What would change your belief?

I’m very curious about religious people who dismiss stories such as Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, etc on the basis of scientific evidence, yet still believe in their God. They seem to be able to twist their religious story: Oh, those bits were only ever meant to be allegories.Yeahright!So, it makes me wonder: How much more evidence that is contrary to your religious texts would be sufficient to completely undo your belief? Is there a tipping point? Or would you continue to twist and turn indefinitely? Or, indeed, have your texts and various interpretations of those texts actually been evolved to ensure that you have such a complex, self-contradictory and ultimately meaningless premise that there is nothing definable to be disproved?Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Note - This is not a "Creation/Evolution in the News" type topic. It should have been started via the "Proposed New Topics" forum. That said, I will move it to the "Faith and Belief" forum. - Adminnemooseus

Three problems strike me straight away.1) "Yeah.. right!" is a way of 'arguing from incredulity'. That you can't believe it, somehow lends your argument more weight.Yeah right!2) There is no problem with someone now considering something allegorical that they previously thought literal. So long as the overarching theology holds together then there is nothing to worry about. Scientific theory works that way all the time: modify your hypothesis according to new observations or scrap the hypothesis.3) You seem to be suggesting that wasn't until Science that people wondered whether a talking snake could be allegorical or not.-I don't dismiss stories of Adam and Eve based on scientific evidence so I really can't comment from the position you target. Just pointing out a couple of problematic areas in the setup of the dilemma.

Hi iano I was expressing my extreme incredulity. Nothing more, nothing less. You are right in that there's nothing wrong with someone changing their mind. But, just to take the example of Adam and Eve, I disagree that everything still holds together. The theology of Christians is still that God created mankind. But if you discard the only explanation you have for that creation, how can your theology still "hold together"? Get rid of the Adam and Eve story, and where do you have any explanation for how God created Mankind. I don't know what your definition of "Science" is, or when you though Science started. But I would say that some people would certainly always have wondered whether a talking snake could be real or allegorical based on their observation that no snakes or indeed any other animals apart from humans had ever been observed to talk. I would make that a scientific analysis.Appreciate your comments though.

The thing is that once we reach a conclusion we tend to stop thinking about it any more. Even if we do we tend to stick to our original conlusions as we ignore negative information and attend more to positive information.This coupled with our ability to hold two contradictory, even mutaully exclusive points in our head (ever loved and hated someone?) allows people to ignore that which does not fit in with our world view and attend to that which does all at once with limited cognitive dissonance.Google the confirmation bias.

Interesting point and I'll try and read up on it. Just thinking about it off the top of my head, I think this contradictory thinking must be largely due to instinctive or emotional responses. As such, I wouldn't dispute that I often have instinctive or emotional ideas that are contradictory to my objective attitude. I can't see how you can maintain fundamentally contradictory views though if they are both purely objective. Maybe that's the simple answer: that many religious people will hold onto their beliefs in the face of contradictory scientific evidence (which they also accept) because their religious belief is based on emotion rather than objective analysis.

Hi, Chimp. I'm pretty sure that any creationist saying, "yeah right" in a post on this forum would have gotten a good handful of comments identical to the one you got from Iano.My personal take on this is that, since you've been leaning heavily on an "emotional vs rational" theme here, you should avoid the expression of anything non-rational, because it kind of makes you look two-faced when you're using non-rational expressions in an argument against non-rational arguments.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi BluejayOn reflection, I shouldn't have said "Yeah...right!" in my OP.I let my emotions get the better of me!In fact, I think most of my last paragraph was written in an exasperated state. This wasn't really intended to be a rational/emotional argument; really just a rational one. I should have just kept my question to believers very simple, as follows:"Is there any scientific evidence that could theoretically emerge that would undo your religious belief."Consider my wrist duly slapped.

Hi IanoAs discussed with Bluejay, I accept I shouldn't have used the phrase "Yeah...right!"It wasn't clever and undermines my whole position of rationality!Apologies.

Also, to avoid these kind of things, please post topics like this in the "proposed new topics" forum. As it is now, your post is wrongly placed in the "evolution in the news" forum, which isn't a debate forum, but a "Hey look at this nice tidbit of info" forum.When posting in the "proposed new topics" forum, moderators will read your post, and they might have caught that use of "yeah right" amd asked you to change it, or something.So, keep that in mind, and things like this should be a thing of the past.

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I hunt for the truthI am the one Orgasmatron, the outstretched grasping hand
My image is of agony, my servants rape the land
Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain
Two thousand years of misery, of torture in my name
Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law
My name is called religion, sadistic, sacred whore.
-Lyrics by Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead

Thanks. I didn't even realise I'd done that. I thought all new topics were assessed and put in an appropriate forum.May I suggest a new forum where we can propose "idiot of the month".

That's exactly the cases. Funny things, people.

Thread copied to the What would change your belief? thread in the Faith and Belief forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.