religion, oh god... gods!

Sorry, but no. Truth is not determined by belief. We can, and even do, believe things all the time that turn out to be wrong. Religion is no different. I believed today was Thrusday, for example, and it turned out to be Wednesday. And it would be Wednesday even if I went all day without realizing my mistake. Truth doesn't care about us and it doesn't change to fit our will. And to use my favorite example, I am perfectly free to believe Olivia Wilde is sitting on my bed right now wearing sexy lingerie. I firmly believe that when I look back she will be there. Will she, really?

The other problem is personal truth. It is a very dangerous conceptual mistake. What you should say is «MY belief». It can't be your truth because one thing can't be truth for you and not for me. 2+2 will be four no matter how much or how little math you know.

I perfectly understand that you don't rub your beliefs in other people's faces and that's great. Really. But the problem is that if you belief in Christianity (don't really remember if that's your religion but just to make the point) you believe certain things. One of those things is that Jesus is the true way and that all who reject him will go to hell. Therefore, people who don't believe in Jesus like you will go to hell. The other problem is monotheism. It would be one thing if those religions believed in tons of gods but they don't and they all claim to have the right one whereas all others are wrong. They exclude each other by definition.



The Bible I have is not in English and I don't want to risk corrupting the holy word of God... JK. But my Bible is actually in another language (and I'm lazy to get it now and I'm lazy to look up verses) but in the first two books of the New Testament, Jesus talks about how he's *the* prophet and that all other prophets that will appear after him are false.

Yet again, you speak the truth. The problem is that trying to decide which Bible verses to believe and which to let go is a philosophical nightmare (as are most things associated with religion). The way I see it, no one can separate the Bible into verses that God wants us to know and verses God wants us to forget. If you do, you are either saying «I know more than God» or «This isn't the word of God, because if it were, it would be perfect». Even Jesus talked about abolishing old laws and kept most of the ten commandments. And, even though most Christians try to divorce themselves from the Old Testament, they still want it plastered over walls in every school (at least in the USA).

So, the problem isn't what religious people do. It's whether they have legitimacy to do it. I for one can't fathom how a book allegedly holy can have mistakes...

Truth, as you say is indeed completely without subjectivity. The reason we have religions is because evidence is subjective, we cannot know anything for certain (except mathematical proofs). For all I know, you could be Olivia Wilde's lover, which would make the sexy lingerie scenario fairly likely. But the fact that the majority of people on the planet are not Olivia Wilde's lover would suggest that you, sadly, are also not.

In base 3, 2+2=11. Just sayin'.

Again, you're taking the default christian to be an extremist. Most christians would say that anyone who leads a 'good' life will be able to get into heaven (even if that's not what the Bible says). And again, they do not exclude each other by definition. It is some religious people who attempt to exclude other faiths from their own. Coming back to pluralism, it is easily possible for someone to say, for instance, 'Allah and God are one and the same being, but the Muslims have made some mistakes in describing him'. Sure, they'll be saying some Islamic beliefs are false, but not outright denying the existence of Allah.

Okay, if you're using *the* as a quote to support your argument, I think you're reading too much into the bible. It wasn't written with all the ideas of modern literary analysis in mind. Also, you said in a previous post that all previous prophets were rendered false, but now you're saying all prophets after Jesus. I seem to remember something about Jesus saying he was the last prophet, so I think the after point is valid. Was saying previous prophets a mistake on your part, or do you have evidence for that as well?

I've heard of these people trying to get schools to teach only their religion. This is a stupid idea. Chances are, if someones gonna believe in christianity, the thing that convinces them will not be being taught it in school. And it's unlikely to convert anyone either. I remember hating always only doing Christianity in religious studies. The school justified it by saying, 'most of are students are most familiar with it, so the exams will be easier'. That really cheesed me of, given the only practical use of RS was to teach us how to deal with different religions. There is no point if you're teaching us about something we're already familiar with.

Perhaps rather than 'Holy book', it should be something like 'Interpretations of the Holy word of God by mere mortals'. It's a bit of a mouthful, but I'm sure we'll get used to it.

Which is why I don't doubt my beliefs, but I doubt on humanity itself.

I know that to be the historic answer but answer me this: God decides he wants humans to know his rules, his commandments. He reveals himself and chooses specific people to write down his word in exact detail. Over the years, they mess up. Nowadays, we have no idea what to believe. Shouldn't he appear again, then? If the reason he showed up was to give us rules, why doesn't he come again if we simply don't know the rules?

Again: if the scriptures were written under divine inspiration, why are there holes in them? It makes perfect sense that we lost some stuff of Homer or Aristotle but God?

I won't reply to Golden_Lightning you both make the same point.



I actually have a different take on it. I don't do this in practise but I think religious extremists are people who *don't* follow all rules in their books. They have some beliefs, some faith but turn away from most stuff. In essence, they are liberal Christians, for example. Again, I don't call them extremists due to a negative conotation but they are extremists because they move away from the center text to the periphery. What I call upon are the fundamentalists. Those are sitting exactly in the middle. If a Christian kills a gay man and says he's doing the word of God, how can you call him extremist? He's not extremists, he's literal.

I take the literal view because if they belive in the Bible, they should believe that to be the word of God. Socially, it's great that they don't follow the rules, but discarding them is essentially realizing they are bad. How can God-given rules be bad?



Too lazy to look back but I might have made a mistake. Jesus claimed that after his mission, false prophets would appear and we should not take their word for it is false. He wouldn't be much of a wise source since he also told us to hang on for the apocalypse... which is roughly 2000 years too late but that's another story. It wouldn't make sense to say previous since Jesus himself believe Old Testament stuff.

Yeah, you got me there, those were my mistakes in explanation. I did mean that evidence can be interpreted subjectively, as you said. But I hold firm on my statement that nothing can be proved (bar maths) with absolute certainty. So nothing can conclusively prove the existence of Christ, only act as evidence for it, which can then be interpreted by someone as either good evidence or bad evidence (ie true or false).

And I'm sorry, I didn't intend to make you feel bad about your life. I simply meant that I would have liked it if you were her lover. It would be quite humorous, if nothing else.

Similarly, I should indeed have put fundamentalist rather than extremist, someone who follows their scriptures to the letter. Although your idea of extremist refers to differing 'extremely' from your religion. The common idea of an extremist is someone who takes 'extreme' actions based on their beliefs.



Glad we cleared that up. Although some Christian sects have recent prophets, but still believe in Jesus. Mormons, for example, believe in Jesus, but have more recent prophets like Joseph Smith. And I'm sure any Christian could get away with believing the words of other peoples prophets, simply by not thinking of them as prophets, but as 'enlightened individuals' or something.

You are right about absolute certainity. In Philosophy, it seems as though no such thing as absolutes exist of anything. I seem to be mentioning his name quite often but that is more or less David Hume's contribution, or rather, one of his main contribuitions. There'a s catch though: for example, if you say you believe that your house continues to exist when you go away and I say: how do you know? You will have no response and your point about absolute certainity shatters. However, the catch is that, is my question a valid one? The philosophical implication is more or less that the burden of proof would be one me and until proven otherwise, my question about certaintiy is meaningless. In religion, people often shift the burden of proof around. Quite mistakenly so.

I was being silly about you making me feel bad. It would be awesome to have Olivia Wilde in lingerie on my bed but I've come to terms with it lol.

As for your extremist distinction, it's a valid one. But words are an even more complicated subject. We'd have to spend hours talking about philosophy of language just for the extremist point.

And yes, mormons do have a new prophet. So do some Christians in Puerto Rico who have some hispanic dude who claims to be Jesus Christ. And people believe him... But the point stands, if you believe in Jesus and he says there will only be false prophets, accepting the new prophecy is either saying you disagree with the son of God/God himself or thinking he was wrong.

Disagreeing with God is like... like... disagreeing with God. There's no better example. Thinking he was wrong puts the Bible in doubt. If this was a courtroom, the Bible would have to be entirely dismissed until we could know for certain what's true and what's false about it. Which is an impossible task.

I've heard a similar house analogy at a philosophy lecture before, only the question he posed was 'How do I now my house will still be here when I get back?'. This question is answerable: It's still been there when I've returned before, so evidence would suggest it will still be there when I return this time. But with your question, you're asking what happens to the house when it's unobserved. This is something we cannot know, for to know what happens, we would have to observe it, and thus it would not be unobserved. But that's a whole different philosophical quandary that I'm not gonna delve to deep into.

Yes, believing the new prophets does contradict Jesus, who Mormons believe to be the son of God and thus infallible. A complete contradiction in terms, is it not? So why do they believe it? Well, since Mormons are 'urged to avoid' masturbation, I doubt we'd find many on Fakku to ask. But they believe it, which is kind of my point. It is true that are 'disagreeing with God' (metaphorically of course), but they can still believe it, and be just as cocky and uptight about their religion as anyone else.

Also, I'd like to point out that, in a courtroom, the bible would dismissed until there is significant enough evidence (in the eyes of the Judge/Jury) for what's true and what is false. Which is a much easier task given that you're just trying to convince people of it, rather than conclusively prove it.

Well, now you went completely opposite to David Hume. Your answer to the house question is an induction. It is actually a great example for this discussion because it is something we do naturally and something that would make us go insane if we abandon it. However, philosophically speaking, you have no guarantee of such thing. We have no certainity that, just because the sun rises every day, that it will rise tomorrow. Philosophically, we can't know. The solution David Hume advances for the very problem he brings forth is, in so many words, we would go crazy if we stopped leaving with inductive thoughts such as those.

So the question isn't answered with absolute certainity - it's just answered and, if the 'bad skeptic' pushes on, the burden of proof is his to carry.

I don't think evidence for anything in the Bible is an easy task. I was more than 2000 years ago. That is why, philosophically and historically speaking, if we are to be reasonable and say: «Even though I'm a Christian, I think we shouldn't follow this because the Bible has a lot of mistakes» (which is something a strong believer I know claims), we have to put the whole thing at steak. Since it's so old, we can't know about anything about it.

They can believe it and do whatever they want with it. But logic has never been a dear friend of the pious.

You'll notice my answer to the house question did not say it will be there, but said evidence would suggest it will be there. Of course it isn't certain. It could be like hitchhikers guide, and they've planned a bypass through my house without telling me, and they've torn it up before I got back.

It's true that finding evidence for the bible is not easy, but my point was that it's easier than proving anything from the bible, which is, as we both agree, impossible.

Fair point, but you also said the question was answerable which, should the skeptic be a competent one, it can't be. The problem is that the question presents itself in a way that you can never answer correctly for it would be an infinite regression of «How do you know?». We live by the induction that things will be the same as they were (i.e. that dropped objects will always fall) but the dent in the induction reasoning is that it is always invalid by definition. Logically so.

Alright I did say that, which is incorrect.

I've always found it odd that inductive reasoning is very similar to mathematical proof by induction, in that they are looking at sequential logic (i.e. looking for patterns in subsequent events), and yet the very slight difference makes one impossible to prove something from. Mathematical induction requires only two steps; show it's true for 1, then show that if it's true for k, then it's true for k+1. The fact that their is no way to do the second step in real life situations is the only thing that stops us being certain about stuff you work out with inductive reasoning. If you were to attempt inductive reasoning in maths, you would have to check that the proposition was true for every single number individually, which is impossible because there are infinite numbers.

You cannot say inductive reasoning is invalid. You would have to say it is invalid as a form of proof. Otherwise you're implying that it has no use whatsoever. Inductive reasoning is a very useful device, because it tells us things that are highly probably, to the extent where it the chance of it being false is small enough to be ignored. You yourself said it stopped us going insane, which is a use in itself.

Excuse my intrusion...

I am not sure if anyone else is like me, but I kind of have my own religion. I believe in Jesus and God, and when I say God I am talking about the Father of Jesus. But, I believe that both are humans, and I treat the Bible as a piece of realistic fiction made by Jesus and God. I believe in certain parts of the Bible, but not all. I also believe some of Jesus and God's words, but again, not all. I go to Church every Sunday and pray when I go there. To make long story short, my family was Roman Catholic, but I believed in Atheism until I was 14. When I turned 14, that was when I started practicing "my own religion." I firmly believe that Jesus is indeed the son of God, but at the same time, I believe that just like all humans, Jesus and God have emotions and are sinful. At times they feel sadness, sometimes they lie, and in rare instances they even get angry. Like I have mentioned previously, I also believe in what typical Roman Catholics would believe in, such as heaven and hell, the fact that God created the universe, how Jesus had resurrected, and the list goes on.

I do inductive reasonings as well, everyone does. But in Logic, all inductive reasonings are invalid by definition. In order to be valid, an argument's conclusion needs to be «forced» by the premises. In other words, if you grant premises 1 through N, you have to grant the conclusion. Inductive always provide safe space that makes it illogical to grant the conclusion. For example:

1. On Monday, the bus was late.
2. On Tuesday, the bus was late.
3. On Wednesday, the bus was late.
4. Therefore, the bus will be late on Thrusday.

Even granting a 99.9999999999999999% probability, the argument is invalid. We have no reason to know the bus will be late too. It is likely it will but it can also be early. Or it may not show up. Or it may disappear. Or it may turn into How'ls Moving Castle. The argument tells us nothing. This is not my idea either. It's basic [advanced] Logic.

Again, I agree with your point about Mathmatics but in Logic, induction is a shady path.

You are using a definition of validity which is specific to logic scenarios, which is why we are disagreeing. Based on that definition, then yes, induction is invalid in logic.

The definition I use is a more generic one, whereby a conclusion is valid if it is based a reasonable or cogent argument. In which case, while your bus argument probably does not have enough data or a high enough probability of truth to be valid, a conclusion with a 99.9999999999999999% probability of truth is probably based on a reasonable enough argument to be valid.

So in terms of the study of Logic, you are right, but in terms of everyday life and the minds of the general populace, you are wrong.

Really this is just another case of semantics causing the disagreement.

Between two thunders during a storm...


I don't belive in religion. I don't even believe people that much. But I somehow built/build and trust my discernment.

I'm more confident in science than faith -- which can philosophically appear a rational paradox, when you push the reasoning together with knowledge to its end.

Then somehow it does not dispair me whether or not exist(s) god(s). If it does not exist, thant this entire universe is the most incredible miracle you could ever see. If it/they does/do exist, understand what is/are this/these may be pretty different from our clumsy guess, particularly those coming from any cultural context.


Well sometime when I consider the whole world/universe, it makes my head spin and gets me dizzy. Everything seems so meaningless... and in itself so unique. That's kinda alternately fearsome and awesome.

How ? Maybe because I don't think this universe would be determinist (Casualty is just a matter of statistic). If we would have something like a "destiny", then it's made by all the choices intertwined together each time possibilities allow divergences. To put it bluntly, each of us makes its own fate, whether you undergo or embark upon it.


This is my point of view. I imagine each of us may have its own one. Thus I respect more or less people believing but refraining from doing proselytism -- particularly toward myself or in front of me. But I like to discuss in an open-minded way with religious people :)

That's why Logic is far, far from being my favorite subject...

I don't think you can separate Logic from everyday reasonable conclusions because they are one and the same. The only difference is that Logic goes deeper into it and is 100% objective and not grounded on, I dunno, Psychology for example.

But no, in Logic, an inductive reasoning cannot possibly be valid. And this is not my opinion either. You would make a safe bet expecting the bus to be late but it would never be logically valid. That's the essence of induction basically.

Interestingly enough, we can agree to disagree even though we've been agreeing this whole time. I don't really like the problem of induction either...

Again, words are the problem here.

In an everyday scenario, it would be logical to assume something with 99.9999999999999% probability of happening will happen. But in the study of logic, it would be illogical to do so, because that looks at certainty.

Really, the English language is hopelessly inadequate to describe what we're talking about, without mountainous walls of text being used to explain what we mean.

Exactly, which is why there is so much confusion and doubt about religious beliefs and which many believe to just follow their feelings because in some cases that is the best way to express it to themselves.

You think english is ambiguous ? Then try nihongo (japanese).

But you get a point even though, I agree.

Well... Shall I say the mathematicians' (scientists) prefered language is french, because its rigid grammar so complicated to learn give fewer room for ambiguousness than lot of vehicular languages ? I've red it from an english essay (it's a pity that I didn't think to save a link from it at that time...).