And then General Relativity, comes along, and it turns out that both were right. 
I thought I just did.
Or here, try this one: “Muslims don’t eat pork because pigs are holy” versus “When some guy says a few words over a cracker it magically changes into the body of Christ.” Just like your example, both statements are demonstrably false. I change my mind when confronted with evidence, others do not.
How many people that believe in the Eucharist do you think carefully considered all the evidence from both sides before coming to believe it? Some, perhaps. Not most. That’s the whole reason the Catholics try to get them when they’re young, so they’re not equipped to look at the evidence from both sides.
Touche. 
(pretend there’s an accent aigu over the e because I don’t know what the Windows code for it is)
Bit unfair to single out Catholics in that regard, isn’t it?
Not quite. These two statements are not at all analogous, as far as the point you are trying to make is concerned. If you compared whether or not pigs are ACTUALLY HOLY with whether or not transubstatiation ACTUALLY TAKES PLACE, then you are right, one cannot demonstrate or verify those claims. But, in the first, you are talking about a factual statement about what a certain religion believes. There is plenty of evidence to consider in this regard (such as the Wikipedia entry about Islam, I’m sure). In the second, you are disputing whether or not a belief is actually true, not whether it reflects what the religion believes, which is not verifiable. That is, there is no evidence to consider, scientific or otherwise (see Bricker’s excellent explanation of this in GD).
It doesn’t take a very open-minded person to accept a brief education about what a religion believes.
If you think that most people decide to believe in the Eucharist when they have their 1st Communion, and never question it ever again for the rest of their lives, you are completely wrong. You can’t even imagine how wrong.
In more general terms, do you really think that most Biblical literalists honestly and objectively weigh the evidence for and against their beliefs before coming to conclusions about whether or not they’re true?
Ya think? I don’t. Especially since the Quran never gives a reason why eating pork is prohibited. It’s more analogous to:
Had some examples listed above but on preview I like Really Not All That Bright’s and DCMS’s better.
No, that’s not at all what happened. He didn’t form an opinion; he stated as a fact something he thought was correct. He was wrong about an aspect of Islam, probably just based on a reason for a food prohibition in another religion- that is all. Not the same as “making shit up”.
No one proved that he was incorrect either. Someone merely stated he was wrong and he accepted it.
I went over this with Miller already; I’m not going to go over it again with you.
No, it doesn’t.
Then maybe you’ll respond to my last post directed at you?
Sorry, missed this earlier:
Pretty much all of them.
But I believe it is verifiable by lab testing.
Sure there is. Lab tests. And I did see Bricker’s explanation.
I carefully considered Bricker’s explanation, and I repeatedly asked Miller to explain his beliefs to me in this thread. I was unconvinced by Bricker’s explanation.
I never said that. Please re-read my post.
I was talking about the Eucharist, that’s why I mentioned Catholics. But you are absolutely right, religion in general tries to get them while they’re young, that way they are unequipped to carefully consider alternative explanations objectively.
Can you elaborate? Do you mean ‘No, GR did not come along’, or ‘No, there is indeed a preferred reference frame and it is not earth?’
That’s the statement of mine you chose to respond to?
General Relativity does not suggest that the “Sun rotates around the Earth” and the “Earth rotates around the Sun” are both correct statements.
Would you like to discuss this in another thread?
At the risk of derailing the current conversation, I thought I’d provide an update to the OP. PZ Myers has been interviewed by the Minnesotain Independant, here: Bodenwischer - Tests, Infos & Tipps zu Bodenwischer.
Here are a few choice comments that I thought were particularly good.
Regarding the antisemitism that some (not in this thread, I think) have suggested are at the root of the attack:
and re: his actual intention to violate the host:
The last bolded statement (bolding mine, of course) makes me think of the time a friend of mine (at 9 years old) stood in a field and yelled “G-D damn it”, and we paused for a minute waiting for God to strike him down.
Then, I think you might have missed the point of what Bricker was trying to say. What was it you were unconvinced of? That the host really does undergo some kind of spiritual transformation? If so, then that’s good, because that in no way was what Bricker was trying to explain. What he was trying to explain was what Catholics actually believe about transubstantiation…in much the same way as it was explained to you that Muslims do not consider pigs to be holy. No one was ever trying to convince you of the RIGHTNESS or TRUTH of those beliefs, but instead, they were trying to explain to you what the belief consists of. That’s all. To say that you read Bricker’s post and you were unconvinced means that you have not been convinced that Catholic doctrine really holds that Transubstantiation exists. If that is the case, let me assure you that Bricker is completely correct in that assertion.
The point I’m trying to make is that many people question this kind of stuff their whole lives…it really doesn’t matter when they learned it. And in my experience, people who learned it as adults and came to believe it are much less likely to question it down the road than those who were taught it at a young age.
To those that have accused Meyers of lying when he said he received death threats, look here for a confession from Charles Kroll that he sent one.
You know, I don’t really know what their thought processes are. My guess is that they don’t, at least from the standpoint that I would, for instance (my Catholic education didn’t contradict such things as the age of the earth, evolution, etc.)
I understand the Bricker was not really trying to convince anybody of anything with that post, so saying that I was unconvinced was probably not the best choice of words. I understand Bricker’s explanation of the Eucharist, and I disagree with it. Specifically, the statement he made: “[Catholics believe] The bread’s physical characteristics don’t change one iota; the underlying substance of the bread, it’s essential character, is what changes.” I don’t believe this. I do understand that Catholics do believe it, and I understand that Catholics believe that it does not require my belief to be true. So I have made an effort to understand your belief, and I remain unconvinced that it has any merit. Is that fair?
He wasn’t trying to convince you it had any merit. He was merely explaining what the belief was. What’s so hard about that?
It’s certainly fair that you believe it has no merit. I would be surprised if you thought it did. The point is that you are comparing one statement, which regards a point of fact about what Muslims believe (that is, not questioning the Truth of the belief), with another statement which regards an actual profession of Catholic belief (that is, questioning the Truth of the belief). Two different and non-analogous things.
Sigh. Please read the first phrase of the post you are responding to. It is: “I understand that Bricker was not really trying to convince anybody of anything”
So yes, I am aware that he wasn’t trying to convince me it has merit. I understand he was merely explaining what the belief was. Now please try to understand what I’m trying to say, which is that statements that I have made no effort to understand the Eucharist are not true; I have in fact made such attempts. I was specifically responding to Sarafeena when she said “It doesn’t take a very open-minded person to accept a brief education about what a religion believes.” I was explaining that I had read Bricker’s post. In fact, if you look at the post, I quoted the above sentence of Sarafeena’s post immediately before I made the statement, with the apparently pie-in-the-sky hope that that would make it clear that that was the specific point I was responding to. I have been accused a number of times of not knowing the other side, and it looked like that was where Sarafeena was going, so I tried to refute it.