/u/Phylanara (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/11s1nuq/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_no_religion_has/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)

I think you would be better off specifying *all* of the others: "No religion has epistemically better arguments or evidence for its claims than *all* of the others. I'm not aware of any religion that has uniquely good evidence. But a few are especially bad, having been started by obvious con artists in eras for which we have comparatively good records.

I agree, but I thought of it after posting and one can't edit titles.

If the poster you are responding to changed your view (AS STATED) in even a minimal way, they deserve a delta. Your statement indicates that this person's correction of your stated view is one you agree with . . .

I don’t believe this is accurate of the rules. The point of the sub is to change a view. Here, the commenter did not change OPs view, as OP pointed out. No delta should have been awarded in this instance.

Ok! Will do

Are those really worse, though? I would argue that the ‘evidence’ for more established religions ultimately isn’t really different. It’s still all just accounts of experiences people supposedly had of God/other metaphysical entities and such. Even if those people genuinely believed those experiences, they still have essentially no evidentiary value. If two people came to me and told me they had a direct experience of some deity, and I somehow could verify that one of them was completely sincere and the other was lying, I’d see no reason to put any more stock in the sincere person’s deity.

In some cases even with well-established religions we know who created the religion and who wrote down the holy texts and it’s really no different than like L. Ron Hubbard or Joseph Smith. Like we know Mohammad was a real person, and we know the scholars who compiled the Old Testament, and we know the stories a lot of those myths were borrowed from, and we know for a fact that a lot of claims made in the Old Testament have no historical evidence or are even contradicted by historical evidence What really makes these religions any different other than that the people who started the religions and wrote down the stories existed a long time ago?

From a particular point of view, ALL religions have exactly 0 evidence. Therefore, because 0=0, there cannot be any that are “especially bad” no matter how ridiculous they sound. Mainstream acceptance of the major religions does not make their evidence any less ridiculous

I would say that buddhism has more than zero evidence, mainly since the bulk of its teachings are about specific techniques for meditation, ethics, etc. while cosmology plays significantly smaller role in it than in other religions (in fact canonic teachings occasionally say things with general meaning "try it for yourself and don't take others' word for it")

!delta, as I mentionned in another comment responding to parent, this is a clarification of my op that I thought of after my posting.

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/amiablecuriosity ([11∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/amiablecuriosity)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)

!Delta

Religions are trust based, that is: I believe it is true, because people and sources I trust say it is true. Superficially, that seems like a very weak argument. But upon closer inspection, this is how every society fundamentally must function. Let's do an example" During the "China-balloon-incident", let's simplify and pretend there were two opposing sources: The New York times reporting that this was an unauthorized balloon that most likely tried to spy on the US and the Global Times (chinese propaganda paper), which reported that it was just a weather balloon off course and America is abusing this situation to fuel anti chinese mentality. I have absolutely no hint which of these sources could be correct. I have never meant any journalist of either of these news papers. But still, I believe in the New York Times version of the story over the Global Times version. I do so, because I trust the New York times but not the Global Times. I trust the New York times, because the New York times is trusted by my "network", by which I mean: I can only confirm trustworthiness of a few individuals (let's call them my friends). However these few individuals confirm trustworthiness of other individuals. And since I trust my friends, I trust that the people my friends trust are itself trustworthy. Like that, we get a "tree of trust", my network. Somewhere in this network there are trustworthy people that confirm that the New York Times is trustworthy. And somewhere in this network there are people that confirm that the Global Times is not trustworthy. The same concept underlies EVERYTHING you have ever believed in: Did Japan commit war crimes during WWII? Well, I was not alive back then to confirm it myself. I also know nobody who was alive back then. But my network knows trusts people, who trusted people, who trusted people, who were actually directly involved in confirming it. Hence I belive Japan did commit war crimes during WWII, even though there are equally big and legit trust networks which deny it (for example the country of Japan itself). But I trust my network more, because there are at least a few people which trustworthiness I can confirm. So let's apply the same concept to religion. The argument why I believe in my religion is: "I trust the religion my network believes in". This does not apply different standards to different religions. Whatever religion my network believes in, this argument would make me belive in it too. In fact I belive that this is the argument that (almost) every religious person pursues. However, they often phrase it in a way, that makes it seem asymmetric. For example, a Christian would say: Christianity is true because the Bible is true, but Islam is wrong because the Quran is wrong. But what they actually are saying: They trust their parents, which trusted their parents, which trusted their parents, which trusted their friends, which trusted their parents, ect. We now walk backwards in time through their network until we eventually get to the people that have written the Bible. And since their trustworthiness has been confirmed by their network, they trust it. TLDR: The argument that makes my religion right from my viewpoint is: It has been confirmed as correct by my network of trust. This applies the same standard to all religions.

And people with different "circles of trust" can give the same answer. What makes you so special that your network of trust is more likely right than theirs?

Isn't this a problem with essentially every type of knowledge though? "Knowing" something requires you to decide which sources you trust and to what degree. Even in science a new study can at most adjust your priors, it can't prove something. And weighing different studies may require considering how trusted the authors are, which usually involves trusting those established in your "network".

No, not really. I can't "know" that the truck won't hit me if I run across the interstate, no matter who I trust. I would point out that if you can't justify your "knowledge" without attacking the idea of *knowledge itself*, you're not very likely to convince me.

> No, not really. I can't "know" that the truck won't hit me if I run across the interstate, no matter who I trust. You can never "know" things that are false (definition of knowledge), but you can have justified beliefs for things that are false and/or unjustified beliefs for things that are true. I don't think they were attacking the "idea of knowledge itself". Credulity is important in all fields, and I tend to hold with more liberally trust ([for example, as Swinburne](https://www.philosophyofreligion.uk/theistic-proofs/the-argument-from-religious-experience/the-principle-of-credulity/)) on credulity unless given a reason otherwise. The common complaint with credulity is that it does mean people can rationally come to different conclusions based upon the same evidence, but I see no reason to say those conclusions are unjustified. Just because someone has a seemingly rational belief that contradicts one of my beliefs doesn't mean my belief is not justified. As such, for a realm like religion, you can only do your best. Luckily, most religions don't penalize you for getting it wrong (so you COULD play a silly game and just pick the one that does penalize you for believing other religions, but that seems needlessly hedonistic for me)

This is not how any of that works. You do not validate studies because you simply trust people. A single study is basically worthless, you trust the data because multiple credible independent sources reproduce and publish similar results. The study must layout the methodology and data in such a way others (including you the reader) can go and try if it you want to prove it yourself. You can have trusted sources, but that trust can be verified with your on testing and research.

>Religions are trust based, that is: I believe it is true, because people and sources I trust say it is true. Superficially, that seems like a very weak argument. But upon closer inspection, this is how every society fundamentally must function. Sadly, it's also how every cheap grift in history has functioned. The key is in the examination of those sources and their evidence and the results they produce. As someone said, by their fruits ye shall know them. Religion fails every test.

>No religion has epistemically better arguments or evidence for its claims than the others. >For the purpose of this post, I'll consider "religious claims" only claims that would detectably contradict a naturalistic model of the universe. If I understand you correctly, if there is evidence for a religious belief then it doesn't count as a religious belief? Then of course all religious beliefs have the same evidence.

No. I am saying that if the evidence for your religious belief is no better than the evidence for an opposing religious belief, then you are not justified in adopting the belief rather than the opposing one. The second line you quoted is there as a way to narrow the field of "religious claims" to avoid arguments like "my religion claims 2+2 = 4 therefore my religion is better supported". You could totally have evidence for something supernatural - imagine the resurrection of Christ, but broadcasted live with witnesses and controls against trickery in place, for example. Or D&D like clerics that can commune with their gods to gain testable information and call miracles on demand that people who believe in other (nonexistent) gods cant' replicate the miracles.

>my religion claims 2+2 = 4 therefore my religion is better supported That sounds like a religious belief that "epistemically", has, "better arguments or evidence for its claims than the others". Why is it disqualified? >You could totally have evidence for something supernatural - imagine the resurrection of Christ, but broadcasted live with witnesses and controls against trickery in place. Usually things are natural, or super-natural, because of the evidence behind them. If your resurrection thing was televised it would become part of nature.

So a camera in the tomb would have made jesus not-god ?

My understanding is that Jesus was a human, some kind of diety, and resurrected. It would have made human resurrection part of nature. We might be able to imitate it. A Christian might be able to tell you which resurrected humans are and are not Gods.

>A Christian might be able to tell you which resurrected humans are and are not Gods. How?

I am not a Christian. I don't understand the trinity or what constitutes a God. What I'm saying is that if you showed me a video(proven to not be fake somehow) of a guy getting resurrected, then that would become an accepted fact. It would be categorised with 2+2=4 and other evident things according to epistemology. It would not be super natural, it would be one of the many observable things in nature.

> What I'm saying is that if you showed me a video(proven to not be fake somehow) of a guy getting resurrected, then that would become an accepted fact. I disagree in a way that supports your argument (oddly). I don't believe it would be accepted fact if someone showed a resurrection video that wasn't proven fake. I know this because most ghost sighting videos are never proven fake. The moment someone says "you COULD have faked this because you can fake video" everyone moves on. And maybe that someone is right, but that means a resurrection video would not be given *ANY* weight of credibility by any skeptic. In fact, I don't think any evidence could exist that would make resurrection accepted fact, short of it happening so regularly you couldn't avoid it (and per my above point and the fact that 18% of Americans have claimed at least one ghost experience in their life, maybe not even that)

What if a religion makes less implausible claims than other religions? Buddhism, as you may be aware, is better thought of as a mentality or a way of life rather than a religion. Supernatural elements, where they exist at all, are of peripheral importance. It just seems fundamentally *less implausible*. Islam posits that the prophet mohammed revealed the truth of things and while supernatural miracles feature in the narrative, there’s no historical doubt that he existed (as much can not be said for Jesus) and the core faith of Muslims (as I understand it) rests on the self evident truth of the Quran rather than a profoundly unlikely miracle of bodily resurrection of Jesus. So, might one religions claims be better than another if they’re fundamentally less implausible? What about religions that claim less (or even no) “magical thinking” as proof; is that a better epistemological argument by default?

Personally, I think internal consistency is more important than rock solid evidence for religions. If the doctrines and history contradict, the religion is a non starter. My only extensive knowledge is in Christianity, though I am aware of the tenents of many others. I won't be able to answer questions concerning them without injecting opinions that muddy the message.

>Personally, I think internal consistency is more important than rock solid evidence for religions. If the doctrines and history contradict, the religion is a non starter. >My only extensive knowledge is in Christianity, though I am aware of the tenents of many others. Interesting, because I cannot find internal consistency in christianity. For example, the first sentences of the Bible: In the beginning there was the word, and the word was god, and the word was with god. Another example is Jesus, who is both the son of god and also god. Another self-reference. This kind of self-referencing breaks internal consistency. This is a fairly recent discovery, tho: originating in modern, logical positivism. What's your take on this?

>For example, the first sentences of the Bible: >In the beginning there was the word, and the word was god, and the word was with god. That's in John, not Genesis. The first sentence of the Bible is: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. Minor quibble. But I do agree that "the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true" is circular reasoning and gets us nowhere.

>>For example, the first sentences of the Bible: >>In the beginning there was the word, and the word was god, and the word was with god. >That's in John, not Genesis. >Minor quibble. Exactly. Nuance. It's an example of the kind of self-referencing we find in the Bible and christian theology. >But I do agree that "the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true" is circular reasoning and gets is nowhere. That's not what I said. The word is both god, and with god. Jesus is both the son of god, and god. A more obvious example is the Trinity: three things that are also one. Very clear self-referencing. From logical positivism, and logicians like Gödel and Russell, we know this kind of self-referencing breaks internal consistency. The previous commenter said internal consistency is important. So I asked how they resolve this.

>From logical positivism, and logicians like Gödel and Russell, we know this kind of self-referencing breaks internal consistency. That’s not really what the logicians concluded. They concluded that any system complex enough to talk about itself must either be incomplete or allow paradoxes. This is different than calling such a system “wrong”. In fact, I would argue it’s a mark of a good system. Any religious system that doesn’t reach that level of complexity is not strong enough to describe our world.

I'm Christian but I don't think Christianity is internally consistent, and there are plenty of biblical events that contradict history. However... >In the beginning there was the word, and the word was god, and the word was with god. This is the first sentence of the book of John, not the first words of the Bible.

>I'm Christian but I don't think Christianity is internally consistent You don't find this problematic? If a system isn't internally consistent, any and every proposition can be proven to be both true and false.

No I don't find it problematic. No religion is "internally consistent." How could I claim a religion is "internally consistent" when there are thousands of denominations? Every religion has sects that believe different things based upon their interpretation of that group's holy book. The Bible is a collection of writings over the course of thousands of years and by thousands of people. Of course it isn't consistent! The major themes are consistent, for the most part, but it contradicts itself. >any and every proposition can be proven to be both true and false. I have no desire to prove anything true or false.

Indeed, which is why I have looked into the Bible. Ive found a high level of consistency and if I hadn't I wouldn't be Christian

>Ive found a high level of consistency and if I hadn't I wouldn't be Christian Well what's stopping you? Explain the consistency you found. Secondly, how do you reconcile the self-referencing I pointed out? Self-referencing breaks internal consistency.

Read the thread. Ive explained where I can when questions are asked.

Those are paradoxes, and if you dig into them on Christian sites youll find theologically backed answers

>Those are paradoxes, and if you dig into them on Christian sites youll fund theologically backed answers You're not responding to my comment. I'm asking you for this supposed backing. Because I have made an invested and honest effort, and found none. You claim there is backing, and these are paradoxes: what's the backing?

The two you presented are actually related. The Word that is God and was with God is Jesus. Its establishing their eternal relationship as two of the three persons of God. Jesus is God, not made by God, showing that he is equal to God the father and the Holy Spirit. Jesus was fully human, and fully God. He was born as a human, had a physical body, grew up, and suffered like the rest of us. He was sinless though because he was God, which allowed him to not fall into human nature despite being tempted.

Why do you insist there are answers, but are either unable or unwilling to put your money where your mouth is?

After a day I stop really caring about the argument. You have your views and I have mine

Then why bother sharing your view on this sub?

We can have internally consistent yet fictional stories, I'm afraid. Internal consistency is also a bar that many religions can pass, yet you chose (presumably) only one of the internally consistent religions.

We can, but that does give one the ability to compare the religions on an equal level. Consider this. What if you suddenly found some mathematical proof that a god or gods existed and that at least one religion was at least partly true, but nothing else? What would your next steps be?

Publish and collect my Fields medal?

A religion like Christianity explains for believers how the universe cane into existence, and gives a jumping ooff point for Christian scientists to theorize how the world works through that lense. As long as there is a very logical cannon, its difficult to disprove or debunk since proving God's existence is not really possible. We can't even comprehend him and his thoughts if we go by the Bible's descriptions. Also, I'm only able to argue Christianity. The others I can debate against or talk about at a surface level, but it would be disingenuous for me to claim expertise with them.

And other religions provide a similar service for their believers too. I'm afraid you're not really getting the point of this post here.

Religions don't feel the need to prove God or their god exists. It doesn't come up much but when it does, evidence is often given in the form of ideas. Things like irreducible complexity in biology, the lack of beauty in random things, the way our universe seems designed like a simulation (mostly an atheist thought but a fascinating one). What view do you want changed? I can switch gears I think.

I thought my title was explicit enough.

But Theists do feel they must prove their god or gods are real for most wish to continue the cycle and spread of thier indoctrination to as many as possible. The fact that over thousands of years of claims of deities not a single 1 has ever shown any proof of their existence just seems silly to believe after all this time. Idea aren't evidence your merely trying to move the goalpost. Evidence is verifiable, tangible, or observable. Subjective Concepts and Personal anecdotes are the furthest you can get to proving something.

But that explanation of creation is demonstrably wrong - things weren't created in a week, nor as recently as it suggests

So you say.

I'm not expressing an opinion.

Christianity seems like the most internally inconsistent religion. Jesus was a pretty cool guy but he basically changes so many of the teachings of God from the old testament. It seems like a huge contradiction and the only way to handle it is to say that what is good is determined by God and so it can be anything. This is circular logic and could be used to justify anything so it really doesn't feel fitting for any specific religion.

In order to make moral belief system you need some bedrock assumptions or axioms. Then you can build your system with logic from those axioms. Now you can make worse system by having more axioms or using false logic. Both that are often used. We often use false logic that leads to conflicts within systems or invent new axioms to justify our belief systems. Best moral belief system is one with fewest logical failures and fewest axioms.

So mathematics is the best belief system

Certainly for it's own purpose. But mathematics cannot answer many fundamental questions about human existence.

(I am a mathematician/computer scientist btw) I don't think that's necessarily baked into belief systems. Many belief systems fail to answer many questions about human existence. Take Judaism for instance: Judaism doesn't even attempt to explain what happens after humans die.

>(I am a mathematician/computer scientist btw) I'm economist/data scientist btw. >Take Judaism for instance: Judaism doesn't even attempt to explain what happens after humans die. Couldn't be more farther from the truth. You should research Sheol, yeshiva shel mallah and shamayim. But what is really important here is compering moral belief systems. Belief systems that tell you what is right and wrong. Maths cannot answer moral questions but many other believes can (including but not limited to religion).

Hm I suppose I don't really know enough about belief systems to speak intelligently on this then. I suppose my overarching point is just that it's an interesting mental exercise to stretch these definitions in interesting ways and see what happens / what fails / what succeeds. For instance when I am doing a proof, you always try to plug in these extreme cases to see what happens and see if the proof holds up. Similarly when we try to have these blanket societal definitions for stuff, it's interesting to me to stretch the definition as far as possible and see where things fall apart. In the *literal* definition of a belief system (a system of beliefs) well mathematics IS a belief system. I have a set of beliefs (axioms) and then I have a system built around that: theorems / corollaries / lemmas

>In the literal definition of a belief system (a system of beliefs) well mathematics IS a belief system. It is. But it's not moral belief system. Maths is best what it does but what it does is very limited. And same method of logical proof (or unit testing) you do should be applied to moral belief systems as well. Find extreme cases, see illogical conclusions, find when they break. And this brings up my original argument. Best moral belief system is one that has fewest assumptions/axioms and least amount of these logical flaws.

That does not seem to address my post.

How not? It's about finding the "worst possible religion" and saying that some other religions has better arguments and claims. Argument is better when it's logical and have fewest assumptions.

This is not about finding the worst possible religion. This is about comparing the quality of the support for the claims religions make, and finding out if there is one that makes better-supported claims than the others. Your top level comment did not even bother to address religion at all.

>This is about comparing the quality of the support for the claims religions make, and finding out if there is one that makes better-supported claims than the others. Isn't this the same as? >finding the worst possible religion. Or the best. It really doesn't matter. What is the difference in compering quality of arguments and finding the best arguments? What kind of qualities are you compering if not logic or number of assumptions? What are your metrics? And there is really good reason why my original comment (or any argument) is not about religion. All belief systems operate the same way. It doesn't matter if you believe in human rights or if you believe in Jewish Yahweh. They are just belief systems with assumptions and internal logic.

OP isn't concerned with the best or worst religion. They're asking the question about if religion should even be considered in modern society. They're all pretty awful, as far as ethics are concerned. Imo this is more asking 'should lawmakers be able to use religion to justify laws' more than it is 'what is the best religion to practice'

>Now you can make worse system by having more axioms Why having more axioms = worse system?

If you can reach the same conclusion with fewer assumptions, it's simpler. Simpler is better because it's easier for human to follow it. Simpler is better because there is less change for mistakes.

>Best belief system is one with fewest logical failures and fewest axioms. Why? That's just another belief system with its own axioms. One belief system isn't inherently better than another.

Certainly these are merits and metrics that I deemed most important. Simple and logical. I think these are the best metrics because they are easy. Complex and illogical belief system is harder to follow and therefore worse. But what would you think are better metrics?

>Certainly these are merits and metrics that I deemed most important. Certainly. >Simple and logical. Exactly: If you're using logic to say one system is better than another, you need another system: to compare the two. Which means setting axioms to do so. >But what would you think are better metrics? I can think of many metrics. I don't pretend any of these are inherently better than another. You have yet to establish yours is the best one.

My metrics were logic and simplicity (less axioms). To compere two belief systems you count the axioms and logical flaws.

>My metrics were logic and simplicity (less axioms). Exactly. Why is this the objectively correct metric? >To compere two belief systems you count the axioms and logical flaws. I understand your metric, you don't have to explain it.

Logic must be metric. Without it it's impossible to make logical comparison. Simplicity is also logical metric. If you can reach same outcome but one uses less axioms, the simpler model knows more (because it has to assume less).

>Logic must be metric. Without it it's impossible to make logical comparison. Logic itself isn't a metric. It's a set of 3 axioms: identity, excluded middle, Non-contradiction. >Simplicity is also logical metric. Yes, it's a metric you can construct using those axioms. >If you can reach same outcome but one uses less axioms, the simpler model knows more (because it has to assume less). Sure, it means it's a simpler model. You have a metric for simplicity. But I asked you why simplicity is better. How did you conclude the metric for simplicity, is the best metric?

My metrics were: Logical consistency. No belief system is without some flaws in this department but we can use logical consistency as a metric. Also logic is much more than set of those 3 axioms and there are logical exceptions to each of those three. Simplicity/ less axioms. I explained why this is good metric. Simpler is better because it needs to assume less. It's based more on logic less on assumptions. If logic is good metric then simplicity is just extension of this metric.

>My metrics were: >Logical consistency. No belief system is without some flaws in this department but we can use logical consistency as a metric. >Simplicity/ less axioms. I explained why this is good metric. Simpler is better because it needs to assume less. It's based more on logic less on assumptions. I understand your metrics. Here's my reply: Logical consistency is a binary property of a system, and the lowest bar to clear. A system must be internally consistent, otherwise every well-formulated proposition within the system can be shown to be both true or false. But we cannot use this to say whether one consistent system is better than another consistent system. You've explained why simplicity is a good metric. But do you understand that, as a metric, it is also a system which has its own axioms? "Less axioms is better" is not objectively true nor inherently true: this is an axiom of your metric. >Also logic is much more than set of those 3 axioms and there are logical exceptions to each of those three. First order logic is no more or less than those three axioms. There are no exceptions. Making exceptions to the axioms of logic itself, breaks logic itself. >If logic is good metric then simplicity is just extension of this metric. Logic itself - that set of those three axioms - is not a metric for logical systems. Logical systems are constructed in terms of first order logic.

Your title and description are not really the same. For instance, there are religions that have definite proof that they are incorrect, and therefore have worse arguments than others. And there are religions, such as Buddhism, which do not necessitate a God or even a soul. But you don't seem to want to include those religions either.

I am indeed focusing on the god claim for this particular post. The definition of "religion" is vague and broad, probably too much for a single post. ​ edit : however, if you feel buddhism makes claims it supports better than the claims of theistic religions, feel free to present those claims and the support and to explain why it's better than the support for the claims of other religions.

I'd argue that in comparison to Christianity, very few other religions have the extent of historical supportive evidence for the existence and divinity of their central figures. The Vedic scriptures are all clearly written as mythic tales, that most Hindus would agree we should not take as literal in the sense of the individuals being real historical figures. While the Koran would claim Mohammad to be real and to have done all the things the scripture lists, unlike the Bible there is only a single central source, and no witnesses to the events that confer divine intervention in Mohammad's life. By contrast, Jesus's life was lived very publicly. His miracles were very public. There were multiple sources and multiple witnesses to what he did. It was pretty clear that this was something that happened and something people were expected to be able to point to as having happened. While you are correct that the wider issues of high theology etc all have similar levels of proof, it's hard to argue that other religions have comparable historical evidence to Christianity.

>I'd argue that in comparison to Christianity, very few other religions have the extent of historical supportive evidence for the existence and divinity of their central figures. What evidence, exactly? There's only apologetic evidence: it only lends support to christianity, if you already believe it. There's no evidence that allows us to CONCLUDE divinity exists There's only evidence that CONFIRMS A PREEXISTING ASSUMPTION divinity exists. >By contrast, Jesus's life was lived very publicly. His miracles were very public. There were multiple sources and multiple witnesses to what he did. What contrast? Miracles and magic were a dime a dozen in those days. There are libraries full of accounts of people performing miracles. Jesus is definitely not unique in that regards.

>Miracles and magic were a dime a dozen in those days No, they weren't. Claims of miracles were dime a dozen. The distinct thing about the claims of miracles that the gospels talk about is that they were performed in public, and we know from the source material and other surrounding evidence that these claims were made in the time of living memory of the people in the places where the early Church began. The claims in question were public knowledge and were describing events many people would have witnessed. The Gospels made themselves very publicly falsifiable by making reference to widely witnessable events such as earthquakes, eclipses, and public executions. The miracles too happened in large public places, such as the Bethesda pool etc.

>>Miracles and magic were a dime a dozen in those days >No, they weren't. Yeah, they were. >Claims of miracles were dime a dozen. So when its about Jesus these accounts are evidence. But when it's not about Jesus, these accounts are claims that require evidence. Don't you see the obvious double standard you're applying here? >The distinct thing about the claims of miracles that the gospels talk about is that they were performed in public, and we know from the source material and other surrounding evidence that these claims were made in the time of living memory of the people in the places where the early Church began. The claims in question were public knowledge and were describing events many people would have witnessed. Nothing distinct about it. There are many accounts of miracles like this. If the gospels are evidence of miracles, then so are those other accounts. If those other accounts are not evidence of miracles, then neither are the gospels. >The Gospels made themselves very publicly falsifiable by making reference to widely witnessable events such as earthquakes, eclipses, and public executions. The miracles too happened in large public places, such as the Bethesda pool etc. There are many, MANY accounts like that. That's my point.

So if I tell you a story, one that’s kind of hard to believe like say I claim I once jumped over an entire baseball diamond in a single enormous leap. Does it automatically become more credible if I say “and there were tons of people there, they were all impressed”. You can’t talk to them to confirm this, but my confidence in claiming there were witnesses is going to make you believe me?

Let’s try this slight adjustment to your story. Instead of “there were witnesses but you can’t talk to them”, you tell me “there were witnesses and you should definitely talk to them, they will all back my story.” Also our conversation is recorded so everyone knows what we were discussing. Years later I hand over the recording to Alice, and tell her how incredible it was that you really did make that jump. It’s too late for Alice to go talk to those witnesses, but I reassure her that I talked to them and it was just as you said. How does this stack up for Alice?

In addition: you keep insisting there is evidence. But you don't show this supposed evidence you're alluding to.

Welcome to faith.

Don't be daft. This is such a cheap take on faith People can have faith without pretending there's evidence to back it up. In fact, many people hold the position that you can only have faith without evidence. If you can show it's true, then you don't need faith in the first place.

I did not think the /s was necessary. I agree with you asking op to show the claimed evidence. And I am in the camp that faith requires no evidence. If there is any evidence then it is a supported but unproven theory at worst.

>I did not think the /s was necessary. Of course it is: sarcasm is conveyed through intonation. There's no intonation in written text.

My man. There is no written sarcasm? Ever? I agree that sarcasm can often be missed when written, especially with short replies like mine. But context is everything and in this case I thought it was obvious and you did not. That is perfectly fine.

>By contrast, Jesus's life was lived very publicly. His miracles were very public. There were multiple sources and multiple witnesses to what he did. It was pretty clear that this was something that happened and something people were expected to be able to point to as having happened. What?? Turn water into wine, coming back from the death or healing crippled people with just a word are not supported by any science record and they are treated like myth today. What are you talking about?

>Turn water into wine, coming back from the death or healing crippled people with just a word are not supported by any science record That's why they are called miracles. >they are treated like myth today No, people who don't believe they happened treat them like myth.

>>Turn water into wine, coming back from the death or healing crippled people with just a word are not supported by any science record >That's why they are called miracles. The accounts that say Jesus turned water into wine: are those evidence, or are those claims that require evidence?

From a purely epistemic point of view, they would be both. Or more specifically, the *accounts* are evidence, and the *claims* are claims. All testimony is evidence, and there are several defensible metrics for credulity if we are trying to decide how much weight of truth to give testimonies. This is problematic with Christianity because a charitable measure almost directly proves Christianity to be true, and an uncharitable measure almost directly proves Christianity to be false.

>That's why they are called miracles. > >No, people who don't believe they happened treat them like myth. ​ >There were multiple sources and multiple witnesses to what he did. So... what are your sources? If you gonna say that something impossible happened, you need a lot of sources and not some random ancient people saying "I saw it, trust me bro"

>No, people who don't believe they happened treat them like myth. Yeah, that's how myths work

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>lmao, please direct me to the trusted historical source that says Jesus walked on water and was resurrected from the dead… It's the same trusted historical source that demonstrates his existence.

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If the bible is a historical source, why are other religious texts not sources but claims?

I disagree with you. The existence of both Mohammad and Joseph Smith seem more attested to me than the existence of Jesus. The existence of L. Ron Hubbard is not even contested.

I don’t believe that the historicity of a man named Jesus is contested by historical scholars.

Neither are the historicities of Mohammad, Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard.

But there are far more contemporary sources that Jesus was a religious figure than there were for those other figures. There are no sources outside of Mohammad, Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard that Mohammad, Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard did anything miraculous. There are a number of sources that Jesus did, from the dead sea scrolls to Roman histories and the multiple gospels. That does not make it true, of course, but we can absolutely compare historical evidence and find one religion greater than another.

The Dead Sea scrolls do not say that Jesus did miracles I don’t know how you would even get that idea. Which non-Christian Roman histories say that? Edit: this is also just the Khuzari argument with extra steps. 600,000 Jews saw the revelation at Sinai. If 600,000 people were all lying about being there, the truth would have come out. Jesus was witnessed by, what, a few dozen fishermen? I’m not saying this is a good argument, just that’s it’s the same as an old argument for the veracity of Judaism, and it doesn’t work much better here.

Wow. you are tap-dancing so fast it's making me dizzy. ​ There are many sources that Mohammed and LRH were "religious figures". On the other hand, there are no contemporary, eyewitness sources for jesus's miracles (that includes the dead sea scrolls). ​ Honestly, you seem to be *aware* of the different standards you use for the different religions, which hurts your credibility.

Of course they were religious figures in the cultural sense, forgive me for not specifying. But In terms of any actual supernatural feats, there is a difference in the evidence available. And this does not mean you should become a Christian, mind you. The evidence is far from overwhelming as you note. But there is absolutely a difference in the scope and scale of evidence between Jesus and L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard has lived through an era of photography and other recording technology, and yet no evidence of anything even approaching supernatural has ever been alleged. Jesus lived 2000 years ago, and some of his close friends went to their execution still insisting he was the Son of God. Again, far from overwhelming proof, but to ignore it is to ignore history just because you dislike religion. I'm not religious either but we can absolutely compare the historical and material claims of different religions and see which are more plausible, same as we do for any metaphysical system.

> Of course they were religious figures in the cultural sense, forgive me for not specifying. But In terms of any actual supernatural feats, there is a difference in the evidence available. LRH claimed to be immortal and be able to heal his own wounds. Scientologists believe he did those things and that he did not die. TO a non-Christian, there are a lot of similarities between Hubbard and Jesus. > and some of his close friends went to their execution still insisting he was the Son of God To be clear, a lot of scientologists are willing to suffer gravely based upon the supernatural claims of LRH... despite the fact (as you say) there is no recording of him doing anything magical. You can see the problem when we see that kind of zeal for people you can *demonstrate* are frauds?

I'm confused. We don't have pictures of LRH doing miracles, do testimony is irrelevant. But a post hoc writing of Jesus's miracles is better evidence?

Every shred of evidence for L Ron's acts comes from either him directly or someone monetarily connected to him. With Jesus we of course lack direct testimony but the sources that do claim he did miracles say he did so in public with many witnesses and there are (as far as I know) no rebuttals from the time. Honestly I'm not going to tell you which is more likely but the point is the level of evidence is different and we should not be forced to treat both of them the same because they are both religious claims.

LRH founded a religion and cult, his followers attest to his divinity. Jesus founded a religion and cult, his followers attest to his divinity. What sources do we have that support Jesus's divinity? Aside from religious texts? I honestly wasn't aware of any so I am really excited.

Just an fyi this person is completely full of it. The first gospel wasn’t written until Jesus had allegedly been dead for 50 years. No one that would have met him wrote them, they are not contemporary evidence. The Dead Sea scrolls contain nothing about Jesus. Jesus probably is existed in some form. He receives a couple off hand mentions by historians (who also would have never met him but heard stories of him). That’s it. That’s the extent of the evidence that he existed.

>But there are far more contemporary sources that Jesus was a religious figure than there were for those other figures. Well what are you waiting for? Show the sources. Make an actual point, please.

I didn't say "existence". I said existence and divinity of. I have no doubt that Mohammad existed, or Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard. There is equally very little doubt in the mainstream historical community that Jesus existed. However the distinction is that the evidence Jesus existed is also directly linked to the evidence of his divinity. By contrast, none of the evidence for Mohammad's existence can equally be relied upon to confer contact with divinity. All of the actions in the testimony of Mohammad's life that could be said to confer direct contact with divinity happened alone and away from witnesses. The same is true of Joseph Smith. By contrast, Jesus's divinity can be confirmed in repeated public events.

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I have to disagree on the evidence for jesus's divinity here, sorry. We have decades-after-the-fact anonymous accounts that suspiciously seem to copy an account from someone who never met jesus except in a vision. I'd also add that the evidence for Jesus's miracles is less than what we have for Copperfield making the statue of Liberty disappear, and I don't see you making Copperfield the second coming of Jesus.

>We have decades-after-the-fact anonymous accounts that suspiciously seem to copy an account from someone who never met jesus except in a vision There are many historically accepted events where the texts we have are further away from point in time. The "decades away" accounts you mention are known to be copies of older texts that we do not have access to. This is very common understanding for many historical documents.

There's a really interesting article out there I found on some reddit thread a few weeks ago (lazily searched for but couldn't find it very quickly) from what I remember as being an official arm of the Catholic Church explaining why they take the New Testament at least to be evidence of history rather than just a story. It was a really fascinating read, going into how the NT features people we have at least some level of evidence for existing (Pontius Pilate for example), historical events that we have evidence of, and that it is presented as fact rather than as a story, so why would they be lying about it? It really gave me a lot to think about and helped me to understand the mindset of believers as an atheist myself. Unfortunately, every single argument it presented could also apply to the 2007 Transformers movie and how in 2000 years we could convince people that all that stuff happened as well.

Ah, but we have *contemporary* evidence for the life of, say, LRH. So you don't get to claim that the evidence for Jesus is *better*.

Surely the difference is the nature of the claim. Don't extraordinary assertions require extraordinary levels of evidence? We accept historical claims, but surely they must be sense checked to some degree. Is that done with super natural claims?

>I didn't say "existence". I said existence and divinity of. I have no doubt that Mohammad existed, or Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard. There is equally very little doubt in the mainstream historical community that Jesus existed. However the distinction is that the evidence Jesus existed is also directly linked to the evidence of his divinity. By contrast, none of the evidence for Mohammad's existence can equally be relied upon to confer contact with divinity. All of the actions in the testimony of Mohammad's life that could be said to confer direct contact with divinity happened alone and away from witnesses. The same is true of Joseph Smith. By contrast, Jesus's divinity can be confirmed in repeated public events. When are you going to present the evidence you insist exists, elude and refer to, but never actually give?

So you're dispensing with the old testament altogether?

No, I'm just pointing out a particular point of contrast.

>For the purpose of this post, I'll consider "religious claims" only claims that would detectably contradict a naturalistic model of the universe. It feels like this line defines the scope of discussion in such a way that you'll inevitably be correct. Supernatural phenomena are, by their nature, not evident in physical reality. Your position seems to be that there is an equal lack of evidence for all religious claims, but in attempting to review that belief, you're only willing to consider things for which there is no evidence. Religions aren't just a set of assertions about the influence or role of the supernatural on physical reality. They tend to offer moral, social or intellectual frameworks and arguments, as well as prescribe ritual practice. Some religious positions don't include, or at least don't depend on, the supernatural. It strikes me that these are the elements of religions that might actually differentiate them epistemically. For example, if the moral code of one religion is incoherent and that of another is internally consistent, it seems that the latter has a higher likelihood of being true than the former.

>Supernatural phenomena are, by their nature, not evident in physical reality I'm sorry, but how is that different from them not existing? We can of course imagine universes where what we consider supernatural phenomena are observable - any fantasy setting, and so on. Many religions do claim supernatural phenomena. Trips to the moon on a horse, resurrections, alien ghosts trapped in volacanoes...

That's kinda my point. If you're interested in assessing which religions are more likely to offer truth, it seems unproductive to limit discussion to a category of religious claims for which we already know (or at least strongly suspect) that there is either no evidence or cannot be useful evidence. Wouldn't it make more sense to focus your enquiry on elements of religion for which there might be some truths?

Let's give the religious people some chance before we give up on them.

You may be correct about no one having better *arguments*, but I think we have to parse what it means to have 'better evidence' here. Obviously 'evidence' and 'proof' are different things. No religion has anything like proof that they are right, because they aren't. But evidence is just about probability. If the evidence for one religion makes the likelihood that it is true 1 in 1 billion, and the evidence for another religion makes the likelihood that it is true 1 in 1 trillion, then the the first religion had much much better evidence in favor of it (despite not being true still). In that sense, different religions have vastly different levels of evidence in their favor, based both on empirical facts around them and the initial unlikelihood of their claims. Like, if two religions both say that God will bless them and smite their enemies, and one of those religions is a world-spanning empire lasting thousands of years and the other gets repeatedly crushed and dies out, that's some evidence that the first is more likely to be correct (though again not strong evidence approaching proof for either). Several eastern religions focus on practices of meditation to access divine truth; some percent of modern day people who follow their practices will reliably have altered mental states and perceptual states that they describe as mystical experiences, non-believers can access these states by following their practices, and the effects of those states can be measured in their brain functions. Again, the most likely explanation for these empirical facts is not that the religion is true, but this is at least *some* repeatable verifiable empirical evidence in favor of them over other religions with no such phenomena. The Catholic church obsessively catalogues, investigates, and documents reports of miracles as part of their process for granting sainthood. Again, that doesn't make it likely these are *real* miracles, but it makes it *more* likely that *these* miracles are real as opposed to others that are just urban legends with no investigation or documentation. The #1 reason to believe *any* religion might be true is taking the outside view of noticing that most things that most people believe are true (like, most people believe most swans are white and they are), and that when a small number of people *with no particular expertise* disagree with most other people, they are usually wrong (like they believe a conspiracy theory or are just mistaken about a well-known fact or w/e). Thus having lots of people believe something is weak evidence in favor of it, and religions with more believers are more likely to be true because it's less likely that lots of people could be mistaken than that a few people could be mistaken. Also, there are more humanistic religions that make fewer supernatural claims and have less complex mythologies, and they're more likely to be true simply because their claims are less unlikely to begin with. Etc. Again, because people always get this wrong when I make this argument: none of that is *strong evidence* for any religion being true, I'm an atheist and I'm sure they're not. BUT things that are not true always have evidence in their favor, there is no such thing as probability 0% or probability 100%. When you get down into actually calculating the evidence for different religions, some might be 10^-5% likely, and others are 10^-20% likely, and that is a proportionately *huge* difference in how much evidence there is for them.

>I consider that no religion has met the burden of proof on its claims. This is one of those questions that seems sensible only from a rather myopic worldview that is Christian/Islamic-centric and thinks that belief is an inherent part of religion in the first place. It isn't. There are over 6,000 religions in the world. The vast majority of them do not have any required beliefs. They exist as a set of family, tribal, or ethnic public acts demonstrating belonging to the group and marking important social/personal events (such as coming of age, or getting married). Their epistemic claim is effectively limited to "People who are part of this group, engage in these activities to demonstrate they are people who are part of this group." They have no creeds. They have no formal theology. Thus there is no "claim" that they can be said to make. While mythology and stories may be associated with the practices, those are neither central nor essential to the practice of said religion. And, i would add, discounting religions as religion because of the fact that they don't make what you consider to be religious claims (the giant-left-toeists) is seriously cherry-picking. Basically, you are really arguing, "Of those small number of religions in the world with which I have some minimal familiarity and who make claims of a supernatural nature, I don't believe any have met their epistemic burden." But you didn't say that. Can you name the over 6,000 known religions in the world and give a synopsis of their beliefs and why you think the epistemic burden in each has not been met? Or, do you have a rather small, selective sample size of a specific kind of religious practice that happens to be dominant in the part of the world you are most familiar with? Many sociologists, btw, have given up trying to even talk about religion as separate from culture because they found that defining religion is really, really hard. If you define "religion" as, for example, a set of beliefs about the supernatural or metaphysical -- plenty of things that aren't religion suddenly are included and plenty of things that cleary are religion are excluded. If you define "religion" as a set of actions and practices, the same happens. It happens again if you include both categories. As an example: NFL fans of particular teams in the USA are indistinguishable from religion. They engage in group rituals. They come together to events to celebrate their shared engagement. They engage in group chants and songs. They have individual rituals that demonstrate their belonging to the group. Their weekly "service" dictates their emotional state to some degree for the rest of the day or week. They decorate their homes with shrines and icons to the team. They wear stylized costumes and uniforms as part of worship and to deliniate their identity. They often engage in getting ritual tattoos and other body markings. We know they aren't a "religion" as we typically mean the term only because we understand English as a language and American culture as culture. But imagine someone did not have that base knowledge. How would you differentiate NFL fandom from religious practice? So, from an academic standpoint, numerous sociologists and anthropologists have basically admitted that religion just is culture and culture just is religion. You can't adequately separate the two. We tend to think we can in the US and Europe because we have in mind Christian fundamentalism as our mental model of religion. But that is actually a rather odd "religion" from a comparative religion standpoint. When one looks at the actual practices and beliefs of people engaged in the over 6,000 religions in the world, "making epistemic claims" just isn't something that they actually DO with much frequency.

It seems to me that your answer is to define religion so broadly that it includes collections of practices that make no claims. I am not sure I agree with redefining religion so broadly. Not making claims meet not meeting the burden of proof for the claims, though, so these "religions-lite" would still not do better at proving their claims than the others

I’m using this as an example, not an attempt to proselytize: We have plenty of historical evidence from non-Christian sources that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure who 1) lived in first century Judea, 2) was an itinerant preacher many contemporaries believed was a faith healer, while others believed he was a charlatan, 3) was crucified by Roman authorities, and 4) his body went missing from his tomb. Now even the Bible says that the Romans and the Sanhedrin claimed Jesus’s body was stolen by the disciples to bolster their claim of the resurrection, but obviously Christians believed then, and now, that the tomb was empty because Jesus was resurrected. My point is that given the evidence we have, and the fact that dead people don’t tend to come back to life, it is absolutely a leap of faith to believe in the resurrection, but it is not a leap of blind faith: we know there was a man named Jesus who was crucified, died, and was buried and then his body went missing from the tomb. Now compare that to a religious claim like that of the Heaven’s Gate cult: “The comet Halley is actually an alien spaceship which will take us to a paradise planet.” That is more akin to a blind leap of faith in my opinion because we don’t have evidence for any part of that claim: we don’t know of any alien spaceships, nor do we know of any exoplanets which would be inhabitable by humans, let alone a paradise, and every piece of observational data we have does not support that the comet is anything but, well, a comet. To believe that claim would mean a much larger suspension of disbelief/ leap of faith than to believe in the resurrection.

>We have plenty of historical evidence from non-Christian sources that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure who 1) lived in first century Judea, 2) was an itinerant preacher many contemporaries believed was a faith healer, while others believed he was a charlatan, 3) was crucified by Roman authorities, and 4) his body went missing from his tomb. Can you link to sources? I've been told this many times but have never found a source for these claims.

We know He lived because the early church preached where He was supposed to live to those who are supposed to be contemporaries of Jesus. Myths come many years after the supposed person lived that basically nobody or only a few persons could have remember that period. We know people thought of Jesus as a miracle worker because nobody rejected the claims but put accredited them to demons or some kind of wizardry. This is big that while a lot of people claimed to have done miricales in Judea, only Jesus is undisputed. The rest were ignored and rejected by those who didn't followed them. We know He was crucified because it would have been to emberasing to make up. The jews(earliest disciples of Jesus) were hopping for a warrior king who would establish the kingdom of God on earth that would last unto the ages of ages. We know His body went missing because the empty tomb was discovered by women. The jews had a very low view of women, they couldn't even testify unless they were the only witnesses. A myth would have had the apostles discover the tomb. Matthew includes the rumor that the apostles stoled the body but dismisses it. If this wasn't a real rumor he wouldn't have made it up and include it, for obvious reasons. This shows that it was a real rumor and it couldn't have been a rumor unless the tomb was empty, other wise they would have produced the remains of Jesus.

That all seems like a lot of conjecture. And how would we know if anyone did object to the stories? Are there any actual secular sources?

In Avoda Zara 17a a rabbi talks to a disciples of Jesus(after His death, not an apostle) . The rabbi's nephew was bitten by a snake and the disciple offers to pray for for him but the rabbi reject even though he knew that the disciple could heal in His name. In the Talmud a rabbi said :"Jesus was indeed a false prophet as he acted only by using powers of sorcery." Celsus in his now lost work has claimed that Jesus learned sorcery from Egypt. We know this because that part was preserved in the response from Origen. Also, of others who claimed to be the messiah, only one other was recorded saying he will do a miricale. He failed and got his followers and him drowned because of it. Only Jesus is recorded as actually doing legit miricales that worked. The source of them is contested but that's another discussion. Tacitus mentions Christians that are named after Christ who was crucified.

We have evidence the comet exists. Or Mohammed. Or Joseph Smith. And your "minimal facts" are pretty disputed too.

"For the purpose of this post, I'll consider "religious claims" only claims that would detectably contradict a naturalistic model of the universe." But that's not religious. I'm not going to CMV, but I am going to point out a tremendous flaw in your thesis. There are religions that consider themselves to be religions that are non-theist and would not meet your criteria of a religion (including significant parts of one of the three great missionary religions). Why do you get to arbitrate what constitutes a religion? You're limiting responses to a subset of what your title describes. The premise of your question is flawed, and your title is incorrect, I believe. Based on your arguments, your title should be about theism. I would also point out that there is a very important word in this premise - "detectable". That means that all that can exist is what is detectable by methods you understand to be valuable, but that's a different conversation. I think it's a reasonable question - I just think what you think you're asking and what you're actually asking are two different things.

No religion, or no god claim? Depending on the exact school, certain branches of Buddhism are pretty much atheist/materialist philosophical self-help systems. Taoism might fit this category as well, but I'm not well versed in it

Would they still qualify as religion? the limit is pretty blurry. I guess the question becomes "do they make claims, and how do they support those claims if they do?"

But once evidence accumulates, the facts that contradicted a naturalistic account become part of a naturalistic account (for example the Big Bang). So you are asking for evidence but excluding anything with evidence.

You say you are agnostic atheist, which as far as I know means "I don't think it's real, but I don't know" That implies to me that something has leaned you toward "No god" to some degree, or you'd simply be a straight up 'agnostic'. How does that work because there seems to me to be a small bit of a positive claim in that. It's just 'hedged' with the 'agnostic' part. If you simply said 'agnostic' that would be what it appears to me what you argue, but when you go with agnostic *athiest*, you've made a slightly positive claim, simply hedged so it doesn't have to be argued, you can simply say "well we don't know, but I don't think its real"

How about you read the paragraph where I explain what I mean instead of telling me what you think I believe?

The part where you contradict yourself by saying "I don't know if there is one or not (that's the agnostic part) but I don't believe any one exists (that's the atheist part)." ? If you don't believe it, something simply pushed you that way, the default is agnostic, the pushed version is atheist, you've only hedged it with 'agnostic'. All I'm doing is going by the words you used, if you want to have a discussion about it, then when someone uses the words you've used, and says "this is what it seems like to me when you say that" then you aren't really doing much 'discussing' are you then.

>If you don't believe it, something simply pushed you that way, the default is agnostic, the pushed version is atheist, you've only hedged it with 'agnostic'. He's using the epistemic meaning of the words, which is what is often used in religious debates. "Gnosticism" referred to knowledge while "Theism" referred to belief. In this sense, everyone is either a Gnostic Theist, Gnostic Atheist, Agnostic Theist, or Agnostic Atheist. There's no hedging, as both Agnostic and Atheist refers to different points on knowledge and belief.

Not everyone is one of those 4. There is pure agnostic as well, someone who says "I simply don't know, i don't believe nor disbelieve, I simply have no idea"

>Not everyone is one of those 4. Yes they are. They are necessarily binary positions. >I simply don't know That is an Agnostic. >i don't believe nor disbelieve If you do not believe, by default you disbelieve. "Theist" and "Atheist" are necessarily binary positions in a logical debate. If you accept the claim "I believe there is a God(s)", you are a Theist. If you do not accept that claim, you are an Atheist.

>If you do not believe, by default you disbelieve. Uhh... No? I don't believe nor disbelieve if you have a cup with pens in it by your PC. I literally have zero idea. I hold absolutely no belief on that topic. It is not at all binary.

So to show it's binary, you have to look at what the word "Theist" means. Theism is the acceptance of the claim "I believe in a God(s)". "Atheism" means "Not Theism" (the a- prefix is literally the binary operator). So do you accept the claim "I believe there is a God(s)"? If you do, you are a Theist under these definitions. If you do not accept that claim, then you are an atheist under these definitions. That doesn't mean you believe no Gods exist (that's anti-theism), but that you don't have a belief in any Gods.

I am sorry you consider nuance as hedging. Let me use a frequent analogy for this case. ​ There is a jar of beans on the table between us. It is closed and opaque. A muslim and a christian are telling me "there's an even number of beans in the jar". The muslim goes on to say "the number of beans is not only even, it's in the table of 14". The christian adds "the number of beans is not only even, it is in the table of 22". ​ Intrigued, I ask how they came to their conclusion. Not only have they used the same method, that method did not involve counting or weighting the jar or looking inside it. ​ Do I then have to say "I believe the number is odd" in order to say "I don't believe your claim that the number is even" ? No. ​ As I said, there are some gods I believe don't exist (I believe there isn't a billion beans in the jar) , some gods I don't know about, but have no good reason to believe they exist (reasonable numbers of beans) and there could be no god at all (the number could be odd). ​ And instead of finding and presenting evidence for your number, you're here yelling "Well, prove there's an odd number then!"

I don't think that's what is happening here. What seems to be happening is the Christian and Muslim say there are marbles in a jar. You say "I don't know, but I don't believe there are any marbles in that jar". You have literally the exact same basis of knowledge as they do, and you don't believe something, they do believe something. Based on exactly the same lack of knowledge. They belief something based on *zero* evidence, you don't believe something based on *zero* evidence. I don't see why a person would say "I don't believe you" based on absolutely zero evidence, when the more appropriate answer is "I don't know, I don't think you know, but I certainly don't know" Which is basically pure agnosticism.

Seemed pretty straightforward to me as an explanation - "I don't believe a God exists, but I can't prove it, so I remain equivocal"

Yeah, except the belief has to be influenced by something, a belief and even a disbelief is not the default position. The default position is pure 'agnostic'. "I simply don't know"

So, agnostic is the position you take on unicorns, mermaids, spaghetti monsters, etc, yes?

Do you think these things are comparable to the concept of a God that exists outside of your physical ability to see and verify? All those things are defined as things that *would* be verifiable... with the exception being the spaghetti monster, which is literally a tool that is designed to express the idea that "You don't know". Simply remove the specifics of "Spaghetti Monster" and call it what the tool is comparing it to... which is simply "God" or "A Force of Intelligent Creation" and yes. Agnostic would be the correct description. If you want to speak about very specific "Gods" then it would make a little more sense to utilize the idea of Theistic and Atheistic, based on the world, but only vaguely. The absolute truth, is you have absolutely no evidentiary claim that the universe was not created by something that is perfectly conceivably called a "Spaghetti Monster" with the language we utilize today.

But merely invoking 'God the creator' as a potential cause already goes beyond a more scientific/agnostic approach of 'I don't know', therefore inviting one to take a position. And since that which is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, I share the OPs position of 'I don't believe'.

I didn't invoke god the creator I answered your examples.

...in order to suggest that while theism/atheism may be appropriate for those, in the case of "simply "God" or "A Force of Intelligent Creation", agnostic is the default. But it isn't - a claim has been made, and one invoking a force/being based on zero evidence. At that point, 'I don't believe' is the appropriate default, not 'I don't know'.

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>A divine being by it's very nature would have to be perfect, Says who?

There are three levels of enlightened thinking: 1. Common sense 2. Scientific critical thinking and logic 3. Spirituality and faith You're not going to find God in a laboratory, telescope, or court of law. Only the spiritually minded, who have open hearts and are in tune with personal revelation, can get to know Him. There's the experiment described in Moroni 10:3-5 and Alma 32. God is found through a prayerful study of the scriptures, and by viewing the beauties of nature through the lens of faith, and by viewing history with a glass half-full attitude. Most religions share a lot of truths. I believe in the Judeo-Christian God. Brahman is a Dharmist interpretation of God. Native Americans believe in a Creator or Great Spirit. I suppose the Tao can be considered another interpretation of God. Philosophers like Confucius, Laoszi, Buddha, Zoroaster, Socrates, and Plato were inspired with some enlightenment, although they didn't know about Christ.

The Tao is not an interpretation of God; God is an interpretation of the Tao

You seem to believe I am aiming to "find god". I am aiming to have my beliefs supported and demonstrably reflect reality. I am aiming for testable supported beliefs, not for "enlightened thinking" ​ I will note that many theists of many different - and mutually exclusive - faiths claim to arrive to their - mutually exclusive - conclusions about god through the methods you propose - well, the points one and three of the method you propose.

>I am aiming to have my beliefs supported and demonstrably reflect reality. Then you are on wrong subreddit. Here you should be looking to have your beliefs disproven.

How do you think one has supported beliefs? by having them attacked and only keep those that survive. I'm here to have a particular belief attacked.

Scientologists: “Hold my beer”

Here’s my evidence: order of things. Perfect planet, perfect distance, perfect resources, all other identifiable planets are virtually useless for our use. Human body literally runs on auto. If it needs repair, it’ll repair itself. Heart beats until it doesn’t to sustain life. Even if you stop eating or drinking the body will do whatever it came to survive. Fingerprints: if heritability, dna, billions of people etc etc. were just from basic building blocks then why would every human being have a distinguishable wrinkle set on their damn hands? This order goes beyond humans to the animal food chain, predators, prey, etc. The way things are and we understand it have such an order to it it begs for a creator. If things don’t merely exist as is by random then someone created the order and is in control. Hell believe in a higher power to explain things we can’t or it literally costs you nothing to do so. Historical record: Jesus is a know historical figure that existed. His life is modeled around loving, accepting and helping all. Hardly a high bar just to exist and run out a good life for yourself. For this and many more, it seems to me that something was created, Jesus was real and lived a badass life, he is to be followed and modeled after.

Wrong, platonism and Pythagoreanism based part of their ideas on abstract objects of mathematical origin…which are by logically true. To the extent that a religion is compatible with these paradigms, I.E. an abstract monistic God, then those religions have much better epistemologically grounding (via mathematical cohesion) than say the primitive pagan religions of nature. p.s. the validity of mathematical platonic realism is supported by the arguments put forward by Frege and Quine, which to this day have yet to be refuted or supplemented

I think I can agree with you that many epistemological arguments will be the same for different religions, because really religions are answering a few different questions. 1. Is there a personal God? 2. Who are they? 3. How should we react? Many religions will of course agree on the first point, and start to differ as you approach the second and third. I understand you find no religious argument to be convincing? Or does there similarity work against their believability?

I find the arguments unconvincing so far. A particular focus of this post is that the people disagreeing (mostly on your second and third points, as you said) seem to choose an opinion based on epistemic standards that are not the same that the standards they use on the opinions they reject - ie they don't seem to apply consistent epistemic standards to arrive at their conclusions.

J. L. Schellenberg's religion of Ultimism is a belief-less religion that (putting it crudely) amounts to little more than atheism plus a hobby of researching various theologies. I can expand on that if you want, but Ultimism seems to be in a better relationship with the evidence than most religions.

It also seems to make zero claims, so it's pretty useless. How exactly does it qualify as a religion?

Do you mean to say that no religion has better arguments or evidence than _all_ the others, or that no religion has better arguments or evidence than _any_ of the others? If the former then I'd argue that you could equally say that any phenomenon that has competing theories of explanation could be accused of the same point, and it doesn't follow that neither are correct. If the latter then I would argue that you could definitely find a religion that has worse evidence or arguments, and this makes all the others better by definition.

If you believe that every God from every religion exists, then the heavens will be in constant chaos with God's fighting each other .. which it kind of contradicts religion itself. Do I believe it is a "God", not really

I agree. That is why if there is not a religion that gives a valid reason to believe it is right and the others are kot, in the form of evidence that is epistemically better than what the others can match, i velieve none of them.

you ain't never heard of the pastafarians, have you?

I have. Their evidence is not worse than what some other theists offer. They even use graphs!

Religion that is based on the shared experience of another person has more evidence than one that does not. For example if Bob comes to me and says "I just say a being of light descends from the stars" and then proceeds to tell me his religion around it. Then he tells me about another religion that believes it's not a *being of light* but a *large frog man* in the sky. No one has ever seen or claimed to have seen the frog man though. The *being of light* religion has more evidence than the *frog man* religion. They are both really shitty religions and Bob was probably tripping on acid but one religion does have more evidence from my perspective and from Bob's.

Since when does reality follow the whim of the majority?

why would god need to be capable of thought? if he is omniscient then he already knows all and therefore has no thinking to do

Let's say cognition then. Which encompasses thought and knowledge.

>For the purpose of this post, I'll consider "religious claims" only claims that would detectably contradict a naturalistic model of the universe. So no religion has better evidence for the supernatural than others? Is that what you're saying here? I wonder if a better word than epistemically is empirically, because there's lots of truth to lots of religions out there.

Consider an existing religion. Assume another religion that is the exact same, except it has an additional belief that something happened which only has a 20% chance of happening. The likelihood of the second being true is equal to (.2) x the likelihood of the first, and thus the first has a better claim to knowledge. For your claim to be true, it would require that the sum total probability of the claims of each religion are exactly the same, which is a ludicrous proposition. Even if you are a staunch atheist, and inclined to reject every religious claim you can as “impossible,” you’d still have to reckon with “a broken clock is right twice a day,” and that some of the historical claims would be accurate, and thus they would not be equal inasmuch as they differ.

You can add a "significantly" before "better" in my title if you want. (Does that count as a delta here? First cmv)

Depends how you feel.

Some religions presuppose truths from another. Mormonism for instance requires that the Bible be true AND The Book of Mormon be true. It's then the case that Christianity is epistemically better in regards to simplicity. Note that you don't need to accept that Christianity is true or even likely true to grant this case. You only have to grant that simplicity is an epistemic virtue.

Can you clarify what you consider to be a 'naturalistic' view of the universe? Because from a certain perspective, the laws of nature are simply a description of what is, and it's inherently impossible to violate the laws of nature, it's only possible to violate our current understanding of them. In particular this means that at some level a God is indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced technology. There are plenty of fictional beings in sci-fi that possess powers that dwarf those of many historical gods. Which makes it vital for the argument to determine what is disqualifying about considering them a god, and what exactly you're arguing against. Or perhaps its easier to just specify you're arguing against various historic religions and the deities they envision.

Claims and evidence are not quite the same thing. Monotheistic religions inherently claim fewer entities than pantheistic faiths. Even if zero evidence exists for \*any\* deity, the claim of one unproven deity is less than the claim of many. This holds true regardless of evidence, and therefore means that claims of religions are unequal, often dramatically so.

If a religious text accurately describes human nature, and another does not, then the first religion has epistemologically better arguments. Your choice to only focus on fantastical elements that are not subject to proof is a psychological blind spot.

Let me try a different approach: One of the biggest problems in Epistemology as a field of philosophy is the problem of true belief: is there a meaningful difference between KNOWING something and BELIEVING something that is correct? If so, what is that difference? I think whatever answer you have to that question will inform how you measure the reliability of different religions to a non-believer: which religions require you believe more things that are probably false? Which religions require you to believe things that are definitionally or practically unknowable? This is where faith comes in: basically, religions are constructs of trying to provide believers with as many rational arguments as possible before they have to fill in the gaps with faith. Faith in this sense is more akin to a suspension of disbelief, and just like it works in the literary sense, more successful narratives will either require less suspension of disbelief from their audience OR they are compelling enough to extend the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

Polytheism doesn’t have the issue of needing their gods to be right to the exclusion of others. Doesn’t that by definition mean they have a better argument than the others that have to prove why their god exists and the others don’t?

I am also an agnostic atheist with a similar position as you. I think the best evidence for any religion is personal experience claims. These only work if you know the individual making the claim. Otherwise, they are typically easy to dismiss as un-trustworthy. If you know an individual. You know that they are a trustworthy individual that would tell you the truth. When they tell you about the spiritual experience they had when they prayed about something. You can tell that they are being fervent and truthful with you. This evidence is at least as good as eyewitness testimony for almost anything. People have been sent to the death penalty based on eyewitness testimony. So a personal testimony of a spiritual experience is the most convincing evidence to me. You have to dismiss these experiences as. They didn't really see/experience what they thought they saw/experienced. This creates conative dissonance. This individual is trustworthy but I cannot trust them regarding religion/spiritual matters. As you already stated eyewitness testimony can come from any religion. The big difference in this particular evidence is how well you know the person giving the evidence.

There are trustworthy individuals joining mutually exclusive religions following personal experiences.

The Buddha said “Life is suffering” I would like my victory plaque now, please