What do you do when people mock/criticize your religion?

[Rowan]

Actually, I'm not religious. From where I stand, the denial of the divine is every bit as illogical as its acceptance. The fundamental purpose of logic is to infer truths from other truths. The only absolute truth to be inferred here, is that nobody has concrete proof of anything about the origin of the universe, meaning we know nothing.

Science is all well and good, I like science myself, but even in science we base alot on faith. Faith that our tests have given us reliable data, and that our observations have discovered all the relevant information. Quite often, they do not. For example, it was observation and implementation of the scientific method that lead people to believe the earth was the center of the universe. Because their observations were incomplete, their conclusion was wrong. Someone then came by with much better observations and calculations, and he 'proved' that the sun was the center of the universe. At least until someone proved him wrong too. Even scientific theories are only 'true' for as long as they fit in with the other things we think we know. Every belief anybody has is based entirely on the assumption that we percieve things correctly. We have no evidence to support this. In fact given how often we've come back later and proven ourselves dead wrong, we in fact have good reason to believe the exact opposite.

Nobody's beliefs are perfectly logical, the only real difference between people is how far they try to go with reason before they finally say "screw it" and take the leap of faith.

If you're into what works, I'll pose a pragmatic argument for you.

Let us assume that all religions are equal just for the purpose of this, so I can eliminate complexities unnescessary for the sake of this argument. To be more precise, you're either religious, or athiest, no sub divisions. Most of them share the primary focus of my point anyways.

Your goal is that our belief be practical and useful. So I'll make a truth table with that as my conclusion.

The two premises and attempted conclusion are as follows

I am Religous, My beliefs are Correct, My beliefs Acomplish something for me. My beliefs were Useful

R C A U
T T T T
T F F F
F T F F
F F F F

These are all the possible ways the two premises can occur, and their effect on the conclusion.

Argument 1: If I follow this religion, and am correct, I go to heaven. Therefore the belief was useful and did me good.

Argument 2: If follow this religion, and am incorrect, I decompose after burial and am consumed by worms. Therefore the belief did not do me any good.

Argument 3: If I do not folow this religion, but it was the truth. I now rot in Hell for all eternity. Therefore the belief definitely did no good.

Argument 4: If I do not follow this religion, and was right in not doing so, I decompose after burial and am consumed by worms. Therefore the belief still did me no good.

The only argument which lead to the conclusion that the belief was useful, was the first, in which you picked a religion and happened to be right.

I appreciate you posting. I've seen a lot of your posts and I like the way you put forth arguments and bring information to the debates.
having said that I think you might have missed something.

Theres nothing illogical about denying something based on lack of evidence. If anything, that is the perfect logical thought process.

"god exists"
-"okay! i believe"

the default position for thinking SHOULD and always should be 'prove it' and not to just accept something because it is.If i say "ive got a fire in my pocket" you dont just say 'okay, i believe you' you would want evidence and proof that the fire was actually in my pocket because you could not see it and therefor have reason to question if there actually was a fire in my pocket.

I mentioned scientific method, but I didn't think I made myself clear. In no way am I claiming to know the origins of the universe, for i do not. I mentioned scientific method because science gives us testability (we are actually able to prove things in a PRACTICAL way) and repeatability (we are able to do them over and over again successfully). Based on these 2 things, we can make informed deicisions that give us results. Science is results based and therfor making it practical and useful. Science is not faith based, we dont believe in avenues for no good reason, we take roads based on tests and results that give us the information to make informed decisions about what we are trying to do, they are not based on faith. Of course certain risks are involved in areas, but they are in the interest of results and based on tests that have credability. They've nothing to do with faith.

Your diagram on how one lives thier life based on religion is interesting, but seems a little redundant.

and to firefly, im not targetting you. You are the only one whos responded to my question yet still failed to give me a logical answer. Believing in god because of a book and a person who supposedly existed all those centuries ago, is not justification enough for me. Bible does not count as physical proof as it has been re-editioned countless times and edited out so many versus its unbelievable. If you were a true christian you would only be allowed to wear the clothes of animals you have killed yourself and would not be allowed to have sex unless it was for reproduction only.

also, you say that god is loving and caring in your eyes but you also say that he ALLOWS death and slavery and sacrifice to happen. That is the most hypocritical statement I've heard all month. Where do you get these ideals of his character from if you can acknowledge that hes a immoral god who allows death, destruction, slavery and sacrifice? Im more moral than your god because I would not allow anything like that to happen. I wouldnt care about people believing in me, id rather them be happy and living their lives isntead of praying to me everyday.

[Firefly]

You are the only one whos responded to my question

Umm...FYI,I did not respond to your question. I responded to the topic of " What do you do when people mock/criticize your religion?" The question you asked,I paid no attention to. I guess you must have mistaken my answer to the thread,for an answer to your question . Anyways,I am done trying to prove my point(which I wasn't even planning on doing in the first place). I am done with this thread. I hope that someday you find the answer your looking for.

[Heartless Angel]

I appreciate you posting. I've seen a lot of your posts and I like the way you put forth arguments and bring information to the debates.

Thanks =]

Theres nothing illogical about denying something based on lack of evidence. If anything, that is the perfect logical thought process.

I'm affraid I must disagree with you there. In fact, that's so illogical, it's been defined as a formal fallacy. Argumentum ad Ignorantium to be exact, the lack of proof for a conclusion, does not prove its opposite. That is sufficient reason not to accept the conclusion as true, but not to accept it as false. Again, the only thing logic proves here, is that we've proven absolutely nothing, and can only have a belief if we base it on faith.

the default position for thinking SHOULD and always should be 'prove it' and not to just accept something because it is.If i say "ive got a fire in my pocket" you dont just say 'okay, i believe you' you would want evidence and proof that the fire was actually in my pocket because you could not see it and therefor have reason to question if there actually was a fire in my pocket.

The only possible proof here would be to turn out your pockets... or for the rest of your pants to catch fire. In this case, all possible evidence can be examined in a matter of seconds, and the conclusion can be inferred immediately from that evidence. When conflicts are this simple to resolve, one belief is ultimately defeated by another, and nobody continues to hold on to the original belief. Problem here, is that the evidence is no more concrete than the theories, neither conclusion can be proven true to defeat the other, so both stay on the table as reasonable conclusions. To deny one conclusion because the opponent failed to prove it with no evidence for either side is more akin to taking a thimble to the atlantic ocean, getting a scoop of water, looking at it with a magnifying glass, and concluding that fish do not exist; than to your fire in the pocket analogy.

When you say somebody is wrong when they say there is God, regardless of the strength of their evidence, you are immediately implying that the reverse is true, at which point you're the one making the positive claim, so the burden of proof shifts to you. You unfortunately can't prove it isn't true, so if that line of reasoning is valid, we've got a paradox here. You can always say their argument was insufficient to convince you, but never that the conclusion was not true because of it. So again I'm left with the recurring conclusion that the only truly logical answer is, "I don't know."

I mentioned scientific method, but I didn't think I made myself clear. In no way am I claiming to know the origins of the universe, for i do not. I mentioned scientific method because science gives us testability (we are actually able to prove things in a PRACTICAL way) and repeatability (we are able to do them over and over again successfully). Based on these 2 things, we can make informed deicisions that give us results. Science is results based and therfor making it practical and useful. Science is not faith based, we dont believe in avenues for no good reason, we take roads based on tests and results that give us the information to make informed decisions about what we are trying to do, they are not based on faith. Of course certain risks are involved in areas, but they are in the interest of results and based on tests that have credability. They've nothing to do with faith.

My previous statement stands. No matter how many times unenlightened people looked at the night sky before we invented telescopes, we always appeared to be at the center of the known universe. It was repeatable, hell you can repeat their primative experiment and get the same results right now. It was an informed belief. The information happened to be limitted, and because of the information we lacked proving the opposite, wrong. The next guy could run his calculations as many times as he likes, with the empirical data he's been able to gather, he'll conclude that the universe is heliocentric every single time. Repeatable, got closer to the truth than the guy before him, still wrong. Tests only have credibility as long as our data does, and our data only has credibility as long as it's the extent of our knowledge. Unless you'd actually be arrogant enough to say that we humans currently know everything, and will never be proven wrong by better observations and more data again, because we're awesome enough to have already observed everything and gathered all data, you can't say anything science has inferred has actually been proven. Science deals with fact, philosophy with truth. Fact is contingent entirely on our perceptions, and calculations about other facts, which coming from flawed beings are concievably flawed themselves. Truth is contingent only on the truth. In that regard, philosophy is superior when it comes to truly proving anything.

Your diagram on how one lives thier life based on religion is interesting, but seems a little redundant.

Not really, in fact in the sense that this limitted (that's my euphasmim for me being too lazy to construct a much much larger more precise truth table) argument can, I have proven that the only useful, practical, belief, is that there is a God who's going to let you into awesomeland for believing in him. Unless you have a different definition for practical than that which acomplishes something, which is actually fairly likely, since I was cutting corners with this argument and dumbing it down alot, primarily due to laziness. Anyhoo, conclusion, the only logical belief, is that all beliefs are illogical.