# Resolved by Steven Landsburg: Nobody is Actually Religious. Discuss! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 14, 2011, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-by-steven-landsburg-nobody-is-actually-religious-discuss/589043 "2011-07-14T19:02:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2011, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-by-steven-landsburg-nobody-is-actually-religious-discuss/589043/81 "2011-08-13T22:55:34Z")
> [@David42](#): > > There is another interesting set of prophecies by some monk (I will go try to find this) that is uncannily accurate in foreseeing Popes. The list ends, as I remember, either with the current Pope or the one after. > > The question is whether this last one (whichever pope that is–I am not assuming the monk was completely correct, perhaps he is wrong and popery will go on) will start performing obvious miracles in order to unite the world in believing he is God. That would be the prophecies of St Malachi. According to Apocalypse Wow!, the prophecies are almost certainly a fraud written a few centuries after Malachi’s death. They are very accurate up til that date, then miss like crazy. Considering that there were a Anti Popes and Hidden Popes, the list may have run out several Holy Fathers ago. Forgot To Address The OP No True Scotsman, Strawman and bad reasoning. I have found that many atheists can’t accept that some people truly do believe. Yes, some theists are just going through the motions. Others feel a divine presence in their daily lives. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2011, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-by-steven-landsburg-nobody-is-actually-religious-discuss/589043/82 "2011-08-13T23:04:17Z")
[Here it is at wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_of_the_Popes) Note that even the Catholic Encyclopedia has concluded that it’s a fraud. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2011, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-by-steven-landsburg-nobody-is-actually-religious-discuss/589043/83 "2011-08-14T10:12:52Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > No True Scotsman, Strawman and bad reasoning. > > I have found that many atheists can’t accept that some people truly do believe. Yes, some theists are just going through the motions. Others feel a divine presence in their daily lives. I haven’t read the book, but it seems you may have missed an important point: its author appears to concede that merely “feeling a diving presence in one’s daily life” is common enough, and valid in the sense that it’s a real _feeling_, but that the word “religious” is taken by most people to mean something rather more than this – specific tenets that, if carefully examined, would cause behavior contrary to what people really do – and that it is in _this_ realm that many people say they are religious but, in some sense, really “aren’t.” To avoid confusion, I think it’s perhaps best to use a word like “spiritual” for the feeling you describe. True, there is a fine line between a mere vague feeling of supernatural presence (akin to optical illusions, false pattern recognitions, saccades, and other quirks of the human brain), and a more specific, “developed”, personal “god”, and that the more someone subscribes to the latter, the closer they come to being “religious” as the author defines it. However, fine as this line is, there is a difference between the two; and people who are closer to the “mere vague feeling of supernatural presence” end of this continuum, while perhaps mistaken, do not embody the contradiction which is the author’s main theme. Even strident atheists, I’m sure, would “go easy” on this latter group of people\*, since the human brain is, by its nature, full of tricks and limitations. (Strident atheists who have, say, taken LSD, might be _especially_ inclined to “go easy” on them.) (\*the “mere vague feeling of supernatural presence” folks.) ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2011, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-by-steven-landsburg-nobody-is-actually-religious-discuss/589043/84 "2011-08-14T18:39:51Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > specific tenets that, if carefully examined, would cause behavior contrary to what people really do – and that it is in _this_ realm that many people say they are religious but, in some sense, really “aren’t.” If you limit it to “many people,” this is true; and I could find several Bible verses that make essentially the same point. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-by-steven-landsburg-nobody-is-actually-religious-discuss/589043/85 "2011-08-15T04:03:44Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > I agree that most people who believe in religion don’t act in ways that are logically consistent with their belief. > > But that’s because human beings are not inherently logically consistent. We naturally come up with provisional explanations for immediate situations. As long as those explanations allow us to muddle through, most of us don’t spend much time trying to reconcile them all with a unified large-scale logically consistent model of the universe. Interesting thought. Religion _itself_ is a merely one of those “provisional explanations for immediate situations.” Yet even long after this “provisional explanation” has largely ceased to be useful or constructive, most of us _still_ “don’t spend much time trying to reconcile (religion) with a unified large-scale logically consistent model of the universe.” ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2011, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-by-steven-landsburg-nobody-is-actually-religious-discuss/589043/86 "2011-08-15T04:30:31Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Nonetheless, I generally agree with Landsburg, but I think I have a better example: The fact that modern religious organizations pick and choose the things from the bible they choose to treat as law, and ignore the rest. And their choices are generally based more on how they relate to society rather than how they relate to God. You mean modern Christian organizations, right? Not all religious organizations are Christian. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/resolved-by-steven-landsburg-nobody-is-actually-religious-discuss/589043.md?page=4)