I will come back to number 3 later. It deserves a more thorough response than I can give right now.
To tackle these in reverse order, I do not believe Pentecostals to be wackos, so that takes care of the second question. To the first question, I ask “Why would they?” Different people approach the process of choosing a denomination in different ways. Some may be looking for frequent, intense experiences with the presence of the Holy Spirit. If so, they probably will find the Pentecostal Churches attractive. Others do not put that so high on their list of priorities. I care more about the intellectual basis for a church’s doctrine, a church’s history, and a church’s priorities.
(If you’d like to explore the Pentecostal experience more, I recommend the book Salvation on Sand Mountain, by Dennis Covington. He was a journalist who left Christianity in childhood and became agnostic. Later he heard about a bizarre case of attempted murder involving a Pentecostal preacher who did speaking in tongues, snake-handling, the whole nine yards. Covington went down to investigate with the intention of mocking those primitive hicks, and ended up being converted.)
I may be one of the one-percents, but what does that mean? If the argument is made that religious experience is somehow taught by parents, I’m a counter-example. My religious experiences could not have been taught by my parents or anyone else, because they happened before anyone gave me any serious religious education.
Another problem with the “taught by parents” hypothesis is that there are so many prominent Christians who just don’t fit in with it: G. K. Chesterton, Josh McDowell, C. S. Lewis, Anne Lamont, Lee Strobel, J. P. Moreland, and the list goes on.
I’m not sure of the point of your OP. Their is “Evidence Against Religions”. Granted. But then you seem to conflate assessing religions and assessing the existence of God. A comparative religion course is a good way to explore the evidence against any particular religion. But the existence of God cannot be proven nor disproven. It’s really as simple as that. And that is why they call it faith. But I’d add that it’s faith for either position.
This sort of thing might or might not explain the origin of belief in some deities. I don’t know. I do know one deity that certainly can’t be explained this way: Jesus Christ.
Jesus was a human being. He was not an example of anyone recognizing human properties where they didn’t actually exist.
So that leaves us with the possibility that his followers assigned him the qualities of a deity, when in reality he was only an ordinary human being, due to a pattern-matching process like what you described. But what you described has nothing in common with what happened at the dawn of Christianity. Jesus did not promise to keep a volcano calm, or do anything with the weather, or anything like that. (In fact he specifically said that his followers would get the same weather as everyone else.) Rather, he said that his followers would have to endure great hardship–and he was right. The only things that he guaranteed them in return were “not of this world” in his own words.
The second objection is that I disagree with the whole premise.
I don’t believe it. (And don’t you atheists generally reject the idea that humans are “built” at all?) I don’t recognize the smiley face as a human face naturally. I’ve been taught to recognize it as meaning certain things. I don’t assign any personality traits to the front of a car either. Now maybe some people do these things. Others don’t. Some people fail to recognize faces even when they are present.
I don’t believe it. Anyone who believes this needs to try teaching. Most of the effort in teaching goes into helping kids recognize patterns. Cases where they perceive patterns that don’t actually exist certainly do happen, but are much rarer.
There isn’t a shred of evidence that his direct followers (that is, the people who actually knew him) ever thought that Jesus was a deity. The earliest claims for Jesus being a god come from non-witnesses.
We don’t know exactly what Jesus said to his followers, but it’s highly unlikely ever claimed to be God.
Also cite that his direct followers “endured great hardship?” There’s no evidence for that.
I think the existence of God could be proven, if God existed. Since we have no evidence, we can operate on the theory the he doesn’t exist or he’s hiding on purpose (which makes him a jerk who definitely doesn’t deserve our reverence).
If I were asked whether or not mind reading could be disproven I would say “no”. Of course, if you disagree and would like to disprove it, I’d be willing to change my mind.
I dunno; modern cult leaders like Jim Jones and David Koresh and Charles Manson made all variety of claims about their personal ties to God, so it wouldn’t surprise me if Joshua bar-Joseph did something similar. Of course, we’ll never know for sure.
The biggest evidence against religions for me are their “holy” books. If these books are “divinely” inspired why are they so full of contradictions, violence, hatred and pure BS.
All these books are supposed to be “divinely” inspired, yet they appear to be an amalgam of old stories, myths and rituals handed down or coopted from other cultures.
Since Ed Wood can tell a more coherent story than the alleged “creator of the universe”, I vote no such creature exists.
I’ve seen nothing to back this assertion. What percent of Romans were Christian previous to Constantine taking control? Is that number higher than a 1% conversion per generation that we would expect (by modern day stats)?
Numbers? Are more or less people being converted than the expected 1% per generation that we would expect as the maximum?
“Many people are…” is really vacuous without real numbers. 10,000 is “many people”, but insignificant in proportion to the entire population of China.
But more to the point, I can point to entire continents as having been converted by the sword. I’m not denying that conversion minus conquest or government support is possible, I’m pointing out that this is what has allowed Islam and Christianity to attain their current position. For you to note that 5% or 10% of Christians might have converted under good will is like pointing to a pair of shiny hubcaps on a broken down Yugo and saying that it’s a false claim that Yugos are junk cars.
We have a decent enough understanding physics and the human brain and physiology that there isn’t currently any non-magical hypotheses for it.
Controlled tests of subjects have been unable to reveal any mind reading talent in the populace.
People who profess to be “mind readers” can be shown to be doing nothing more than stage magic and trickery.
Proving and disproving are the same thing. If I prove that my pen is sitting on my desk, I have disproved it’s existence elsewhere. Certainly there’s the chance that I and everyone around me is simply seeing an illusion, or that the next time I try to prove that my pen is sitting where it is that I will fail, but this is the limit of proof that we can achieve. And thereby it’s also the limit of disproof that we can achieve.
So for as much as we can prove that Darwinian evolution is a valid theory, we can prove that deities run against observable reality. Observable reality might be wrong, but that’s a non-starter as an argument.
That might be hard to say with such certainty. Is there reliable census data from pre-1900, or were nonChristians just tossed into the catch-all “Heathen” category? I can just imagine the census forms of the era:
You Are (check exactly one)
()White
()Inferior
Your religion is (check exactly one)
()Protestant
()Roman Catholic
()Hebrew
You marital status is (check exactly one)
() Unmarried
() Married
() Widowed
() Boston Married
() Utah Polygamist
() In sin
It would seem to me that religions prospered because they give people a way to escape their problems and if they can think that they will have a reason to suffer or go without now, then they will be rewarded in an other life. When a person’s loved one dies it gives them comfort to think that they will see them again some day and eases their pain.
Each person seems to find a religion (or none) that will satisfy their needs. Some are comforted in believing that there is a good father somewhere who is looking out for them, some do not. Hence there are many religions and even in the same religions people seem to have a different interpretation of a diety or dogma.
I know many people who are not looking for fulfillment in this life and expect it after they die.
I personally believe that it is better to live for someone than to die for them. I believe if Jesus lived life like many or most people, this would be a better world had He lived instead of dying. Death is an escape for many. We were born to live as long and as well as we can, that to me means helping others which is also a help to ourselves.