Showing posts with label skepticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label skepticism. Show all posts

The Pure Sophistry and Obfuscationism of Philosophy of Religion and Why the Evidential Requirement Changes Everything

0 comments
Earlier I had posted this link. I then reminded believers that had they been born differently due to the lottery of birth they would be raised to believe differently. Their religious rituals would be different too! On Facebook it was called the genetic fallacy. Nope. Look at what happens when the sophistry of philosophy of religion is used to obfuscate the impact of the lottery of birth, and why the requirement for evidence changes everything:

Dear Christian, Doubt Is Not Your Enemy (Part 1)

0 comments
For the Christian, doubt is a bad thing - a lack of faith, or even worse, outright unbelief.  Early on in the Bible, doubt is portrayed in a negative light.  The Eden story in Genesis tells of a serpent planting doubt in the mind of Eve - did God really say not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? 

According to the Bible, faith is the “evidence of things unseen” (Hebrews 11:1).  Without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6).  The writer of the gospel of John has Jesus saying “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).  In other words, God approves of those who believe on the basis of stories they have been told, rather than requiring evidence, as “doubting Thomas” did.

Such credulous acceptance of unverified word-of-mouth claims played an essential role in the rise of Christianity.  Miraculous stories abounded in ancient superstitious cultures, providing fertile soil for supernatural beliefs to grow and thrive.  Apologists and theologians love to claim that the New Testament stories are based on eyewitness accounts, but let’s face it – it’s not like the early believers could use a phone, or Google, or Snopes to investigate claims.  Do we really think that they climbed on a donkey and rode for days to track down and interview sources, to verify the tales they were told?  The fact that the people of that time would most likely not be skeptics is the more reason that it is vital we should scrutinize the biblical claims.