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Originally Posted by #-3
I think we do have to consider plausibility.
I think as this point we understand enough about the universe to know that the earth doesn't predate the sun, the women didn't spring from the ribs of men, that substantial portions of the flood myths were taken from tales of earlier cultures, that stories about future kings floating down the river in baskets is older than writing. We know that substantial portions of the Jesus myth was constructed and modified to draw comparisons to current events of grander figures at the time they were formulated. We know that sun isn't the wheel of a burning chariot, at this point we can be confident enough about mind/body monism to dismiss the idea of reincarnation or an after life.
I think there can be a great deal of confidence that no religion has proposed a plausible solution to that which they claim to explain, and the majority of claims religions have made can be directly disproven.
Atheism on the other would be incredibly easy to disprove if wrong, and nearly impossible to prove if right, but I have yet to see and argument against it that does not start with a big presupposition. I have seldom met an atheist who would be unhappy to modify their beliefs in the face of direct evidence.
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A major problem with organized religion is that there is a very shallow understanding of the origin of their own religious texts. At the time in which almost all of these texts were written, the primary mode of relaying doctrine from generation was through allegory or fable.
Whether Jesus walked the earth as advertised really isn't the question. Any of the lessons that were meant to be passed on were done so as an easily understood and remembered story, containing the message intended to be conveyed, and not a litany of recorded actions. Mohammed it was the same, the Koran is very poetic, but written in such a way to be easily digestible by an illiterate culture. Those two groups cover the bulk of the worlds religions.
Also the bulk of the worlds religions read every word in a religious text as indisputable fact. This is encouraged by the bureaucracy of these religious to gain money and power for themselves. The lack of understanding by a large percentage of religious people doesn't discount the existence of a deity.
(Not really trying to go for the worlds greatest derail, but identifying a group by it's craziest members it not a good way of categorizing a pretty important and conscientious subject. I guess that fits into the US election thread, as something similar is happening between the left and the right spectrums)
(I'm not going to continue to write about this in this thread, if you want to respond that's fine, but I won't answer. I'm also not a theologian, so there are many more qualified people to take this on in a different thread. If anyone is interested, I am not a religious person at all, but believe that science requires a complete lack of preconception, so fully discounting the existence of something based on a lack of evidence just seems sloppy.)