Identifying false religions.

But is there a common atheistic higher purpose? One that all of them strive to follow or are supposed to follow? Is there one that I haven't yet noticed? Atheism, unlike religious belief systems, doesn't flesh out its dos and don'ts, does it? So atheists are indeed allowed slack when defining their individual higher purposes. Whereas in religion, you are allowed no say or what you want your purpose to be.

And how do we determine if it is invented by man?

you go back to my earlier post and you'll see

The only people in modern times who make statements like your penultimate sentence are people whose religion tells them that the ToE must be wrong. This does not apply to the vast majority of Christians, but to small subsets of Abrahamic religions (and a few others) who fear that the ToE threatens their literal interpretation of their holy book.You might want to think about what you said above verrrrrry carefully.Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.

If you are here to convert us, shouldn't you go the extra mile and actually reference your post for the benefit of others?

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The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.
Salman RushdieThis rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. - the character Rorschach in Watchmen

Jesus said we should love one another (which is great). But fundamentalists seem to pay the most attention to the Old Testament, where Yaweh destroyed cities and said it was OK for the Israelites to murder, rape and pillage. I remember how Catholics dealt with passages like these when I was growing up: they pretended they didn't exist. And yet you are a Christian. Living in America, there is a high probability of this. And how did you choose to be Christian? Is your family Christian?If you live in India you are most likely to be a Hindu. If you live in Iran you are most likely to be a Muslim. Do you not think that family and culture have something to do with it? And can you honestly claim that you learned in detail about other religions and made an educated choice that Christianity was the one for you? Morals
You define a "moral" as a command or prohibition. Yet rules of law and cultural norms also fit this definition, as do things like "you are not allowed to chew gum in school."What you leave out is the question of what actually is right and wrong, and who decides. I believe your statement above has got it backward; you seem to think that not murdering someone because it hurts them is instinct. How, exactly? Not wanting to hurt people, and restraining oneself from doing so even when one feels the desire and thinks they could get away with it, would seem to me to be the action of someone who respects other people just for being people. Christians sometimes call this agape.Restraining oneself just because the God in the sky says "thou shalt not" is on the same level as a small child not doing something because they fear punishment from their parents -- not because they realise it's inherently a wrong thing to do.A bit of psychology for you. Freud believed that the personality was split into the id, ego and superego. Your id is what drives you to do things that give you pleasure, regardless of the consequences; it's instinctive. Your ego takes stock of reality and puts a check on the id; it's your conscious thought. The superego is your inner sense of how you should behave. It involves conscience but there's more to it than that. As a child, it comes from your internalization of your parents' rules, and what they teach you is right or wrong. They could, for example, teach you that sex before marriage is sinful; so that when you're older and you've perhaps even decided that it's not so sinful after all and would like to try it, you will get feelings of guilt and shame seemingly out of nowhere. Overly critical or overbearing parents can give a child a persecutory superego that will fill them with these feelings all their lives unless they are able to find ways to reprogram their subconscious (which can be done, though often it is not easy).So we see here that a person's sense of right and wrong is hugely dependent upon the family in which they are raised, and subsequently the culture in which that family lives. You don't need yet another authority figure to tell you what to do and what not to do (the role that most religions fill), because you already know this from your childhood. You also get a sense for what is permissible in your society through its laws. You may also have philosophical or spiritual beliefs about where we came from, where we are going, why we are here and what our inherent nature is, though again these are usually (though not always) adopted without too much question by children from their parents.People are fully capable of achieving all the virtues that religions espouse, and thinking about philosophical and spiritual issues, without belonging to the institution of a religion. In fact this is the way I see society as heading: away from the comforting blind safety of following the rules of a holy text, and toward a personal type of empowerment in which issues are considered on their individual merits. This is a liberating idea for many but I can also understand how scary it must be for some, because it means taking responsibility for one's thoughts and actions and the uncertainty that can involve.

Hi again, Doc, When you say "it's impossible to detect it, but I know it's there based on faith," you are anticipating as if the subject does not actually exist. It's a curious behavior in humans.Imagine that I claim to have a unicorn in my garage. You'll immediately want to see it, right? Well, of course it's invisible. You could then suggest that you listen to the sound of its breathing, or throw flour in its general direction to covert it in something visible...but then I respond that of course the unicorn is intangible, as well. In this case, I am in every instance anticipating as if the unicorn does not exist. For every experiment you can devise, I have a rationalization as to why we should expect the result that would normally indicate that there is in fact no unicorn present.This behavior typically means that the person making the claim does not actually believe the claim to be true themselves. They simply believe that it is "good" to believe the claim. For instance, it's "good" to believe the Bible...but in any and all cases where an objective test is possible, there is a rationalization for why a negative result would be observed (sometimes even going so far as to claim that the negative result is actually a positive one, much like the California governor in WWII who claimed that not having been attacked through sabotage was positive evidence that an insidious Fifth Column saboteur movement was present). I find this tendency to be both interesting and extremely disturbing.I'm a rationalist. I cannot ever take a person's word for any extraordinary claim. If you claim that something is true I need you to show me why I should believe you. For me, "faith" never enters the picture at all. But that line of reasoning turns "identifying false religions" into "identifying religions I personally prefer." I find even the mere suggestion that one can "choose" to believe something to be absurd - I can no more "choose" to believe Christianity than I can "choose" to believe in that unicorn in my garage. How does personal preference have anything at all to do with whether the beliefs of a given religion accurately reflect reality?It's like my ex-step-daughter when she was 13, claiming that regardless of facts, her opinion was completely valid because opinions are subjective and cannot be wrong. I really do wish I could make that argument to my bank - I'd immediately be of the "opinion" that my bank account contains a few orders of magnitude more money than it currently does. Or perhaps I could solve world hunger by being of the "opinion" that nobody starves.The fact that human beings associate personal preference with a higher probability of accuracy is merely a demonstration that our instinctual cognitive processes are so deeply flawed as to be broken. And that's exactly what you're describing with "faith," if you can "choose" what to believe without relying on any form of objective evidence. Most real dilemmas in life have even more than two side. But you'll find little argument from me on this statement. The same thing happens in all aspects of life - some people live to work instead of working to live, etc. But I'd still trust the workaholic physics professor's opinion on the age of stars significantly more than I'd trust what Joe down at the gas station thinks. Mostly because I'd expect the physics professor to be able to back up his opinion with evidence. To use an example in current events, I really, really hate it when an individual claims to know how to better resolve the Gulf oil spill than the "so-called experts" do. The experts have been dealing with oil rigs and deep-sea drilling for years. The average person claiming "they can do more!" or "they should just..." likely couldn't even describe the workings of the blowout preventer, or walk me through capping a well under normal circumstances. The illusion of self-competence by the incompetent is maddening - we all need to be able to admit when we don't know something, even when we feel powerless in the face of a disaster and feel that strong urge to act. I will never call anyone a fool who adds "for now" when stating any position. It means that according to the evidence you're aware of, you've taken a position, but that you retain the ability to change your mind. That's true open-mindedness (as opposed to "believe anything anyone says ever, especially me," which is how some people use the term), and it's something we all need to remember. Yes, I include myself in that. Along with assigning a higher probability to personally preferable hypotheses, human beings also tend to vigorously defend established positions and very rarely change their minds regardless of evidence or argument. Remaining rational is exceedingly difficult. Do you have evidence to support that claim (that a child who is never taught that killing is wrong will automatically know that it's wrong)?Because my experience with children shows me that they don't instinctively feel guilty for any number of "wrong" things, including stealing, hitting, etc, and that they only "feel bad" that they receive a negative response from an adult. Feelings of guilt without being caught come later. Children don't seem to be able to innately tell right from wrong - they need parental and cultural influences to develop a functional moral compass. And yet whether an emotion is constructive or destructive depends on circumstances. Anger and outrage, often identified as "negative" emotions, helped start and sustain the American Civil Rights movement. Hatred of injustice can be constructive.Once again you're assigning probability of accuracy based on what is personally preferable to you, not any sort of objective test of claims. You don;t need to be "impressed" by the Squirrel-Hating God. You don't have to like Him. You can love squirrels (those fuzzy tails are rather cute). Your opinion of Him and your personal preference has nothing to do with whether the Squirrel-Hating God actually exists. If the Squirrel-Hating God walked up to you and said "hello, mortal," wouldn't you be obligated to believe that He exists? The "moral positivism," the "warm-fuzzies," your personal preference has absolutely nothing to do with whether the Squirrel-Hating God is real. How, then, can you use those things as tests to identify false religions?Isn't it possible with such a line of reasoning for you to identify a true religion (one that accurately reflects reality, whose claims are all objectively verified) as a false one? But believing something to be true carries no obligation of worship. I believe you exist, but I don't feel the need to bow down. Even if you identified a religion that was objectively true, you'd carry no obligation to follow it if you disagreed on a moral level. During my deconversion from Christianity, one of the questions that ran through my head was "should I worship the God who felt that murdering the firstborn of Egypt or drowning the entire world's population was a morally righteous action? After all, that makes Him guilty of genocide." Note that I still believed that the Christian God existed, and that there was a global Flood, and that Exodus was an accurate representation of events. I no longer believe any of those things, but that's incidental - you can believe claims to be true without liking or approving of them.Again, this thread asks the question, "how do you identify false religions?" not "how do you identify religions you would approve of?" I'll counter with this: I have experienced a massive positive personal change since giving up Christianity.The sentiment you express here is extremely common. The problem is that you're only looking for positive reinforcement of your hypothesis. You;re looking for what (in your opinion) seems to be "supernatural influence" in a person's life. So we actually have two issues:1) What objective criteria do you base an assessment of "supernatural influence?" What distinguishes it from more mundane things like coincidence? Remember, in a world of 6-billion+ people, 1-in-a-million events happen over 6000 times every day.2) Confirmation biasLet's try an experiment. I'm going to give you a few sets of three numbers. See if you can identify the pattern. In fact, I'll open it up to everyone else who sees this post. If you think you see the pattern, feel free to send me a PM and ask if your own sets of three numbers follow the same pattern. Test your hypothesis. When you think you've figured it out, let me know, and I'll post the actual pattern. To make sure I'm not just changing the pattern after the fact, I'll send the real rule to Percy right after I post this message.2-4-6
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46-48-50Hell, I might even post this challenge again in the Coffee House as its own thread. Why should your opinion hold sway over reality? Isn't it possible that the claims of a religion, even if ritualistic and impersonal, could be accurate regardless of your own estimation of their value? If I could objectively prove that performing a magic ritual involving a snail, some human hair, and a laundry basket would immediately cure the common cold, would the ritualistic and impersonal nature of the belief cause you to deny the objective evidence of a 100% repeatable success rate of cured colds? Isn't it possible that Hinduism is actually accurate, that when you die you attain nirvana depending on your good works, despite the fact that this contradicts your view of what should be?Once again - you are assigning probability of accuracy based on the personal preferability of the hypothesis. Whether you like or agree with the hypothesis has nothing to do with whether it accurately reflects reality. That's part of the point - not all claims can be tested. Most can, but not all, like the unicorn in my garage.And therein lies the rub - how is Jesus, or Allah, or Yahweh, or Hanuman, different from my unicorn? If everyone including believers anticipates the result of any proposed test to be identical to what would normally be considered a negative result (unanswered prayers? "God works in mysterious ways." Bad things happen even to believers? "Sometimes God tests our faith." Etc.), then the claim is very likely to be false. An absence of evidence is evidence of absence (in every single case, objectively the failure to observe evidence supporting a hypothesis can only increase the probability that the hypothesis is false according to how often we would expect the supporting evidence to be observed, even if that means it's only slightly evidence of absence).Moreover, if your hypothesis equally explains all possible outcomes of an experiment (Answered prayer? Explained by God. Unanswered prayer? Explained by God. Etc), you have no actual knowledge. If your claim is equally "accurate" regardless of result, then your claim is not accurate at all, or at least is no more accurate than any other untestable random guess. A valid question, and the answer is "I have no preconception, because every religious claim seems to have a different definition themselves." I see no reason to define God as omnipotent - that's typically part of the claim being tested, after all. If the Greek pantheon were to actually exist, would it matter if they didn't actually care enough to ensure that their believers had a completely accurate view of them or reality? Would that make them less real?To have a predefined concept of "god" is to put the cart before the horse. I'm willing to evaluate any and all claims, those identified as gods and those not identified as gods, omnipotent or merely semi-phenomenal, almost-cosmic. If it's accurate, it's accurate, regardless of any preconception I may have. Science has thus far proven to be extremely good at solving problems in general, and I think you'd agree with that. It doesn't tend to solve moral questions, but then, that's outside of its scope and it doesn't claim to be able to solve those problems anyway.It does, however, solve questions as to what does and does not exist and how the Universe does and does not work exceedingly well. In fact, I'm not even talking specifically about "science" here per se. I'm really talking about Bayesian Reasoning, whereby we can objectively evaluate the probability that a given hypothesis is accurate. Human thought instinctively leans towards confirmation bias, towards increasing the perceived probability of accuracy for hypotheses we find personally preferable, and a dozen other cognitive flaws. Bayesian Reasoning helps us to eliminate those influences and align our perception of probability of accuracy with evidence from reality instead.The "true religion," after all, could simply be something that no human being ever conceives of and is never told about. Failure to discover the "true religion" is always a possibility - in fact, if we take "true religion" to mean "a completely 100% accurate comprehension of the real Universe and its workings," then I'd wager that finding the "true religion" is impossible.And you know what? That's okay. I don't feel the need to be absolutely right about everything. I'm content with just trying to be less wrong today than I was yesterday. Grabbing on to a claim of perfect truth when I cannot possibly evaluate the claim sounds like a good way to pick the wrong one. Fair enough, but I'd still counter with the conceivable possibility of a person who's really not that convinced or simply isn't willing to die for their current beliefs, and yet whose beliefs nonetheless reflect reality with extreme accuracy. The flashier claims may draw the eye, but they aren't always right. Modern science's description of the Sun is significantly less interesting and flashy (and a whole lot more math-y) than Apollo driving a chariot across the sky, and it's a whole lot more subject to change than any religion, but it's by far the most demonstrably accurate description thus far. Well, that would depend on the individual claim and the evidence observed, wouldn't it? Claims of past events in actual reality can be examined through archeology, geology, and other investigations of the past as relevant. Claims of how the Universe works (like the Greek conception of the Sun) can be tested as well.But the real problems are the ones I'd wager you're really talking about - the completely untestable, unfalsifiable claims. And for those, I'll repeat my answer:If your claim equally explains and any all results of any and all tests, your claim is functionally worthless and the hypothesis conveys zero knowledge. If I claim that there is a unicorn in my garage regardless of the results of any test you can carry out, it is more probable that there is not a unicorn in my garage. An absence of evidence can only ever be evidence of absence (relative to the likelihood that the evidence should be there if the hypothesis were assumed to be true), even if only slightly.If I cannot objectively assess the probability of your claim as being more likely than the existence of a unicorn in my garage, I'll see no reason at all to believe that your claim is actually accurate.

Hmm, so I'm not the only one that gets accused of proselytizing. Well, that's why I'm here at EvC. Evolutionist scholar galore. I hope to learn a lot from here even if I'm not able to contribute as much. Like I said somewhere else on this forum, I prefer to stay away from the mainstream Creo-Evo debate itself. This doesn't mean I'm not willing to learn about the ToE. Just, I like to be something of a "lurker" and learn what I can. I don't know what I am going to end up believing. But one thing I do know, I will never be a theistic evolutionist. So for me, it’s either be a Evolutionist/Atheist or Creationist/Christian. Right now I espouse the latter position. And I'm trying to learn more about the former position. So, you see inherent contradictions within the teachings of Jesus and the moral behavior of the OT YHWH. You also see contradictions between Jesus' NT teaching and the practical life of many believers. And this is holding you back from being willing to accept Christianity as a valid religion. Yes? I can't resolve this for you.....that too, on an internet forum. I do agree with you that there are apparent contradictions within the Bible. The OT law is eye-for-eye, as opposed to the NT teaching of turn-the-other-cheek. I could, at best, tell you what I--as a Christian do when faced with such a situation as you (believe me, some of us do think about what we believe) but this hardly would be a generalized solution for your problem. Nevertheless, if it will help you, I will tell you. Yes (Word in brackets is mine, added for my clarity sake)True. My family is Christian, yes. Like I said earlier, ever since I started taking my religion seriously (which would be around 15 yrs of age), my scrutiny of Christianity also began. I can't say that I've questioned it with consistent intensity...only progressively increasing intensity. I still question a LOT of things in my religion today... I struggle with them. I was saved as a young kid, 6 yrs old. Given a chance to re-enact my life, I would still choose to be saved at 6 yrs age through my Mom sharing the Gospel with me at home over a period of time until I was able to understand the basic idea behind salvation---Which is what happened in reality. I would not prefer to walk down the road I myself am currently proposing in this thread simply because, as Rahvin, you and I---and everyone else are discussing, it is ridiculously difficult to "pick the true religion from a myriad of imposters" I can say that through all my struggles with my faith, I have never once decide to forsake it. I have many times felt like forsaking it but the emotion vanished when...my faith kicked me back into composure. All this said and done, people might think I am condoning indoctrination. That is not my position. What I'm trying to convey is: religious matters are better off taken on faith rather than scrutiny. This doesn't exclude religion from scrutiny's power. Like I said, by all means question what you believe. Only don't expect to believe or disbelieve by scrutiny. The "guidelines" I propose in this thread might very well have thousands of holes in them. And I can say that pretty much every other guideline set will most probably have atleast 5 holes in it. What do you then? Abandon your search for religion? All roads down the in religion country lead to...faith. Scrutiny should follow faith not vice versa. Hypothetically speaking, if I was re-enacting my life and happened to be unsaved as a say.19 year old, I would still let faith preceed scrutiny even though I have better analytical skills as a 19 year old compared to a 6 year old. No matter how old and mature a person is, salvation is still by childlike faith. Not astute analysis. This is what I believe.I understand that by now, I have exasperated many of you (who read this), sorry I had to state the truth. After all, this is the faith and belief forum....faith is going to come into the picture at some point or the other. A command, not necessarily a prohibition. "Love one another" is as much of a command as is "Thou shalt not steal." "Who decides" is a ubiquitous question in any religious conversation. So there's not dodging that...Now to answer your "how exactly",...I propose that a instinct differs from a moral in that:Violation of an instinct is not an offense against an authority but a violation of a moral is an offense against an authority. Morals are an extension, a reinforcement, of instincts if you would. Morals exist because right and wrong exist. Wrong exists because people intentionally go against right. This tendency to intentionally go against right, Christians not only call inherently wrong---but also an offense against a higher moral authority (God). Different religions have different interpretations of morality. In Hindusim, to the best of my knowledge, there is no sin concept. It’s good and bad works that matter. In Islam, neeyat mattersyour intentions. In Christianity, doing wrong (se defined by God) is a violation against God. Human beings are generally prone to positive instincts. Unless in a fit of rage, or under compulsion, people will not usually resort to killing other people. —This is instinct. What moral is, is when a person understands that if he murders he is committing sin and will be held morally responsible for it. No. Like I said, religious morality is an extension of an already existing, slightly underdeveloped moral compass. Thou shalt not..because I AM the LORD adds weight to the moral. It makes a violation of law violation against God, the greatest moral authority and this installs fear within a believer. To kill is not only wrong because it hurts people (instinct), but it holds me morally responsible to God for my sin (moral). Instinct's source is developmentally obtained feeling but morality's source is reason. You are are moral person when you choose not to go with your evil instincts. But how do you know what is moral and immoral? Your limited knowledge gives birth to your instincts but laws of morality need to come from....a higher moral figure, if there is one. What about kids born to abusive, alcohol, drug addict parents? Do they not need a moral authority figure? Furthermore, do individual cultures get to define moral absolutes (assuming there are)? Thats absurd. We're all one culture--humanity. There shouldn't need to be variant models of morality, should there? Unless people subject their morality to a higher moral authority, they are most likely to allow themselves slack when defining and practicing morality. There’s a reason why the participants of a soccer game are not allowed to referee the game they themselves are playing. Yes? Whoa, do you like to refute my points...erm, oh.... discuss with me, Rahvin! I’m sorry I can’t get to answering your post today. I enjoyed reading it and hopefully will respond to it tomorrow...if I've ruminated it for long enough. Edited by Dr. Sing, : fixed a db codeEdited by Dr. Sing, : No reason given.Edited by Dr. Sing, : No reason given.

Hey Rahvin, I find this analogy inappropriate. Here, you claim to have a unicorn...with certain qualities. You mentioned no evidence of there actually existing such a unicorn. Whereas, Christianity (I'll speak for it, since I am one) has a structured network of evidence, though not all of it is tangible evidence. Certainly, God is not tangible--but this doesn't mean that He isn't real. There a lot of other things that are real but not tangible...emotions, intelligence, ideas etc. We can see manifestations of these intangible entities but not the entities themselves. Your unicorn doesn't seem to have any effects attributable as evidence of its existence. The only "evidence" that I gather from your post, is you yourself. First-hand eye witness testimony....and I really can't go by that small amount of evidence. I need more. In Christianity, you have data and you also need faith because you don't have all the required data. The difference is, some people treat this data as evidence and other people who are more tuned into accuracy and science tend not to treat it as evidence. Let me illustrate. Let's suppose an accident occurred on a interstate and a bunch of people witnessed it. You were not there at the moment but heard about the accident and became curious about how it occurred. You come to me, who happened to be there when the accident occurred, and ask me what exactly happened there...whose fault did I think it was etc. Well, I tell you that a dark demon with black and white feathers, green claws and big feet came from the sky and collided with a particular car on purpose and immediately after the collision, it disappeared.<--That's an eye-witness testimony. Being the rationalist you are, you immediately dismiss my testimony as...a pathetically foolish cooked-up story. You then find someone else and ask them for their testimony---and they say exactly the same thing I did. Under the impression that every eye-witness you met is a fool, you set out to the accident site to find "evidence". You find some black and white feather.......a green claw.....and a giant footprint. Now, this is the xrux of the matter. Do YOU, Rahvin, believe in demons? No. You don't. So what do you do? Dismiss the data as non-evidence or, interpret the data as evidence of something else (some weird animal or something....but not a demon) Supposing another guy--who believes in supernaturalism--hears my testimony, he is likely to believe what I said. And to him--my eye-witness testimony and the data from the accident site, all translate as evidence.When people approach the same data with different worldviews, differences in opinion are bound to arise. The reality of the matter in question is not affected by opinions. However, individual interpretations are. Christians don't have a pre-conceived idea of God. We take what we read in the Bible as the description of God, about whom we otherwise would never have known or discovered. So, the rationalization accusation is not the fault of believer.s The fact that the God of the Bible is intangible is what is causing our dilemma. If God was tangible, I would be the first person to fly down with Him to wherever you live, Rahvin, and show Him to you. (if I found Him before you did, that is) I would have no need to rationalize the intangibilities because there are none. When He claims to be intangible, in His word, then Christians have to accept that and move on. Its not like we cooked up this image, and named it--God--, assigned certain qualifiers to it one of which is intangibility and try to rationalize the irrational. No, we take what we get form the Bible and just present it as it is. The data given in the Bible is your problem, not the believer who presents it to you himself. Exactly. Well, I can't present you with any more tangible evidence than is already present before you. I've explained that, in religion, faith is inevitable. In fact, a lack of faith is the criterion for damnation in Christianity. I say this not to threaten or offend you, only to present you with the truth that I believe. Ultimately, Rahvin, all said and done, faith is unavoidable. Its like Lycra--you either have it or you don't. There's nothing more I can present to you that will instill faith in you....apart from all that you already see, but do not accept as good enough evidence. So there's zero evidence for Jesus' existence, the Bible veracity etc. There's zero evidence for historical evidence presented in it. The evidence for God stand on the same level as the evidence for your unicorn. Let me ask you this, do you even believe that there might exist a supernatural realm in this universe? If you don't, then chapter closed, right? It's like you dismissing me when I tell you that a dark demon caused the accident on the road. You don't even believe in demons. However, if you allow for the possibility of the existence of demons, you might after all be able to interpret the data as evidence. I'm with you. You will find no disagreement from me here. All said and done, it will take some massive explanation to convert me to atheism. I'm a dreamer, you're a rationalist. I love philosophical thinking. Physical evidence is great, but it also needs to agree with my logic and cognition. If the physical "evidence" disagrees with what reason and logic tell me, then I'm not trusting my eyes on that one. Just to illustrate one example, let's take the huge cognitive gap between humans and other animals. How does evolution explain it? I also have a big problem with abiogenesis (though ToE doesn't incorporate it, it sure relies on it).....apart form copious other matters of interest. Evidence as in like a scientific journal paper? No. I'm presenting evidence from experience.My parents work with abused people and abusive people. Often, people who come from poor economical and morally backward backgrounds, will confess sensing a feeling of fear and guilt after doing something wrong....like beating up a spouse, or killing. It is when people do such things over and over and over again that their conscience gets de-sensitized to the feelings of guilt. People who come form morally poor backgrounds do not always turn out to be bad people. In fact, an exposure to more evil would awaken people's sense of morality. I agreed with you, for arguments' sake, that the squirrel-hating god exists. Then I posed a question, is he a moral god? According to what my inner instincts told me, I judged him as slightly immoral. Based on this, I told you that I would not be impressed with him or feel encouraged to worship him. Let's apply this to real life. I do not appreciate Sati. This does nothing to the existence or lack thereof to the hindu god who calls for it. So, yes, I agree with you that my moral compass is only a guide----not an authority. Nevetheless, if I have it, I will make use of it. So you not only find zero evidence to back up Christianity's claims but also strongly disagree with the Bible moral content? May I ask you, which factor plays stronger in your opinion of Christianity? Why should I believe that this happened only because you left Christianity? Couldn't something else in your life have changed? Okay, so I identify the pattern behind your three series and make up my three and PM them to you? Well, my reasoning is based on the idea that heaven is a perfect place. I have not, till date, met a single person who conceives of a imperfect heaven. Tell me then, Rahvin, would we expect to also find imperfect people in heaven? If you attained nirvana, that means either 1. nirvana (hindu heaven) is a imperfect place, or 2. you have achieved ultimate perfection. I think hinduism encourages pursuit of the latter...hence the whole idea of accumulate good works. But I see neither option as a reasonably possibility, philosophically speaking. An imperfect heaven, is paradoxical....at the same time, human perfection is....impossible. Barring scientific testing, do you allow other methods of testing at all? You know, testimony...history etc? I agree that the concept of gods is not subject to science simply because god is often defined as intangible. But how other claims? What are some observations of yours which you interpret to be not in line with religion in general? Okay, So youre not one of those people who thinks scinece is the answer to all our questions. Like what claims? Edited by Dr. Sing, : No reason given.Edited by Dr. Sing, : No reason given.

Hi again, Doc, This illustrates perhaps the largest problem with human cognition: affirmation bias.The problem is not that one has insufficient data. The problem is that one can have insufficient data to establish a high probability of accuracy, while simultaneously having a high degree of confindence that the hypothesis is accurate.Human beigns tend to "search for truth." We look for the "right" answers. But it's completely impossible for us to ever be absolutely certain about anything. You can never be right. Neither can I, or anyone else.The best we can do is strive to be lwess wrong.The method of thinking you describe involves searching for confirmation for an existing hypothesis.It's backwards.The strength of any hypothesis, of any explanatory model, is what it cannot explain. The modern model of the solar system could not explain the Sun rising in the West,for example.What can my unicorn hypothesis not explain? It can explain both the observationa nd the lack of observation of a unicorn. It can explain flour exposing the surface of the unicorn, or flour falling to the ground. Because it can equally explain all possible observations, it is useless as a hypothesis.What if I were to list a variety of reasons to beleive that the unicorn is present? Perhaps I could claim that the unicorn tells me things - that the unicorn told me that I should accept that promotion at work, for example. Perhaps I could claim that the unicorn told me that a great disaster would befall the United States, a few months prior to the Gulf oil spill. Perhaps I could claim that when I pray to the unicorn, my prayers are answered, even if sometimes the answer is "no."All of that sounds very convincing, doesn't it? Or rather it would if we didn't already know that I'm talking about an imaginary unicorn. Surely the observation that the unicorn has conveyed messages to me, has predicted future events, and answers my prayers is evidence supporting the hypothesis that the unicorn exists, even if you can't see it, or touch it, or hear it? Surely the evidence available is sufficient to take the rest on faith?But I haven't even examined what the unicorn hypothesis cannot explain.If the unicorn answers my prayers, surely that means that I can perform a test where many people pray to the unicorn and many people do not and we statistically analyze the results of the prayers in a double-blind study? Wouldn't the hypothesis be unable to explain a statistically identical rate of the prayed-for event happening to both the group who prayed and the group who did not? Yet an unswered prayer is simply taken as a "no." Perhaps the prayed for event was not "part of the plan." If the hypothesis equally explains all possible outcomes of the test, the hypothesis conveys no knowledge. If an observation supports a hypothesis to the same degree that its opposite also supports the hypothesis, the evidence does not actually support the hypothesis at all.If the unicorn predicted a geat disaster, under what likely circumstance would the prediction have not come true? What would the hypothesis be unable to explain? A United States that lived happily ever after with no more disasters, military, natural, ethical, political, etc ever again? How likely it that? If the hypothesis equally explains all possible outcomes of the test, the hypothesis conveys no knowledge. If an observation supports a hypothesis to the same degree that its opposite also supports the hypothesis, the evidence does not actually support the hypothesis at all.I have tried specifically to not address Christianity individually, since the topic of the thread was "identifying false religions," not "is Christianity a false religion?" I will say (I don't know if I;ve mentioned it to you) that I am a former Christian myself, and am well aware of the beliefs of a variety of different denominations. My own background included Congregational, Presbyterian, and Christian Reformed churches, though I have been exposed to many other denominations as well. I have read most of the Bible, my grandfather was an educator at a private Christian school, and before my deconversion I was extremely confident in my beliefs. I had a great deal of faith. If you would like to discuss Christianity specifically, I'd be happy to oblige, simply because it's something I think we're both very familiar with. But for the purposes of this thread, I'm going to try to be a but more general and speak about all religions (indeed, all claims about the real world, including religion but not limited to it). Stop right there. No, that's not what I do. I will evaluate any claim as objectively as I can. Yes, I often fail to meet my own standards, particularly inthe moment - objectivity requires struggling against natural human instincts towards confirmation bias, false pattern recognition, etc. But most of all I struggle to maintain an open mind to any hypothesis regardless of any pre-existing opinion on the matter.Eyewitness testimony is evidence. How strongly that evidence supports the hypothesis that a demon actually caused the accident depends on the prior probability of a demon existing before the eyewitness came forward (relatively low given demons are not thought to exist in the matieral world), the likelihood of the witness observing the demon if it caused the accident (possibly relatively high if the witness was in a good viewing position, or lower if not), and the probability of the witness observing the demon if the demon had not caused the accident (in other words, a hallucination or trick of the eyes, which I wouldn't call "very probable," but certainly higher than the prior probability of the demon existing).The probability of a demon having caused the accident given the eyewitness testimony is equivalent to the probability of the witness seeing the demon assuming that a demon really did cause the accident (call it 90%, we'll assume the witness was in a good position) multiplied by the prior probability that a demon caused the accident before hearing the witnesses testimony (this one depends on a lot of other factors,including what other evidence has been evaluated previously, but I'd call this one pretty low...let's say 1%), divided by the probability that the witness would come forward with their testimony if a demon had not caused the accident (a trick of the eyes with a bird, "swamp gas" like they used to say in UFO sightings, plain old hallucination, etc - certainly not a very high probability, but definitely within the realm of possibility. Let's say 10%).P(H|D)=P(D|H)*P(H)/P(D)
P(H|D)=.9 * .01 / .1
P(H|D)=.09Given those fudged numbers, I would place the probability that a demon did in fact cause the accident at 9%. Certainly not enough to inspire any confidence. In which case we'd ruin teh numbers again - except this time the prior probability is the result from our last analysis, since all evidence is cumulative. Let's say this witness was in a similar position and so still would have had a 90% chance to see the demon if it did in fact cause the accident.P(H|D)=.9 * .09 / .1
P(H|D)=.81With two eyewitnesses in excellent locations to view the accident as it happened and no further data, I would have to say that it is not 81% likely that a demon caused the accident. Now that is a numbe tha might inspire some confidence that the hypothesis is correct. Wow. How do I model this? Obviously our prior probability is now 81%, but how do I model the probability that the feather, the claw, AND the footprint would be found, both if a demon didn't cause the accident (pretty darned low) and assuming it did (all three? not as high as any given one, since probability of concurrent events is multiplicative, but we'd still have to give it a decent number)? The first (P(D)) would be low but not zero, simply because it's still possible that the feather, claw, and large footprint were unrelated - perhaps the feather is from a bird, etc. Let's call it 30%. The second (P(D|H)) should be relatively high, as we would expect a creature involved in a car accident to leave bits behind, though it wouldn't be absolutely certain. Further, all three bits of evidence are multiplicative. Let's call the probability of each item being left behind assuming a demon caused the accident 90%. .9 * .9 * .9 gives us about 73% for finding all three.So:P(H|D) = .73 * .81 (our previous cumulative result from toehr evidence) / .3
P(H|D) = 197%Holy crap, We might have a demon.But do you see the problem yet? It should be obvious given my previous comments. In fact, there are two.1) we have established evidence that a large creature with white/black feathers, green claws, and very large feet caused an accident. We have not established evidence that the creature was "a demon," or in fact given any definition for what a "demon" is. A very large bird would seemingly fit the same description. The indentification of teh observed creature as a demon is a conclusion, not an observation - support for the hypothesis that a large feathered and clawed creature caused a car accident is not necessarily evidence that it was a demon.2) we've selectively looked at positive evidence only...once again exposing confirmation bias for what it is: a natural but utterly flawed process for thinking. We could come up with similarly ludicrous probabilities for the hypothesis that I can accurately predict what cards will be drawn from a deck if we exclusively look at my positive results and completely ignore the negative results. Remember, the strength of any hypothesis lies in what it cannot explain. You'll note that this is not my thought process at all. Rationality means examining all evidence, regardless of whether that evidence increases or decreases the probability that your pet hypothesis is correct. An accurate hypothesis will always come out with a higher probability than inaccurate hypotheses regardless, and why would you ever want to remain confident in an inaccurate hypothesis? To a true rationalist, worldview is irrelevant - only evidence matters. Inaccurate hypothesis, regardless of your prior confidence that they were accurate, must always be forsaken. One can never grow stronger by retaining the same beliefs - only by changing beliefs by discarding inaccurate hypotheses in favor of more accurate hypotheses, by becoming less wrong, can we become stronger.I don't pretend to be a perfect rationalist, any more than you would claim to be a perfect Christian. But like you, that's the ideal I strive for. The preconception doesn;t have to be your own, Doc. The preconception lies in defining a subject before making observations; drawing conclusions before examining evidence. You read about your deity and establish your idea of god from there, and seek confirming evidence, when you should be making observations in the real world and establishing your concept of what god (if any) may exist from reality. If I read that dragons are two-legged, winged lizards that breathe fire, I;ve already established a preconception that completely discounts the possibility of Asian dragons that typically fly with no wings and look completely different from Western ones.The problem is in takingthe data in the Bible to the exclusion of all other data. How can you ever claim that the definition in the Bible is accurate when you cannot test its accuracy? How can you claim that it's more accurate than the Greek definition, or the Roman, or the Egyptian, or the Hindu definition when you can't test the relative accuracy of those definitions either?If it were evidence, Doc, you wouldn't need faith at all. Faith is the source of confidence when you don't have evidence. You don't need to be shown, you simply know anyway. "The evidence of things unseen, the confidence of things hoped for," isn't that an accurate paraphrase from the Bible's description of faith? I think it sums up the largest flaw in human gognition quite nicely - we have a tendency to estimate the probability that desireable hypotheses are accurate much more highly than an objective analysis of the probability would dictate based on the actual evidence. To be more concise, we have a tendency to be extremely confident that we're right even when we have little or no reason for such confidence. I didn't say any of that. Doc, there is evidence supporting certain aspects of the Bible. The Jews actually exist; the nations and monarchs and various other verifiable historical figures check out. The problem is twofold:1) Each individual claim in the Bible is separate. The fact that Jerusalem exists as claimed in the Bible does nto provide evidence that the Earth was Created in six days, any more than the discovery of the city of Troy is evidence supporting all of the claims from the Illiad, like a man who was invulnerable except for a spot on his heel.2) Evidence is not binary. Evidence that fits with the claims of the Bible can also fit with other hypotheses, and the strength of the support can vary from one hypothesis to the next; if I find a pen on my desk, that observation supports both the hypothesis that I put it there and that a space alien sent by Emperor Xenu put it there - but it supports one of those hypotheses more strongly than the other.I think the Jesus described in teh Bible was based on one or more real individuals. I think that personal testimony is evidence for the existence of the Christian God - it's simply not convincing evidence because it equally supports a variety of hypotheses. I think "supernatural realm" is a poor term from the start. I think there are things that we understand and have knowledge of, and things we do not. If a deity like the Christian god exists, then he and his abilities are simply something we don't currently understand. I don't claim to know everything about the Universe - far from it. I simply try to objectively evaluate the probability of any hypothesis given the data available. The data currently does not support a high probability for most of the claims of the Bible, including basically all of Genesis and Exodus. Modern Christian argument for the existence of a deity typically bear strong resemblance to my unicorn - their hypotheses equally explain all possible data, and so convey no knowledge. Are you actually a doctor as implied in your name? I'm sure amateur physicians diagnosimg themselves frustrates you to no end Here's the thing, Doc - if an observation fails to support your current hypothesis, or in fact seems to contradict it, that doesn;t necessarily mean that your hypothesis should be discarded. Remember, you already know that you're not "right." The best you can hope for is to be less wrong. Evidence and conclusions are not all-or-nothing affairs. If your hypothesis is based on very strong evidence, a single observation of contrary evidence will only slightly decrease the probability that your hypothesis is accurate. Remember your car-crashing demon? Given the evidence you already stated, if a third witness came forward who was in a poor position to see much of anything and contradicted the stories of the first two witnesses, the new testimony would lower the probability that our winged-and-clawed creature caused the accident, but not by much, because the new testimony only weakly contradicts the large amount of supporting evidence. Now, if fifty people came forward, and the feather proved to be from a local bird while the claw was actually broken off of a child's toy... Adults are poor test subjects - even coming from "morally backward backgrounds," an adult has still been exposed to social pressures. Children, on teh other hand, start as blank slates - they don't know much of anything unless someone teaches it to them. The observed behavior of children is that they tend to be selfish, what little sense of property they have is dictated more by their own desire than by who owns what (hence everything is "mine!"), and more importantly, typically have absolutely no concept of "death" or "murder." They do empathise - when they see someone who is sad, they will feel sad; when they see someone who is happy, they will feel happy. It's a basic instinct of any social animal (part of the reason dogs make great pets), but there is no real inherent sense of "right" and "wrong." But your moral compass is not a guide at all when determining whether something exists or not. You made the argument that your moral compass should be able to guide you towards "true religions" and away from "false religions," but you have already admitted that that is not really the case. Your moral compass guides you towards beliefs you personally approve of, which has nothing to do with whether those beliefs accurately reflect reality. The ethical ramifications of a hypothesis are totally irrelevant to whether the hypothesis is accurate. Whether you personally approve or not, whether you would worship or not, is independant of whether the Squirrel-Hating God actually exists. My "opinion of Christianity" encompasses multiple questions. My assessment of how likely Christianity is to accurately reflect reality is driven solely by evidence - the moral aspect doesn't even come into it. As I have said multiple times, whether I thing the Christian god is ethical has nothign whatsoever to do with whether or not he exists. Currently I woudl estimate the probability of the Christian god's existence to be pretty low - certainly not likely enough for me to have any amount of confidence that he actually exists.Morally, Chrsitianity is a mixed bag. There's some pretty nasty stuff in teh Old Testament, ranging from genocide to rape to slavery to "ripping up" pregnant women. Not to mention stoning rebellious children, putting homosexuals to death, punishing the children for the sins of the parents, and so on. Jesus, on the other hand, seemed like a mostly decent guy - he claimed to not be trying to get rid of the old laws or antyhing, but he definitely focused more on the whole "love thy neighbor" moral lessons than the ridiculous nonsense of the Old Testament. Only in Paul's writings (particularly when they deal with women) and Revelations do I again start to have moral opposition to the New Testament. Yes! That's the point! Personal change in a person's life often has very little to do with what we attribute it to...and even when it does, the mechanism we attribute is often not correct. My positive changes involved shifting to a rationalist outlook on life, revaluing life as a single chance and where death and suffering are not counterbalanced by any sort of heavenly afterlife, and being able to critically examine my own beliefs better than I could previously. I also happened to get much better jobs, and my lifestyle is now significantly improved over when I was a Christian. Some of that resulted from my deconversion, but some of it was the driving force behind my deconversion. My statement was misleading - it appears to state that giving up Christianity directly caused positive changes in my life, and yet giving up Christianity would more accurately be described as a side effect of those positive changes, not the cause. The job part was in fact coincidental, and would have been likely to happen regardless of whether I remained a Christian or not. Once again we see that human thought is instinctively very poor at differentiating correlation from causality.When a person expressesthat they have experienced positive changes which they attribute to divine providence since adopting a given religion, those positive changes are correlated with the religion, but the religion (and specifically the mechanism of divine providence) is not necessarily the cause of the positive change. Any set of three numbers. You send them to me, and I'll tell you if they follow the rule. Use my responses and your guesses to figure out what the rule actually is. How is the perfection or nonperfection of a conceivable afterlife a determining factor in whether that afterlife exists or not? Many cultures (the Greeks come to mind, as do the Norse people) had concepts of an afterlife that you would never describe as "heaven," and would have been far from "perfect." Why does an afterlife need to meet your ideal in order to be considered likely to exist?Once again you're assigning probability of accuracy based on the personal preferability of the hypothesis. Whether you like or agree with the hypothesis has nothing to do with whether it accurately reflects reality. That's not objective or even rational - quite literally, it's wishful thinking.Any observation, including personal testimony, is data. Whether that data is evidence depends on whether it supports any hypothesis over any others (whether a flipped coin comes up heads or tails would be an observation, but it equally "supports" all possible hypotheses regarding whether deities exist or not, and so cannot be called "evidence" for or against any of them). How strongly evidence supports some hypotheses over others is another factor as well. The Christian God appearing int he sky and yelling "Im here, you blind nitwits, now everybody get in a church and pray to me for your souls" would be extremely strong evidence for the existence of the Christian God, while a person's individual testimony by itself is pretty weak. Multiple individuals testifying that the Christian god exists becomes significantly stronger, yet at the same time every person who testifies to a mutually exclusive deity or belief is similarly cumulative evidence that the Christian god does not exist.Do you see how this works? Any observation that supports or contradicts some hypotheses over others is evidence for or against, the strength of that evidence can vary from very very weak to extremely strong, and is cumulative with all other evidence both positive and negative. "Neutral "evidence" is simply an observation that equally supports or equally does not support all possible relevant hypotheses, and would be more accurately called "irrelevant data." The question is too vague - "religion in general" is too large a topic to be "in line" or "not in line" with. I evaluate the claims of every religion individually with teh evidence I have available. I haven't evaluated all religions, simply becasue I'm not specifically aware of all of them. Further, lack of observation in specific cases where an observation would be expected is also relevant. So far I have encountered no set of claims that self-identifies as a "religion" that also carries a high probability of being accurate. I am a person who thinks that rational, objective analysis of fact is the only way to answer any question about reality with any hope of accuracy. Other questions, like "do you prefer blue or red," don't fit that definition. Questions like "does this particular deity exist" do.There are many made by various religions. SOme of the more common ones:"There exist two afterlives - one is called heaven and it's a paradisical reward for people who live good lives/worship this deity. The other is called hell and is a place of eternal torment for people who didn't obey the rules/worshipped the wrong deity.""There exists an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent intelligent entity who dictates every aspect of the Universe from subatomic interactions to whether the Lakers will win their next game, and who treats the laws of physics as more like guidelines than actual laws.""There exists a unicorn in my garage. It happens to be both invisible and intangible."Obviously I'm being somewhat lighthearted here. But the point is that none of these can be objectively evaluated - any observation you could ever make would equally support all possible relevant hypotheses. There's simply no way to test the accuracy of any claim like these. Remember, the strength of a hypothesis lies in what it cannot explain; if the hypothesis can equally explain any conceivable observation, the hypothesis conveys no knowledge. What observation would not be explained by the existence of an afterlife? What observation would not be explained by the existence of a deity? What observation would not be explained by my unicorn? If there are none, how can you ever claim your hypothesis to be less wrong than any other mutually exclusive hypothesis?

I wonder why it's these two extremes for you, when the vast majority of people in the world happily espouse more moderate views? I am an agnostic evolutionist (though I don't like that phrase because it implies that evolution is a religious belief, when it is in fact a robust scientific theory). I arrived at this position by applying a large degree of reason the way Rahvin explains and also from going by intuition, personal experience and what "speaks" to me (which I'm sure Rahvin would tear down with his invisible unicorn or spaghetti monster or whatever, but these types of epistemological debates have been happening elsewhere on this forum -- you might want to take a look sometime). I don't even like to apply "agnostic" to myself really. I do have spiritual beliefs, which maybe lean more toward pantheism. No, for a couple of reasons. First of all, there are many reasons why I can't reconcile the Biblical account of things with reality; and secondly, I don't know what you mean by "valid." Seeing as how a large percentage of the world's population is Christian, it's socially valid. I can't argue with what Jesus preached; anyone who tells us to love each other is OK in my books. So that's valid too. If I were still a Catholic I'd just continue to ignore the nasty stuff in the Old Testament or try to rationalise it away somehow. You might like to address this in another post and relate it to the topic of identifying false religions. I do not see the subject as a "problem," though you apparently do. And thanks for the offer of "help" but I'm as likely to convert back to Christianity as Rahvin. Sorry. I think both can, and probably should, apply. You've having a pretty long conversation with Rahvin about this so I won't go over that ground again myself. Speaking for myself, I saw the holes and felt I couldn't deny their reality. I took the best of what I discovered from different kinds of spiritual practices and arrived at my own set of beliefs, which I explained at the beginning of this post. You still seem to think that religion and spirituality have to be the same thing. Religion is a social institution, and for much of history it has simply been used to control people. (Good heavens, I'm agreeing with Dawkins; what next.) You're the one who used the word originally.
So who do you think is commanding me not to kill if: a) I am enraged at someone (say I had Adolph Hitler standing in front of me); b) I knew I could kill him without any negative repercussions? There are many Christians, including creationists, who would happily have him put to death for what he'd done, and call it justice. I happen to be against the death penalty for anyone because two wrongs don't make a right, and execution is little more than revenge (plus some other reasons). So you've perhaps got a bit of a conundrum here as to why I, a non-Christian, am against the death penalty, while many Christians fervently support it. Even the US government makes it legal. And I make a conscious choice as to whether or not I think that is a good way to live, which I believe requires more maturity and wisdom than someone who does what they are told because they know they'll get punished if they don't. As parents we expect our own children to move beyond that; fundamentalists seem to be extremely hesitant to do so. Like I said, I think it's maybe something to do with needing the comfort and certainty of a higher authority telling someone that they're doing the right thing because figuring it out for themselves requires taking responsibility for one's actions and risking the possibility that they're wrong. I guess you didn't like the Freudian superego stuff in my last post Morals are not instincts because morality requires conscious choice. You sort of shoot this idea down yourself by what you say subsequently, though you do seem to largely be using the terms "right" and "wrong" in a way that suggests we just all know what those mean. I don't think the issue is that clear-cut at all; there could be a whole thread discussing just this point. And . . . What does this mean, "positive instinct"? Does that mean that the willingness to act aggressively is a "negative" instinct? Seems to be a pretty important one to have in the wild in some situations.And, people killing each other still seems to be a depressing ubiquitous phenomenon across the world. The genocide of the Native American population was still happening only a few generations ago. The majority of the killers were Christians. I think we would see many more deaths if murdering someone were not against the law. Many of us wouldn't be able to walk the streets at night. I think this is nothing more than a rhetorical question for you because you seem to believe that obeying what the Bible says is the only way a person can be moral. I don't agree with this. I explained in my previous post how the superego is formed, and the function it has. I've mentioned that human beings live in groups, and groups can only be successful if the members have some respect for one another and don't indiscriminately hurt each other and destroy trust and relationships. Studies with social animals bear this out; it doesn't just apply to humans. As to the finer details of what is or is not permissible in the society, that is often defined by the culture and its way of life. I don't understand this question. Are you saying that such people cannot teach morals, or that the morals of the society will fail to reach children raised in such families? I would say that it's important to help families in these situations, but throwing Bibles at them would not be on my personal list of approaches. Besides, there are plenty of people who believe themselves to be God-fearing Christians who are abusive, alcohol and drug addicted parents. Well that's begging the question. I don't believe that there are any moral absolutes, and that the best course of action is dependent on the situation. You left your most absurd statement for last, it would seem.

Hi Rahvin,Pretty long post. I'll take it in pieces....so I might not address all points in one post. This is an interesting point. I think a lot of people who are lovers of objectivity, science, and accuracy tend to fleer the generic religious worldview since it often incorporates absolutes and dogmatic affirmatives. This tends to "get the missionary in trouble" with the more educated, and analytical "proselytes" since they perceive the religious message conveyed to them as a threat to their worldview (how can you be so sure that I will go to hell, or even if there's a hell???), or simply irrelevant to their worldview (who cares, I'm going to have fun when I'm alive...we'll cross the bridge when we get there)--the more indifferent people tend to take this stance. As much the rationalists or naturalists, or whatever you like to call them, disdain the moral imperatives/absoultes of religion, note that the religious also view the lack of a religious moral framework (meaning, one that is based on God and His statues) as a pathetic...almost foolish attempt at living morally. So,you've got one group of people who believe we can't be 100% sure of or right about anything....and another group who believes, unless we are right about some things, we are doomed. This is something the Christian worldview incorporates. Absolutes like "God is always good", "The Universe is in God's control both under good and bad circumstances", "God will never leave nor forsake you", "God rewards evil with evil and good with good" are all examples of things we are called to be sure of 100%, in Christianity. For those of us who are of the religious worldview, this take a lot of faith to consistently believe such things (and proclaim them). Not because they are inconceivable, but because we are inconsistent in our cognition and are easily swayed from our principles by momentary negative feeling or emotion. I'm not sure why different worldviews perceive absolutes differently. But this generally seems to be the case. You seem to count "answered/unanswered prayers" and "fulfilled/unfulfilled prophesy" as evidence, be it confirmatory or contradictory to the hypothesis in question. Whether you yourself have this view or whether you think theists have this view is still unclear to me. I understand that the gist of this section of your post is, treating "answered/unanswered prayers" and "fulfilled/unfulfilled prophesy" as evidence for a deity's existence is a flawed thought process because it incorporates affirmation bias. So, I'm leangin more towards---you think this how theists think. However, I disagree with theists that think that way. All the times when I prayed and prayed and prayed in anticipation of my Cell Biology tests (gah!) during College and still got a B or a C+ and all those days when I didn't bother to pray much about my General Chemistry (pretty easy) tests and still got A's, are not evidence (either confirmatory or contradictory) for the existence of my God. Christians who stake their faith on the criterion of "answered/unanswered prayers" are clearly flawed in their thinking.
Furthermore, it cannot be objectively determined whether a answered prayer or a fulfilled prophesy is exclusively attributable to a deity's intervention or not. (Theists base such matters on faith) Yet, we see Christians saying "God healed my daughter of cancer", or "God protected me from a car accident yesterday".....and this is not because they like attributing seemingly fantastic occurrences to God, they simply are agreeing with what the Bible says. IOW, when God says in the Bible that He will never leave you or forsake you (Heb 13:5) or His angels camp around the ones that fear Him (Ps 32:8), Christians believe those words and agree with them. Unfortunately, some of us do it backwards. We think answered prayers point to "God's goodness"....and voila! His existence. That's plain wrong. I can see how the latter thought process is affirmation bias, but not the former Rahvin.
If my bother promised his son ice cream after dinner, then my nephew is being fair when he tells me the next day that Dad was supernice and kept his promise (something he expected anyway). If, OTOH, my nephew comes and tells me, Dad took me out for ice cream, therefore he is a good dad (I doubted it, but he did it)---then, I would be lead to believe that this little guy needs to change his way of thinking. (whats going to happen when dad forbids him certain things?) God's existence is not contingent on whether or not our prayers are answered. God's credibility certainly is contingent on whether or not predicted premises come true and whether or not promises are kept up, but again isn't this thought likely to be floating around in a believer's mind? So, until a person shows faith, he ideally need not be talking in terms of answered or unanswered prayers. I think you did mention it to me, in the Forum name change thread. And I agree, a different thread would be more appropriate for a Christianity-specific conversation, something I would be interested in. I will try to make my responses as general as possible. I might illustrate my general points using Christian examples though, just to make my case. Topic for a different thread but......and yet, the 4 Gospels are treated as fairy-tales by some skeptics. They don't even consider them as viable evidence, let alone whether they support the hypothesis or not. Okay, I'm with you so far. You showed me the beauty of rationalism, Rahvin. Now let me show you the beauty of imagination (well, you might not like it, but....I listened to you so, )Assume with me that both the testimonial and material data found from your analysis fits no known creature. Assume also that it was proven that no toys with white/black feathers and green claws were found within the vicinity of the accident site. You are unable to reconcile you data with your hypothesis (large bird or toy) and also my hypothesis (demon). What do you do? As you admitted in you previous post, we might NEVER be able to "find the true religion." (OR, I propose, we might be able to find it if we work with available data.) But here's my question, in such a situation, why are you not comfortable enough to wager you faith? What holds you back? After all, faith in God is not a question of being less or more wrong...it is matter of "you know it or don't know it"...Why would you not place you faith on something based on available evidence (though not comprehensive) if its a all or none situation? When I said pre-conceived ideas, I meant ones that people make up. "God should be like this...or that" But the Bible is hardly a pre-conceived notion? It is a historical document. Sure, it contains abstract people like...the Holy Spirit, but it also contains history....like Jesus Christ. I don't know about other religions, but I propose that Christianity doesn't think that way. I won't go into illustrating my point by comparing religions because that would stray from the general tone of this thread. There's a reason. You might not think its valid, but there is one. And I'm pretty confident that it is generally common to most major religions. And the reason is, people believe God cannot be detected by naturalistic observations and analysis. In Hinduism, you meditate...and "know" or "feel" god, In Buddhism also, you give up earthly possession-become an ascetic and meditate UNTIL you "know" or "feel" god, In Islam, Allah is God because the Quran says so period. In Christianity, we know who God is only through the Bible. Don't you think that such a idea might infact be true? You know, that fact that God cannot be detected through scientific analysis.....establishing, that true religion is something that we might never discover through scientific and naturalistic analysis? Do you see the common thread that holds the beads together? Or it is the most beautiful manifestation of human imagination. Faith. I have faith that you will read this message, Rahvin. You might or might not, in reality. I live in SC, I don't know where you live. There's no physical way I could predict if you will read this message with 100% accuracy. BUT, I have 100% faith you will. And when you have read this post and responded to it, my faith will have been proven to be valid. I imagine that you interested in furthering this conversation based on the level of interest and time you put into your previous couple posts. I imagine that you will respond pretty soon, since you have been doing so. I imagine that you will indeed further our conversation. I do not assertively say you will, only that I believe you will. That's faith, the evidence of things unseen...being sure of things hoped for. The Doctrine of Inerrancy rests on the single premise that God's Word is inerrant and the Bible is God's word, therefore the Bible is inerrant. Facts that stand on the same level do not lend each other credence, i'm with you on that part. But, that's hardly how inerrancy works. I have never come accorss the particular view you hold of Jesus. It is quite intriguing. How about his claims? Are they also from a mix-up of different people's claims? Most of Genesis, we can't say prove or disprove. Creation? It is a historical event. Flood? The data is controversial. Noah;s Ark? It is most likely that we will not find it (atleast not in recognizable shape or form) because it provided Noah's family with ready resources in a land of zero natural resources and would have been dismantled. We can't go around dealing with each every piece of data...that would take forever. Furthermore, isn't it curious that the Bible never addresses matters of history when it calls for faith? This is why theistic evolutionists exist. The rest of the Bible is great, but creation is a fairy-tale. Well, doesn't that also explode the ballon that hold God's credibility? Since God says He created the world.....The rest of the post, tomorrow...
I apologize for any typos.Edited by Dr. Sing, : No reason given.Edited by Dr. Sing, : No reason given.

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This is an interesting point. I think a lot of people who are lovers of objectivity, science, and accuracy tend to fleer the generic religious worldview since it often incorporates absolutes and dogmatic affirmatives. This tends to "get the missionary in trouble" with the more educated, and analytical "proselytes" since they perceive the religious message conveyed to them as a threat to their worldview (how can you be so sure that I will go to hell, or even if there's a hell???), or simply irrelevant to their worldview (who cares, I'm going to have fun when I'm alive...we'll cross the bridge when we get there)--the more indifferent people tend to take this stance.

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Of course you are failing to consider a very important point here. What if the missionary is "in trouble" because he can't provide adequate evidence that his "absolutes" and "dogmatic affirmatives" are even likely to be true ? Or even worse, what if he is dealing with somebody who has actually investigated the evidence and found out that some of the missionary's claims - so confidently put forward - are false ? What if the "skeptic" simply has an honest concern for the truth ? Can you admit that that is a real possibility ? Or is it too much of a threat to your worldview ?Let's take an example here:

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Eyewitness testimony is evidence.

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Topic for a different thread but......and yet, the 4 Gospels are treated as fairy-tales by some skeptics. They don't even consider them as viable evidence, let alone whether they support the hypothesis or not.

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In reality the evidence is against ANY of the synoptics being an eyewitness account. And we can't be certain of the fourth Gospel either. We do know that John is taken to be the last of the four to be written and that it is heavily influenced by the theology of the authors. If the best you have is something that at best MAY be eyewitness testimony, written many decades after the fact and heavily influenced by the author's biases then you haven't got very good evidence (I should not that while eyewitness testimony IS evidence it isn't especially GOOD evidence, being unreliable at best).So if you try to put the four Gospels forward as eyewitness testimony the informed skeptic will realise that you know even less than he does. Why should he accept you as an authority if you confidently put forward falsehoods as facts ?

No, I am not talking only about adults. Take a look at a recent study conducted by Yale University on Morality in babies. The research was well formulated and the results prove to be decisive. Children are indeed born with a innate sense of right and wrong. Whether we term this as morality, in the more adult connotation of the word, is a secondary question. The objective of this research. was to explore the presence/absence of a innate sense of right and wrong in babies.You can read about the experimental setup for yourself, but I'll highlight the main conclusions of the study and a few afterthoughts.1. "A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone. Which is not to say that parents are wrong to concern themselves with moral development or that their interactions with their children are a waste of time. Socialization is critically important. But this is not because babies and young children lack a sense of right and wrong; it’s because the sense of right and wrong that they naturally possess diverges in important ways from what we adults would want it to be."--Page 12. Many developmental psychologists will tell you that the ignorance of human babies extends well into childhood. For many years the conventional view was that young humans take a surprisingly long time to learn basic facts about the physical world (like that objects continue to exist once they are out of sight) and basic facts about people (like that they have beliefs and desires and goals) let alone how long it takes them to learn about morality.I am admittedly biased, but I think one of the great discoveries in modern psychology is that this view of babies is mistaken.--Page 13. All of this research, taken together, supports a general picture of baby morality. It’s even possible, as a thought experiment, to ask what it would be like to see the world in the moral terms that a baby does. Babies probably have no conscious access to moral notions, no idea why certain acts are good or bad. They respond on a gut level. Indeed, if you watch the older babies during the experiments, they don’t act like impassive judges they tend to smile and clap during good events and frown, shake their heads and look sad during the naughty events (remember the toddler who smacked the bad puppet). The babies’ experiences might be cognitively empty but emotionally intense, replete with strong feelings and strong desires. But this shouldn’t strike you as an altogether alien experience: while we adults possess the additional critical capacity of being able to consciously reason about morality, we’re not otherwise that different from babies our moral feelings are often instinctive. In fact, one discovery of contemporary research in social psychology and social neuroscience is the powerful emotional underpinning of what we once thought of as cool, untroubled, mature moral deliberation.--Page 64. Morality, then, is a synthesis of the biological and the cultural, of the unlearned, the discovered and the invented. Babies possess certain moral foundations the capacity and willingness to judge the actions of others, some sense of justice, gut responses to altruism and nastiness. Regardless of how smart we are, if we didn’t start with this basic apparatus, we would be nothing more than amoral agents, ruthlessly driven to pursue our self-interest. But our capacities as babies are sharply limited. It is the insights of rational individuals that make a truly universal and unselfish morality something that our species can aspire to.--Page 7This stuck me as interesting... No, I said I will use it as a guide in trying to find the true religion. For there to exist a true religion, there must also necessarily exist a few or more false religions. My moral compass doesn't tell me "false religions don't exist", it only tells me "this might be the true religion." This is what I meant when I said, my disliking Sati does nothing to the existence or lack thereof of the hindu god, but tells me that the hindu religion is more prone to be a false one. Now, there is personal preference in evaluations that involve a innate moral compass. No doubt. But you can't discard the compass altogether since it does help to evaluate the moral integrity of various religions. It doesn't help to resolve the existence/non-existence issue, but that's hardly a reason to throw it away from the general search.I think I have switched my thinking more along the lines of "will the true religion ever condone x activity according to what my innate moral compass says" and you are tuned into "why does it matter what my compass says to the existence or non-existence of a religion". So we might both be addressing different questions. Remember, the true religion is not identifiable by objective, scientific analysis. You often refer to it as "a 100% accurate depiction of reality." We can only hope to find such a description, we never will. Now, can we have faith that we have found it? Some do. Meaning, you completely exclude the claims God makes in the Bible when evaluating Christianity's accuracy? That's absurd, Rahvin. Why would you do that? You yourself have admitted defining the true religion as "100% accurate depiction of reality" that we might never get around to finding it. In such a situation, don't you have to resort to other means? Means such as .....faith? This is too vague to answer. By christian God, do you mean the OT God, or Jesus? Or both? See, even you are using your innate moral compass and acquired view of morality to evaluate Christianity's moral integrity (or lack thereof). This certainly does nothing to prove its existence or non-existence, but again can we ever PROVE anything? We can hope to be fully assured about something, and that's exactly what faith is. You disdain Biblical moral content, so you tend not to think of Christianity as a canditate for the true religion. (Now, I do think your view of the Bible is based on misconceptions. You might have excellent book knowledge. You might be able to spit out the numbers, people, places, and facts much better than I could. But what does it matter if your knowledge is based on misconceptions?) What mechanism? I don't use any mechanism to say that I've changed for the better since being a true Christian. Neither does anyone else. It is simply a confession. ...not giving up Christianity. ...simply a change in viewpoint Should I take the latter result as a ramification of the former cause, and the former result as a ramification of the latter cause ("driving force behind my deconversion")? This is a strange mix-up. I don't see any supernatural intervention. You simply claim to have left Christianity because rationalism appealed more to you. You claim to have lived a better life as a non-Christian than a Christian, but yourself do not attribute any supernatural cause to it. You are the driving force behind these changes. No, there are effects attributable to religion only. The thousands of missionary lives lived in jungles serving the barbaric are evidence of this. The strong supernatural invention in the preservation of their lives is evidence of this. When observers are able to distinguish a remarkable positive change in a believer discarding all other alternatives in a valid way, that is evidence. The negative effects that come from leaving a religion though are simply a ramification of human freewill. God does not force people. Some of your atheist counterparts might disagree with you. Some of the more non-stringent people tend to lean towards lending credence to religions like hinduism and buddhism. Thats why Pascal came up with a wager.I don't understnad why some people are willing to wager and some other people are not at all. Hypothesis and observations are great for evaluating and understand tangible and natural things. Whereas claims like the ones you mentioned, rely on faith or doubt. Edited by Dr. Sing, : No reason given.Edited by Dr. Sing, : editing

Well that's interesting. I'm all in favour of empirical research marrying up with the psychodynamic theories I am learning on my counselling course. What this looks like to me, is that babies' brains come hard-wired for making choices that favour harmonious group life (I would hesitate to use a judgmental term like morality here), just like they come hard-wired to learn language (according to Noam Chomsky). But just like they need to have the language available to pick up, they also need access to the morality of their caregivers and social group in order to develop that innate ability. Then these psychologists are puzzlingly unaware of the work done by people like Freud, Klein, Erikson, Bowlby, Winnicott, and all others who have worked in the psychodynamic field. There is definitely a lot going on with babies from the moment they are born, and probably beforehand. Well that's not part of the research, that's just his opinion. Why should anyone declare "this is too complex to have evolved" (the tired old argument from incredulity) when instinct is ubiquitous in living things? And why favour this explanation over the possibility (near certainty, I would say) that we have evolved as social animals, which necessitates that we do not indiscriminately do harmful things like kill each other? It would be interesting to see the results of similar studies on primates.Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.