The Key Point About Specific Religious Debates

[David Sklansky]

I'm repeating myself but the threads about Mormons spurs me to say it again:

The question for those on this forum should not be whether someone's beliefs are accurate. The question is whether someone's belief SHOULD follow from information available to all.

If somebody wants to claim that he personally has information or experience not available to all and that he therefore can't expect others to have his specific beliefs that's fine (except to some hardcore atheists.)

If somebody wants to claim that he is making a leap of faith when he takes the information available to all and from that gets to his specific religious belief even though he admits that pure logic would assert that his information is less than 50 percent to lead to his specific beliefs, that's also fine (again except to some hardcore atheists.)

All we want to do here is examine the claim of those religious people who assert that the information available to all should logically lead to a conclusion that their specific religious beliefs are more likely to be true than all the other specific religious beliefs and un beliefs combined.

[PairTheBoard]

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All we want to do here is examine the claim of those religious people who assert that the information available to all should logically lead to a conclusion that their specific religious beliefs are more likely to be true than all the other specific religious beliefs and un beliefs combined.


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Can you show there are people who claim precisely that?

PairTheBoard

[Phil153]

For one, just about any Catholic on this board regarding the holiness and legitimacy of the church (and the beliefs which stem from this).

[BluffTHIS!]

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All we want to do here is examine the claim of those religious people who assert that the information available to all should logically lead to a conclusion that their specific religious beliefs are more likely to be true than all the other specific religious beliefs and un beliefs combined.

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I agree of course with the other stuff you wrote first. Regarding this quote, though we need to break it down a little. I in fact believe that theism in general can be proven execept to the hardcore atheists you mention, to be more likely to be true than atheism, both by a combination of physics and reason/logic (first cause stuff and if you don't want to call the first cause "God" like Stephen Hawking does that's fine since he doesn't believe in a personal god either). Then as far as christianity by itself, it's a slam dunk that catholicism is more likely to be true than protestantism (and I'm lumping orthodoxy in with catholicism). So that then leaves christianity in general, or catholicism in particular, versus the combination of all other theistic systems, inlcuding the kind where a creator doesn't tinker with his creation.

And then since it can be shown that Buddhism, Daoism and similar relgions/belief systems, don't even believe philosophically (as opposed to various sects of same), in god, except perhaps a nebulous belief that all can become god-like through achieving nirvana, then that just leaves the major mono-theistic religions (i.e forget Zoroaster) and Deism (non-tinkering god). Then I believe you can easily disregard Islam, the religion started by the pedophile mohammed (if anyone objects to that characterization because it's non-PC and offensive I would be happy to prove it). So all you have left then is Deism, Catholicism and Judaism.

Examining which of those three is more likely to be true than the other two is what people should be examining.

[CallMeIshmael]

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All we want to do here is examine the claim of those religious people who assert that the information available to all should logically lead to a conclusion that their specific religious beliefs are more likely to be true than all the other specific religious beliefs and un beliefs combined.

[/ QUOTE ]


I agree of course with the other stuff you wrote first. Regarding this quote, though we need to break it down a little. I in fact believe that theism in general can be proven execept to the hardcore atheists you mention, to be more likely to be true than atheism, both by a combination of physics and reason/logic (first cause stuff and if you don't want to call the first cause "God" like Stephen Hawking does that's fine since he doesn't believe in a personal god either). Then as far as christianity by itself, it's a slam dunk that catholicism is more likely to be true than protestantism (and I'm lumping orthodoxy in with catholicism). So that then leaves christianity in general, or catholicism in particular, versus the combination of all other theistic systems, inlcuding the kind where a creator doesn't tinker with his creation.

And then since it can be shown that Buddhism, Daoism and similar relgions/belief systems, don't even believe philosophically (as opposed to various sects of same), in god, except perhaps a nebulous belief that all can become god-like through achieving nirvana, then that just leaves the major mono-theistic religions (i.e forget Zoroaster) and Deism (non-tinkering god). Then I believe you can easily disregard Islam, the religion started by the pedophile mohammed (if anyone objects to that characterization because it's non-PC and offensive I would be happy to prove it). So all you have left then is Deism, Catholicism and Judaism.

Examining which of those three is more likely to be true than the other two is what people should be examining.

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Are you presupposing that there is no possbility for some other relgion that is, as of yet, unknown, to be true?

[Ringo]

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...the pedophile mohammed (if anyone objects to that characterization because it's non-PC and offensive I would be happy to prove it).

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lolfatwaments

[Insp. Clue!So?]

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...the pedophile mohammed (if anyone objects to that characterization because it's non-PC and offensive I would be happy to prove it).

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lolfatwaments

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Comes under "funny if it weren't sick", doesn't it?

Which parish would Big Mo be hiding in under the direct protection of the local cardinal? Proof that any omni-benevolent being would allow such horrid behavior from his anointed shepards is I think what the hour demands. Please, once again throw the 2-3o in the muck...you got nothing.

[David Sklansky]

You need to throw in the possibility of a God who has yet to reveal himself. So even if one grants your assertions, you come up short of 50% by my calculations. On the other hand you have posted previously that Catholics accept this type of doubt in the minds of otherwise good people and give them a chance for "salvation".

[BluffTHIS!]

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You need to throw in the possibility of a God who has yet to reveal himself.

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That possibility is really a sub-case of Deism, as such an hyphothetical god isn't "tinkering" with his creation right now, even if he intends to do so later.


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So even if one grants your assertions, you come up short of 50% by my calculations. On the other hand you have posted previously that Catholics accept this type of doubt in the minds of otherwise good people and give them a chance for "salvation".

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As you know not only have I never asserted like some fundamentalist types around here, that christianity is 100% provable, I have even given reasons why it can't be (takes away free will).

But this is made up by what you said above:

"If somebody wants to claim that he personally has information or experience not available to all and that he therefore can't expect others to have his specific beliefs that's fine (except to some hardcore atheists.)"

Which is similar to what many of us christians have said about the "extra", albeit unprovable, evidence that we have of the experience of our faith in our daily lives. God wants us to have faith in Him, as in the trust and confidence that a child has for its father, and as shown by our Saviour's comments to (doubting) St. Thomas in the gospel, such a faith that has yet not seen the evidence is greater than that which has.

[David Sklansky]

"As you know not only have I never asserted like some fundamentalist types around here, that christianity is 100% provable, I have even given reasons why it can't be (takes away free will)."

No fundamentalist has said that it is 100% provable. They have only said that the evidence would clearly lead to that conclusion. But that much they must say, because, unlike you, they won't agree to the possibility that an honest unbeliever has a chance to be saved.