I suspect it would be “Evidence for Christian Apologetica” which is a far cry from evidence for religions. It also pretty much devolves the thread into nothing more than minutiae of the history of single lines of text in the Bible.
Ideally we could see something explaining why we should believe there may be spiritual forces at all, Christian or other.
Building a case starts from the foundation and works from there. You can’t start midway through.
In my case, I probably should have organized my points into more of a chronological order with the Big Bang, the creation of animistic deities via human quirks, childhood indoctrination, and then proliferation of these stories as scrpture. Mankind creates, teaches, and spreads their deities as an entirely human pursuit.
To create a foundation in support of religion, you need to show:
A1) Deities exist
A2) These deities have an opinion of our actions
A3) We should care about their opinion
To further support Christianity, you need to also show:
B1) A deity/Deities present the most likely explanation for the state of the universe
B2) There can only be one deity
B3) The ancient god of the Jewish people is that one
B4) Jesus conclusively brought further word from this deity
So far I have presented evidence against A1, B1, and (tangentially) B3. If you can’t accomplish the A series of items without the Bible and Christian teachings, you have a problem.
Your one percent figure came from a single sentence in a sociology book. Moreover, it doesn’t really say what you claim it says. It just says that 99 percent of Americans keep their parents’ religion. It doesn’t say that the 99 percent figure applies to all religions and to atheism. More moreover, it only applies to Americans, and syas nothing about any other nationality. More more moreover, google books won’t let us see the reference, so there’s no way to check it, and academics do make mistakes.
Most significantly, though, you continue to cite the 99 percent figure even though you’ve seen evidence that flatly contradicts it. And here’s some more:
I don’t know the exact percentage of people who change their religion during their life. Neither do you. We can surely both agree that one can’t make a sound argument by keeping the data you like and ignoring the rest.
Even if someone ends up practicing the religion that their parents taught them, does that prove your explanation to be the correct one? Far from it. Such a person could still easily have long periods of questioning and searching and explore a variety of different religious viewpoints throughout their life.
Actually it’s pretty much the opposite, if the title is accurate. Sage Rat presented 11 pieces of evidence against religion and I’ve responded to them
.
But that’s beside the point. I’ve proposed a book discussion. I’ll name a book from a Christian perspective, you name a book from an atheist perspective, we’ll read and discuss. Are you willing to take it up or not?
That link does not support your claim. It does NOT say that “People follow what their parents do 99% of the time…,” and I think you know it.
Even if we limit this discussion to religious belief, your cite does not say that 99% of people simply believe whatever their parents teach them. In fact, you yourself implicitly acknowledged this in the OP when you said, “Only 1% of children will join an entirely different religion from their parents” (emphasis added). People might not choose a drastically different religion, but that is obviously not the same as saying that they “follow what their parents do 99% of the time…”
I see that ITR Champion has already discussed some of the other problems with your claim. Among other things, I asked you which methodology you used. You cited a single statement, but that says nothing about the methodology used to arrive at this conclusion. Heck, one might arrive at a vastly different answer, depending on how one defines “an entirely different religion.”
Well, then what’s the difference between, say, Catholic and Episcopalian? It’s easy to see a child raised in one making the minor leap to the other. Is there a measurable objective difference between the two? What is actually happening during a conversion? Is God happy or sad?
That’s kind of semantic. The best evidence against religious claims is the utter lack of evidence for them.
I don’t care about a book comparison. I’m interested in specific arguments. I don’t need atheist books. I can argue better than the books can. You mentioned having books that “start from nothing” and then allegedly build a step by step case for proving the veracity of Christian doctrine. I’m not interested in reading a whole book and getting back to you. There’s a good chance I’ve already read whatever book you would name anyway, but I’m far more interested in evaluating these logical steps. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that I can refute them, and I don’t need Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris to help me do it. Why should I rely on surrogates, when I can refute your steps as well or better than I can.
Please understand that I’m not going to make a positive case for the non-existence of God. I will stipulate that the existence of Gods cannot be positively be disproven. What I am saying is that no decent case can be made FOR God, and I can easily make a case against the legitimacy of specific Christian doctrine, both on historical and theolocal grounds.
I’ll also assure you upfront that I’m not somebody who engages in polemic broadsides against organized religion, or blames it for all the evils in the world or thinks it needs to be eradicated as a human institution. That’s one of the reasons I don’t want to rely on someone like Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. I enjoy a lot of what they write, but I think they’re pretty much preaching to the choir, and I think they overreach when they attack religion as an institution. My debating interest in the metaphysical claims of religion, not in its institutions. FWIW, my wife is Catholic, our kids are baptized Catholics and we’re sending them to Catholic school.
I also think I know the historical, theological and Biblical aspects of Christianity better than they do.
I’m happy to do this in another thread if you wish
Thanks for the specifics. When I have time I’ll look them up. If there’s a book thread I might participate.
That would be interesting to see. I’m not sure how anyone could argue the theology of Christianity this way. You mentioned *internal *logic which is different.
I think I can tell the difference between a sound logical argument {even if I don’t agree} and a weak or flawed one. I have consistently found that the chain of logic falls apart somewhere in one of several usual patterns.
Aren’t you committing the offense you accuse atheists of by using always? I appreciate accurate language but let’s qualify and clarify rather than exploit an inaccurate generalization and call it failed logic. It makes perfect sense logically that children would be heavily influenced by the values instilled in them by their parents. There are a lot of variables. I know two adults that are in their parents religion after being away in their youth. I know two others whose parents were offended when their children rejected Christianity and became Baha’i. There are also different types of religious families and different degrees of pressure to follow the parents concepts of right and wrong but parental influence is no small thing.
I think most of the atheists on this board would not make the argument in the way that you phrased it. {for* no other *reason} however, if statistically more people who practiced religion were in the same religion as their parents , Christian , Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, etc. then it would be hard to discount parental influence wouldn’t it?
I honestly think you’re exaggerating the argument. Don’t take the generalizations made as too literal. Also, don’t take statements by our more vehement atheists and present them as typical atheist arguments. I’ve read and debated the flawed logic of some atheists here on the board who make inaccurate assumptions but your statement,
seems pretty exaggerated as well.
Considering folks like Dio and Voyager to name only two I find that hard to believe. Some atheists argue from a lack of knowledge and generalizations that are to broad but several don’t.
I’ve seen Christian apologists who will defend every step they take as if it’s logical. Here’s a relevant example that Dio mentioned up thread.
In earlier posts you were saying that
While defending God as a spiritual being and not a physical body Christians will still insist that this all powerful ruler of the universe needed a physical sacrifice in order to save us from damnation. I never understood that even as a Christian but I accepted it and figured eventually I’d understand. When I got around to looking for answers instead of just accepting it just didn’t make any sense to me. Still doesn’t. My studies have led me to conclude it’s a traditional belief put in place by men because they misunderstood the lessons and example of Jesus.
If one of your apologists could explain that to me I’d be happy to read it.
I have no problem with people accepting things on faith and following their own path. It’s part of our humanity and all people do it. Let’s not confuse accepting things on faith with a chain of logic.
OK, what we have now is ninety percent of people in the world receive some sort of spiritual or religious training when they are children. They are taught that a supreme being of some sort has a list of rules for mankind to follow and if they don’t follow those rules after they die there will be consequences. This training is internalized to some degree and when the person is tempted to lie, steal, or harm someone the internal consciousness says “no” this is not right.
Now I am neither defending religion nor assailing it. Just want to know how/what would replace this training if religions and spirituality suddenly disappeared and people believed only in material things with no life after death. How could/would you propose to replace what religion does today in stabilizing the animal instincts in people.
I used to go to the first Baptist church, western division, southern conference of 1961. Then I converted to the Full Gospel Baptist church, eastern division, conference of 1974 in order to better please God. Oddly, when I prayed about it I had a vision in which God smacked me in the back of the head. I’m not sure what that means.
What makes sense to me is that humans often search for purpose and meaning in their life. Depending on your culture and personal experience that expression would probably come in the dominant religion of your area. I also think as our world becomes more diverse and people have more access to other religions we’ll see some positive changes.
Does your conscience allow you to litter? Did you learn anything about littering’s affect on eternal salvation, or did your parents just tell you not to litter and that, combined with not wanting to live in a world where wanton littering is acceptable, keeps you from throwing trash everywhere?
I’m sorry, it’s just a little offensive to me as an atheist to suggest that the only thing keeping people ethical is the threat of unpleasantness in an afterlife. As though unpleasantness in the current life isn’t enough.
And, to add another point, how many people commit heinous crimes, find jesus in prison, repent, and then believe they’re going to heaven? To them, they may have squandered their life on earth but who cares, right? It’s only 80 years compared to FOREVER. To the atheist, there is no second chance. That, to me, seems like it’d do a better job of keeping people in line.
“Stark and Finke estimate that fewer than 1 percent of Americans convert to a completely new religion.”
Unless you know some sort of special, magical percentage based math that I don’t, when less than 1 percent of a population switch to a completely new religion from the religion they were raised with, that means that we do some math like this to determine what percent don’t switch:
100% - 1% = 99%
99% of people don’t switch from the religion they were raised in.
And if you’re going to say that I’m taking the one sentence out of context, let’s start our quote all the way from the start of page 45:
(Bolding added)
So maybe you have the magic, “Lalalala! I can’t see you!” eyes, but I think the book is pretty clear on its point.
And if you want me to look up stats on other nationalities and places I can certainly try. But frankly, if you think that changing religion is a non-sociological process, find me some clear evidence of a group of people switching to Christianity without ever having been exposed to the existence of Christianity.
I’m not making an extraordinary claim. One person telling another person about their religion doesn’t require magic. If you’re proposing something which does require magic, that’s an extraordinary claim and hence requires some pretty extraordinary evidence. I’m fine to keep digging up cites for sociology, but really, what other alternative are you suggesting there is?
That people in America are mostly Christians, people in Sweden mostly atheist/agnostic, and people in India mostly Hindu is pretty well-known. That’s not obscure knowledge. So if you want to argue that deities tend to take control of certain geographic areas for some reason, then I’ll certainly listen to it, but going by my one single individual cite as a basis it seems likely to be because people in those regions continue to pass their religion on to their children. But sure, maybe it’s a deity<->geography thing. Do you want to make that case? The Hindu gods exist and have a chokehold on India that the Christian God in all his universe-creating power cannot pierce? If you want to argue that there’s a magical, godly influence that creates and spreads religions rather than sociological influences, I would like to hear it and how it explains the geographicity of religious beliefs.
You’re being deliberately obtuse, aren’t you? Nobody is arguing with the mathematics here, so let’s drop that pretension. Rather, the point is that this cite does NOT support what you say. There is a huge difference between saying
“99% of Americans never convert to a completely new religion.”
and
“People follow what their parents do 99% of the time.”
The two claims are not equivalent, so stop pretending that they are.
Heck, the cite doesn’t even say that 99% of Americans blindly adopt the religious beliefs of their parents! Rather, as I took great pains to emphasize, it merely says that they do not switch to an entirely new religion. It is perfectly possible – indeed, I’ve found this to be quite common – that they will maintain some of their parents’ religious beliefs but not all of them.
And finally, your source doesn’t say anything about the methodology used, which is what I was asking about. It simply says that this 1% figure is an estimate. That could mean anything from an exhaustive statistical study to pulling numbers out of thin air. So let’s not pretend that this single-page, out-of-context citation of your constitutes any effective discussion of their methodology.
You didn’t really answer the question. Religions also do most of the charity work done in this country and the world at large. I could name a dozen or so religious charities, but will save you the time. If there were no religions who would feed the poor, etc. These are real contributions religions make to society and if religions disappeared how/what would take their place?
Please don’t think I am in favor of religious doctrines and rituals, because I am not, just pointing some practicalities that must be considered if religion disappears.
So you may not like religions, but they have a place and do a job for society. I would welcome a real plan to do as well without the doctrine. If you have it, please tell me.
Do you really believe there are no secular charities? Of course they may be a little harder to recognize because they don’t incorporate “Secular” into their names or devote a portion of their resources to spreading secularism, but they’re out there feeding people, providing medical care, and doing other good works.
I can name a dozen or more non-religious charities, too. But I’ll save you the time.
Religion just attaches its name to charity, it isn’t the driving force behind it. If you believe otherwise, you’ll have to provide a cite that shows religious people are more charitable than the non-religious.
So you’re willing to make a claim, but if anyone disagrees, it’s up to them to disprove it? :dubious:
What makes you so certain that religion does not drive charitable good works? I’m not saying that every single charitable act is religiously motivated, nor do I see anyone making that claim. If you’re going to say that religion does not drive charity at all, then I think it’s only fair to ask how you arrived at that conclusion.
Personally, I don’t have any difficulty in believing that religions which teach “Love thy neighbor” and “Feed the poor” would motivate people into doing those very same things.
