The default state of a human is an agnostic. If you are born and nobody tells you the Good Word, you live your entire life without religion. If someone comes to you one day and tells you a man lives in the clouds with a deep-seated interest in your sex life, the onus is then on you to convince the agnostic. The burden of proof is on you.
If I told you the story of our lord and savior Sauron, could you prove to me it's not true? Could you prove to me any of the Lord of the Rings didn't happen?
>The default state of a human is an agnostic. If you are born and nobody tells you the Good Word, you live your entire life without religion.
There are some interesting arguments that we evolved to become hard-wired for religion. Fear during early evolution was probably the driver for this, all the earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, death by germs etc. We invented religion as a means to explain stuff - the solar cycle, disease, etc, etc. Turns out those explanations were wrong, but our biology is still the same ..
I'm with you there, I believe humans did evolve a capacity for religiosity. I'm pretty sure that a child that grows up on an island however isn't going to spontaneously regenerate the new testament haha.
No but they will believe some form of religion. Christianity and others survived because they were just able to compete against other religions in that area and time period.
Look at the context of this discussion. The claim was made that all religion is based on misinformation.
I argued that that claim is wrong.
Someone responded saying, "find one true account that religion is based on". I responded asking whether they could find an account that is proven false.
The context here is important--I'm not arguing my belief in religion, or that you must believe in religion. I'm arguing that not all religion is based on misinformation. I brought up my question to point out that his question is irrelevant, and he can't prove anything to be false, therefore he can't prove that it's all misinformation.
If I see a bird fly over my head, then claim to you, "a bird flew over my head", I can't prove it. Neither can you disprove it. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, or that my claim isn't real, or that my claim is misinformation.
~2000 years ago people witnessed Christ die and some claim they saw Him come back to life. They wrote about it. Those letters still exist today. I agree that this information alone is not enough to justify someone changing their life to believe the letters--merely existing doesn't "prove" that what's in them is true. But pretend for a second it really did happen. What evidence/proof do you think you'd find that could prove it?
This is honestly getting watered down a lot though, with people jumping in without reading everything. I don't blame them--I do the same on HN.
If someone wishes to discuss why I personally believe, and what I believe in, that's a different thing altogether that I'm happy to discuss but not here on HN.
I'd argue that the problem with this analogy is that a bird flying overhead is something we know is possible and indeed common. According to all scientific knowledge and evidence, resurrection is not possible. So absent significant evidence, it's not logical to believe that this happened. We also know that religion has historically provided numerous benefits to societies, allowing for trust, cooperation, and trade in societies that predate effective government. So it is logical to assume that such belief systems would develop, and that societies that developed them would prevail over those that didn't, even in the absence of supernatural evidence.
Given that religion contradicts what we know about the physical world, and that its existence is explained without reliance on the supernatural, it's not logical to believe its supernatural claims.
So if something cannot be observed by you, within your 15-100 years of life (assuming you fit within that range), that simply means it's impossible for it to have occurred? And that any claims otherwise are misinformation?
No one claims that someone is resurrected every day. The claims of Christianity are that it occurred once, and that it was a miracle.
The thought that it's impossible for something to have occurred unless it's commonly overserved isn't sound. There is no such requirement. There are plenty of rare events that occur, with and without scientific explanation.
Update: Perhaps here's what we're missing. There is information, misinformation, and then there's claims that cannot be proven or disproved. I do not believe that all things are false until proven true. I believe that Christianity, and many other religions, can be neither proven or disproven using modern science. It is neither misinformation or information. It is a belief.
> I do not believe that all things are false until proven true. I believe that Christianity, and many other religions, can be neither proven or disproven using modern science. It is neither misinformation or information. It is a belief.
Where we disagree is that you think that a 2000 year old text that's been translated 7 or 8 times and by what we would consider today to be idiots (human IQ has increased dramatically over time, in 1910 alone the IQ midpoint would be today's 70, which is a full standard deviation lower) - should be given the benefit of the doubt and be granted a reverse burden of proof. Idiots mind you who would have you burned at the stake for the laptop you're replying on.
The scriptures should be approached analytically with modern techniques. Does anything in there line up with observable reality? No. Is there a plausible explanation? No. Ergo, we should assume its false unless we discover some evidence that it might be true.
The challenge with doing that is religions rely on indoctrinating the youth before they're capable of making rational evaluations and play to our evolutionary weaknesses (the need for an explanation).
> There are plenty of rare events that occur, with and without scientific explanation.
Indeed but I'm not going to recommend telling a 4 year old I've just dunked under water about them based on a book written by an idiot 2000 years ago.
> It is neither misinformation or information. It is a belief.
It's a myth. Myths are fine, but shouldn't be presented as fact. And they certainly shouldn't be true until proven false.
By this token, until you prove otherwise, the whole world was started on a giant turtle. [1]
I think calling ancient people idiots is ingenuine. Just because you know trigonometry and someone 2000 years ago didn't know trigonometry doesn't mean that person is an idiot...
I agree there are many strangeties that are in the Bible that don't seem to be plausible, and we should not accept them as fact, due to the nature of translating ancient texts and the corrupting influences of government and religions. You are right that certain stories shouldn't just be believed or accepted without evidence. But you are wrong to say that there is nothing in the scriptures that lines up with observable reality.
The Bible contains many many stories about Human behavior and emotions. Mob violence, rape, drunkeness, greed, corruption, and contain many good lessons on understanding these behaviors in order to overcome them. These are behaviors we observe in our everyday lives.
There are great teachings in the Bible if that is what you are looking for. If you look in the Bible to try and find every falsehood or inconsistency you will never actual find anything of value to your life.
"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter." - Proverbs 25:2
> I think calling ancient people idiots is ingenuine. Just because you know trigonometry and someone 2000 years ago didn't know trigonometry doesn't mean that person is an idiot...
Nothing to do with trig, it's based on IQ assessments. [1] Human intelligence has increased dramatically as a function of nutrition, as a function of living in cities, as a function of education and so on. It's even happening to raccoons who live in cities. [2]
It's not their fault, but compared to modern humans, they were big dummies.
> There are great teachings in the Bible if that is what you are looking for. If you look in the Bible to try and find every falsehood or inconsistency you will never actual find anything of value to your life.
Yeah, it's a modern Aesop's Fables. It's a bunch of stories, some made up, some collected from experience, which are used to provide guidance to living your life.
You are making the case that if I cannot disprove any religious text, then by default, it's information and not misinformation even though it flies in the face of observable reality. That isn't really how we look at things.
Everything is misinformation until proven otherwise.
The bigger and grander the claim, the higher the burden of proof. With a bird, the claim ain't exactly grand, and I'm willing to take you at your word. On the other hand if you told me a bird flew over your head, turned into a plane and wrote "I'm Your Lord and Savior" in skywriting, well, I'm gonna need more than just your word on it.
It doesn't really matter if those events long time ago actually happened, and were interpreted correctly at the time, with the knowledge people had at the time.
What matters is do you today believe heaven and hell are real, and will you go to either one when you die? Will you be judged by some know-it-all entity, and what rules does (s)he judge you by? Do you need to follow the roman, greek, egyptian, viking, moslim, christian, catholic, protestant, ..., rules to go to heaven? And if you follow the christian rules, and god turns out to be allah, will you go to hell?
The onus is on the person making the initial claim; you can't make an assertion without evidence and then expect people who disagree to prove the negative. Could say the same thing about claims of rigged elections.
