in mentality.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 07 Apr 2009, 8:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well, ok, but that also admits to rational doubts.


There are multiple mainstreams of Christianity, depending on where you call the starting point of "Christian" to be. The weighting of core beliefs varies depending upon your position.


Well, nobody proves anything, they suggest it. Proofs usually fail, as the standards are too high, but inductive arguments based upon a cumulative case are valid, and emotional issues can lead to a misweighting of evidence more against an inductive argument than a deductive one. Thus, if he wanted to make an inductive case, then the use of this is fine.


Well, no you don't, so long as you are willing to admit that other Christians exist. If you looked at my original claim, I didn't say that all theists or Christians or anything like that were exclusivists, but rather admitted that there was a train of thought that worked like that. In any case, some elements of the argument can be reformatted as necessary, such as the claim that bad knowledge is a problem. It is weaker, but it can be used for a cumulative inductive case.


Chaos theory IS deterministically predictable, just not in a practical manner. The reason being that small variances in conditions at one point lead to massive changes in later. The issue is that this does not seem to apply in this situation if the overwhelming majority of people are in a similar end point to where they start, as in this case. That is actually the opposite of chaos theory as far I can tell.

A fascinating statement and very indicative of mental capability.

It was meant as irony -- the supposedly rational argument has this effect, which shows why it's useless.

Just forget it, OK?

And if you actually found out that 1+1=2 is very much a result of culture, you would probably be less adamant about it, as the question quickly emerges about why so many other people do not believe this. After all, part of the nature of truths is that they are considered universal, but here we have a believed truth that isn't universally held. The ideas that must be accepted to uphold this idea are "everyone else is stupid", or "I am lucky to find out this truth". Either one of those makes 1+1=2 more implausible as a belief to uphold strongly than it would be if one could easily assume all people know it.

Now, 1+1=2 is an example we consider quickly logically and empirically verifiable to the satisfaction of all, but there are multiple religions and usually a number of intelligent people in each religion or even intelligent people without a religion. If 1+1=2 were the same, I would be more hesitant to say it, as there is little reason why I should accept the great power of my personal perceptions. If that sounds absurd, rationalist Eliezer Yudkowsky argues something very similar in a brief comment mildly related to the Asch conformity test, and rational decision making.(it is found that Asch does not follow what he could argue as a rational reason to change opinions)
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/12/a ... ormit.html (note, once again, one does not have to open this link, it just buttresses my argument)

I've notived that you bigged up John Loftus a few times. You are aware that Loftus is a complete fruitcake who lies, turns on fellow Atheists who disagree with him, smears the names of his opponents, distorts and misrepresents the arguments of his opponents and so on?

As for the subject of this thread, it is not a good argument against religion although it does demonstrate that people aren't sceptical enough of their local religions.

It seems obvious. Me, I was never raised religious and I'm an atheist. My dad's an atheist. He wasn't raised religiously. My mom still believes in God since she was raised christian.

My dad was raised as a JW but was an Atheist and became a Christian on his own later. I was raised as a Christian but was a Nihilist and decided to become a Christian by myself later. Generally kids raised by religious parents who question their parents religion tend to develop a skewered view of their parents religion and usually become diametrically opposed to said religion. So, this argument fails.

Umm.... I bigged him up because he makes a point similar to this, he has some training/background in apologetics, and he also writes publicly.

Fruitcake? He has a wife, so he is not likely gay. As for a liar, I have my doubts that apologist Victor Reppert would deal with him to any extent if he considered Loftus to be completely dishonest, and Loftus is open about some rather embarrassing things(being open about embarassing things does not seem the same as being an untrustworthy source). Loftus is more aggressive than many other people, and this is clear with a few of his actions in regards to other people, but that is not sufficient to claim that he is intellectually dishonest on all things. I do not think that Mr. Loftus distorts arguments more so than other people in the field, and to argue this, I think you'd have to bring up certain points where Loftus is completely dishonest in dealing with arguments in order to claim this.

Frankly, I read a number of writers, and I have not found Loftus to be significantly more dishonest than most people, but rather, I find him to be human.

However, not many kids question their parents' religion, and I disagree that if they do they will be diametrically opposed in general.

I disagree. Kids have a general tendency to rebel against their parents, at least to some extent.


Wouldn't being diametrically opposed just be a predictable reaction? Personally, I think that disagreeing on some (but not all) points is more typical. And probably indicates more independent thought about the issues.