Can we change our mind about what we believe?

[Trailblazer]

You're conflating two radically different ways of thinking - justified and unjustified belief - by calling them both faith and treating the two words as one because they are spelled and pronounced the same. Let me illustrate. A man believes that his car will start today based in experience starting it, and that when he drives it, he will be protected by angels, based in nothing more than unfalsifiable religious claim. I have no unjustified beliefs to my knowledge, but remember that mine include an element of doubt. My beliefs are that things can be said to be more or less likely to be correct based in experience, but almost nothing is proven or known with certitude.

Likewise, my beliefs are that things can be said to be more or less likely to be correct based in experience, but almost nothing is proven or known with certitude.

I understand. I don't begrudge you whatever you feel makes your life better, but I can't help but believe that one would have no need requiring religious faith to satisfy if he had matured outside of religious faith in the first place in the same sense that a person would have no need only a cigarette could satisfy had he never smoked or had quit smoking in the past and the urge abated.

That does not account for the atheists who later became believers. I know several personally.

 

[Willamena]

Likewise, my beliefs are that things can be said to be more or less likely to be correct based in experience, but almost nothing is proven or known with certitude.

That does not account for the atheists who later became believers. I know several personally.

What is proven with certitude?

 

[Trailblazer]

What is proven with certitude?

I don't know of anything off the top of my head.

 

[Willamena]

Can we change our mind about what we believe?

We have the capacity to change our minds based on what information is available to us, and we believe in facts, which change with available information.

@PureX said that one CAN change their mind, but they won't because they don't want to deny their current understanding of 'what is'. #523

I disagree. One CAN change their mind, and they sometimes do, if they get new information that causes them to change their mind. However, if they don't change their mind, it is because they truly believe that what they believe is true according to their current understanding. It is not that they won’t change their mind, as if they are stubbornly refusing to change their mind, it is that they have no reason to change their mind.

That depends on how open-minded one is.

Why should anyone deny that what they believe is true?

Because they've seen a broader or greater truth.

Conversely, why should anyone accept any belief as true if they don’t believe it is true?

They shouldn't. Hands down.

Why should atheists accept that God exists when they see no evidence for God’s existence?

I do not think that atheists are stubbornly refusing to believe in God. I take them at their word when they say that they see no evidence for God. It is not that they won’t believe in God, it is that they can’t believe in God because they see no evidence for God. The same holds true for me. It is not that I won’t disbelieve in God, it is that I can’t disbelieve in God because I see evidence for God.

Atheists shouldn't, and neither would they.

If someone wants to convince them of god, they had better do so. Information

 

[joelr]

sfs


People made from Dust" indeed is to be ... and was taken literally .. but it is clear that you don't have an understanding of the story.

The "Clay" = Earth = Earthling .. modern people were made from primitive earthlings according to the Sumerians living in 2500 BC around the time when Pyramids were being built.

People came from the sky (looked on as Gods - called annunaki) and were mining the earth .. but the work was hard and the workers revolted. The solution was to create a hybrid being . They impregnated 14 annunaki women with 7 male and 7 female .. and that is how the Adamu came to be.

Whether the tree was literal tree or not changes a whole lot friend .. and the "knowledge" that the Serpent in the Garden is a God .... the "Serpent" being that Old Dragon ... the Primordial one of Chaos .. known to the Sumerians as Tiamat.

Get the Gia channel on the phone, they may have a new "history" show here.

 

[joelr]

I believe the devil does get punished in the end.

No, what actually happens is Yahweh goes to Satan and ask him to deliver a plague to kill 70,000 people. Then does it again,
He calls Satan the Angel of Yahweh and later speaks to him as one of the "sons of Yahweh",he allows Satan to torture Job to break him, for being such a nice guy. They serve on trial together with Satan as a prosecutor.

Not much punishment here.

Yes, during the 2nd Temple Period the Hebrews were exposed to a new mythology about a supreme god who was at war with their devil and would eventually win over him in a final battle where all members of the religion would undergo bodily resurrection and live in paradise on Earth.
And in the NT, which is all Hellenism, the devil plays a bad character. But Christians seem to thing Satan is always at work in the world, in all sorts of ways which clearly suggests he is free to work his evil magic.

Evil magic which he inherited from Persian and Greek myths because right after all the atrocities god committed in the OT, the ones I mentioned, Yahweh and Satan were cool. As I noted, Satan clearly worked under Yahweh and did his errands.

So we have the following

1) God does many evil things, floods the world, tells people to take woman and children as plunder and kill everyone in 6 cities. Even babies.
2) Satan just works under him as the Angel of Yahweh
3) Yahweh even asks him "what have you been up to" and let's him torture Job, a devout religious man
4)After being exposed to religions with an evil devil Satan now becomes an evil devil
5) He is sometimes said to be "punished" but Christians of all stripes say he is always around causing all types of temptation and so on
6) No explanation is ever given for this bizarre discrepancy in the story?
7) The serpent is not Satan, the serpent is a bringer of wisdom.

8) You cannot "fool" a God. If an actual God didn't want an Adam or Eve to eat anything off a tree it would never happen. The older African version also has a snake in that role



Campbell: Yes, it has been tough on serpents. The Bassari legend from West Africa continues in the same way. ''One day Snake said, 'We too should eat these fruits. Why must we go hungry?' Antelope said, 'But we don't know anything about this fruit.' The Man and his wife took some of the fruit and ate it. Unumbotte came down from the sky and asked, 'Who ate the fruit?' They answered, 'We did.' Unumbotte asked, 'Who told you that you could eat that fruit' They replied, 'Snake did,' '' It is very much the same story.
Moyers: What do you make of it— that in these two stories the principal actors point to someone else as the initiator of the Fall?
Campbell: Yes, but it turns out to be the snake. In both of these stories the snake is the symbol of life throwing off the past and continuing to live.
Moyes: Why?
Campbell: The power of life causes the snake to shed its skin, just as the moon sheds its shadow. The serpent sheds its skin to be born again, as the moon its shadow to be born again. They are equivalent symbols. Sometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. That's an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. There is something tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in itself the sense of both fascination and the terror of life.

Furthermore, the serpent represents the primary function of life, mainly eating. Life consists in eating other creatures. The serpent is a traveling alimentary canal, that's about all it is. And it gives you that primary sense of shock, of life in its most primal quality. There is not arguing with that animal at all. Life lives by killing and eating itself, casting off death and being reborn, like the moon. This is one of the mysteries that these symbolic, paradoxical forms try to represent. (p. 45)

 

[joelr]

Copy & paste..
They are partisan .. not fact!

Yes, partisan of the truth. Some of them are Christians even. They simply had to admit the best evidence shows the stories are not original.

Scholars use intertexuality to determine if a text is reliant on another text. In these cases there is no doubt.

why you waffle back and forth shows you are just hand waving and really don't care about truth at all.
You sometimes say "the Bible is corrupted and influenced by older nations" and other times you accuse the scholars of being bias.
You have no evidence anyways, you make stuff up.
You haven't read these works and made a determination, listened to the evidence, you just pick what you wat to be true and make up whatever you want about anything that doesn't support it.

Do whatever you like. I care about what is actually true and can be demonstrated, but you can live in make-believe land.

You cannot prove that other beings besides humans don't exist .. you just presume..

And you cannot prove Zeus, Krishna, Inanna, Orirus and Superman don't exist.
Like it or not, there is no evidence for them being real.
There IS evidence that they are from stories, fictional stories.
There is evidence humans enjoy making up fictional stories with make believe beings. It wasn't just modern humans? You think Lord of the Rings and all the massive fantasy-sci-fi collections are just from people in the 1900s and beyond?

Nope. Humans have been making up fantasy epics since we could tell stories. Religions are exactly that. The Greek stories and pantheon, Roman pantheon, all religious stories, likely made up fiction.

So we have that evidence.
And that goes for your light people and angels. Yes, Mt Doom might be a real place and Sauron might be real. And angels and light people. But probably they are characters in a writers head who got re-used in other continuing fiction.

When you can prove beyond doubt that I am WRONG, let me know.

The unfalsifiability fallacy occurs when someone makes a claim that is impossible to prove false.

You cannot prove any myth isn't real. It's a fallacy to even use that as a point.

..and I don't mean copy&paste of books written by atheists.

First, for like the 20th time (seriously, do you have a disability regarding learning, I'm actually asking, if not why would you make this mistake over and over in the same conversation?), these are not atheists. They are historical scholars. Some are Jewish, some are Christian, but all study the original Hebrew and compare it to Mesopotamian writings and conclude they are re-writings of the older stories.
Intertextuality is the main method used to show a work 100% is dependent on an earlier work. You can learn about that also.

Historical events are one thing .. but drawing conclusions is another.

Exactly. Like how some people look at a supposed "revelation" and a bunch of claims and take the entire thing as gospel and assume it's all real.
Like drawing the conclusion the Quran is actually the word of any God when we haven't demonstrated any god?
When the information isn't anything new or different.
Isn't showing math we didn't know, science we didn't know.
It does use science the Greeks already wrote about, exactly that and no more. Hmmm, what a coincidence. As if it was written by just people.
Yet you draw conclusions about it.


Now intertextuality is a strong tool to demonstrate a story was a re-write of another. It isn't that hard.

Plus, you get stuff like:


Noah - Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned

Gilamesh - . When the seventh day dawned I loosed a dove and let her go. She flew away, but finding no resting- place she returned.


Noah - And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake;

Gimamesh - , I made a sacrifice and poured out a libation on the mountain top. Seven and again seven cauldrons I set up on their stands, I heaped up wood and cane and cedar and myrtle. When the gods smelled the sweet savour, they gathered like flies over the sacrifice.



Noah - And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.


Gilamesh - When the seventh day dawned the storm from the south subsided, the sea grew calm, the flood was stilled;

 

[muhammad_isa]

Exactly. Like how some people look at a supposed "revelation" and a bunch of claims and take the entire thing as gospel and assume it's all real.

..some people??
That would be billions of people. What's it like to be so clever, compared to the majority?
..or .. maybe you are not as clever as you think you are..

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The quest for knowledge, and organising civilised society to learn, began with religious teaching Islam/Christianity.

This is incorrect. What we are discussing is the history of the Western intellectual tradition, which is older than either of those religions.

Helpful for what?

Predicting outcomes. The theory of evolution is useful by that definition, whereas the claims of creationism are not.

Religion most certainly DOES have answers

No, it has guesses that cannot be used for anything such as Christian creationism.

 

[muhammad_isa]

This is incorrect. What we are discussing is the history of the Western intellectual tradition, which is older than either of those religions.

Western philosophy refers to the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics.
...
Western culture, also known as Western civilization, European civilization, Occidental culture, or Western society, is an umbrella term which refers to the diverse heritages of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, artifacts and technologies of the Western world. Western civilization, broadly defined, finds its roots in the foundations laid by Greco-Roman civilization, and the tenets of Western Christianity.
- Wikipedia -

..so I'm talking about western civilisation .. you ignore Christianity as part of our roots .. I don't !

No, it has guesses that cannot be used for anything such as Christian creationism.

They are not just guesses .. they can be shown to be true.

For example, why is it that despite what mankind does to curb climate-change, we are still
on course for an apocalypse?
The answer is, that people prefer wealth to the truth. The truth, is that the global financial
system is not according to the guidance that G-d has taught us i.e. it is usurious

Usury has blossomed since the Reformation, and the Industrial Revolution that followed.
It's like being on a runaway train!

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

you ignore Christianity as part of our roots

Christianity plays a role in Western history, but it's contribution to Western philosophy is essentially nil. It's adherents like to tell us that the US Constitution, humanism, and science are products of Christianity, but they are not. Various elements of Christianity remains averse to of all of these.

Its affect on history has been and still is mostly negative. It has held back Western progress. It promotes faith over reason, and an ancient, stagnant, flawed moral code which manifestation today is seen in the culture wars in the States, where the church is spearheading attempt to restrict and oppress women and LGBTQ+, and repeated failed attempts to get creationism into public school curricula. THAT's Christianity. That's what it does. It's an intellectual and moral anchor.

"The argument of Western antitheists is that Christianity is a false religion, and that it imposes a significant burden on society. We say that it harms and diminishes people and their societies (families, communities, and nations). It impedes intellectual and moral progress, and it drains considerable resources from the community. These conclusions are the generalization abstracted from thousands of separate events" - anon

For example, why is it that despite what mankind does to curb climate-change, we are still on course for an apocalypse? The answer is, that people prefer wealth to the truth. The truth, is that the global financial system is not according to the guidance that G-d has taught us i.e. it is usurious

This is your example of an answer religion provides that is useful? This is a statement of the obvious and isn't based in religious beliefs.

Regarding climate change, here are typical "answers" from Christianity:

• "We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand" - James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under Reagan (note his position and responsibilities)
• "My point is, God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous." - Sen. Inhofe, R-Okla
• "The Earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth. This Earth will not be destroyed by a flood. . . . I do believe God's word is infallible, unchanging, perfect." - Rep John Shimkus, R-Ill.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Its affect on history has been and still is mostly negative. It has held back Western progress..

Your idea of progress must be different from mine.

This is your example of an answer religion provides that is useful? This is a statement of the obvious and isn't based in religious beliefs..

On the contrary, it is.
The Christian church before the Reformation forbade usury,
and it is forbidden for Jews (in regards to their dealings with their brethren).
It is also forbidden for Muslims to deal with usury.
Usury is defined as an "unreasonable increase" in financial transactions,
particularly of like-for-like eg. money for money

The Industrial Revolution was financed by usury, and modern economics is based on it.
It is no more than mathematical manipulation of money to achieve a win-win .. much like
one-arm-bandits and roulette.

Communist, Marxist philosophy also recognises usury as morally wrong, but
communist countries today have decided "if you can't beat them, then join them"..
..as have most Muslim countries.
It is no surprise that we are heading for an apocalypse.

Regarding climate change, here are typical "answers" from Christianity:

• "We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand" - James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under Reagan (note his position and responsibilities)
• "My point is, God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous." - Sen. Inhofe, R-Okla
• "The Earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth. This Earth will not be destroyed by a flood. . . . I do believe God's word is infallible, unchanging, perfect." - Rep John Shimkus, R-Ill.

They are not answers from Christianity .. they are quotes from a bunch of American Christians.
..not the same thing at all.

 

[ChieftheCef]

I said: You could also consider it favoritism that some people have easy happy lives and other people have hard unhappy lives, since our fate is largely determined by God. What do you think about that?

How can you expect anything to be but pieces parts when we are all but pieces parts? Reality is patchwork, if god is real he is real stuff (hint he is the Void, Space-Time). Reality can only literally do so much and you're glad for it, because if it wasn't the way it is it would be horrible.

Why is that mere math and

Because reality is practically made of math.

how is it provable?

It is math...

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The Industrial Revolution was financed by usury, and modern economics is based on it. It is no more than mathematical manipulation of money to achieve a win-win .. much like one-arm-bandits and roulette.

Yes, win-win. Bank loans made my life better even as they enriched the banks. I could not have afforded medical school without student loans. I financed my first house, my first new car, and my first medical office. This allowed me to save while repaying those loans and their interest as well as live a full life during those years.

Today, I own my home and car free and clear, have no credit card or other debt, and pay no interest on anything, but that wouldn't have happened without bank loans early on.

It's remarkable that this was your go-to answer for how Christianity has benefitted Western intellectual development and Western life. Ask me how humanism has made life better, and I can give you a long answer filled with benefits. It's made your life better if you benefit from secular democracy and scientific achievement. Do you? Do you like freedom of religion? Secular democracy is a humanist value that became the norm in Europe and the English-speaking world thanks to Enlightenment values supplanting the Middle Ages ways, which were quite Christian.

But I can't name one way that Christianity has made my life better, although I can name several ways it degrades life. I'm an atheist and am quite familiar with Christian bigotry for atheists. It's unsafe for fertile women to live in states where the Christians write the abortion laws. Christian homophobia degrades the lives of LGBTQ+ people. It wants to degrade science curricula in the public schools by injecting its mythology into them. White evangelical Americans voted overwhelmingly (81%) for the orange monster, who has degraded America, and they'll vote for him again if they can.

And then there's this:

They are not answers from Christianity .. they are quotes from a bunch of American Christians...not the same thing at all.

Disagree. Their Christianity manifested in the way those quotes demonstrated. Those were Christian ideas they were spouting, and very bad ones. They welcome apocalypse. I'll bet many are thrilled with the war in Gaza for that reason. What could be better than Jews and Muslims killing one another when Jesus returns, right? They're all going to hell anyway according to Christian doctrine, and prophecy foretells of destruction in that region in the end times.

 

[Trailblazer]

How can you expect anything to be but pieces parts when we are all but pieces parts? Reality is patchwork, if god is real he is real stuff (hint he is the Void, Space-Time). Reality can only literally do so much and you're glad for it, because if it wasn't the way it is it would be horrible.

Sorry, I do not understand what you mean. Are you saying that it is reality that some people have easy happy lives and other people have hard unhappy lives, and we should be glad for that because we can only expect so much since reality can only do so much?
If it wasn't this way why would it be horrible?

Because reality is practically made of math.

It is math...

Again, I don't understand what you mean by 'made of math.'
Are you saying that reality adds up? If so, what does that mean? Adds up to what?

 

[muhammad_isa]

Today, I own my home and car free and clear..

Bully for you!
..but you have ignored most of the content of my last posts, and your point is not relevant.
Like I said .. many people don't like the truth .. so ignore it.

And then there's this:

Disagree. Their Christianity manifested in the way those quotes demonstrated. Those were Christian ideas they were spouting, and very bad ones. They welcome apocalypse. I'll bet many are thrilled with the war in Gaza for that reason. What could be better than Jews and Muslims killing one another when Jesus returns, right? They're all going to hell anyway according to Christian doctrine, and prophecy foretells of destruction in that region in the end times.

Political stuff .. you are too far away from the origin .. and that is the Middle East.
I'm not surprised that you turn religion into political mumbo-jumbo.

Christianity and Islam are religions. They have evolved into schism, as that is mankind's nature.
i.e. tribal
The biggest mistake you make, imo, is to equate "a Christian" or "a Muslim" with a religion,
when the majority do not practice their faith, and know little.

 

[joelr]

..some people??
That would be billions of people.

1) Billions who. believe one version of revelations, Islam
2) Billions who believe a different claim of revelations, Christianity
3) Millions who believe a different claim of revelations, Mormonism
4)Thousands who believe a different claim of revelations, Bahai

That's odd, when something is demonstrated to be true it's accepted. All scientists accept quantum mechanics or the laws of thermodynamics.
There isn't different groups with different conflicting thermodynamics?

Also, that is an argument to popularity, a fallacy.
Another set of billions believe Hinduism, does that make it true?


NOPE. Not even a little. It means a lot of people bought into the movement. Which in that time, was common and a thing one did.

What's it like to be so clever, compared to the majority?

compared to the majority? Not compared to the educated majority, they agree. It's the people who don't know better and were brainwashed.


Dr. Joel Baden

23:11
"Why would anyone think the Bible stories are anything but fiction"



Yahweh isn’t original

Francesca Stavrakopoulou
10:30
"Yahweh and the OT does not contain original ideas. Yahweh is a typical Near East God among many and just happens to be the deity who survived into the modern day."


Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity - Routledge Studies in Religion (Paperback)
Richard C. Miller (author)


"This book offers an original interpretation of the origin and early reception of the most fundamental claim of Christianity: Jesus' resurrection. Richard Miller contends that the earliest Christians would not have considered the New Testament accounts of Jesus' resurrection to be literal or historical, but instead would have recognized this narrative as an instance of the trope of divine translation, common within the Hellenistic and Roman mythic traditions. "

So What About Hannibal, Then? • Richard Carrier Blogs

This kind of argument has been tried again and again and again. I’ve discussed every one. (See Okay, So What about the Historicity of Spartacus?) It’s always of this form: P1. We should not doubt [x] existed. P2. The evidence for Jesus is better than for [x]. P3. The same standards of evidence...

www.richardcarrier.info

All mainstream scholars agree Jesus as demigod is a mythical savior deity. They all agree the Gospels are myths about him. They simply conclude that those myths contain some kernels of fact, and that Jesus was originally not a flying, magic-wielding supergod. But they agree the super-Jesus, the only Jesus about whom we have any accounts at all, didn’t exist. They think some mundane Jesus did, who was dressed up with those legends and beliefs later. But that still admits he belongs to a reference class that the Hannibals of the world do not: that of mythically-attested savior gods who speak to their followers in dreams and visions. So we actually need more evidence for Jesus than we have for Hannibal, to be sure Jesus isn’t just like all other mythical savior gods, who also had amazing stories about them set on earth history, and who also appeared to people in dreams and visions—yet never plausibly existed.


How many times? Will 20 help? 22?

All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
`All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
All mainstream scholars agree
Όλοι οι επιστήμονες συμφωνούν
همه دانشمندان جریان اصلیهمه دانشمندان جریان اصلی
כל החוקרים מהמיינסטרים מסכימיםrr

..or .. maybe you are not as clever as you think you are..

...or....maybe since I'm clever enough to know other people who specialize in subjects I do not, might actually know more than me.....

unlike some people who hand wave crap like ....."atheist scholars..." which means NOTHING??? As if the historical information changes if one is atheist. As if the Temple doesn't say "Yahweh's Ashera" if you are Christian. Archaeologists have to be like, "hey, you don't believe in Yahweh, does this Temple have "Ashera" written next to Yahweh? Since I'm christian my eyes are blind to evidence that doesn't comport to my beliefs".

Or does this happen,

Archaeologist #1 "Hey check out these Dead Sea Scrolls, there was a community 150 years before Christianity,
who were an apocalyptic, messianic group who claimed to be the new covenant people, did not practice animal sacrifice, their prayers were the sacrifice, they didn’t need a temple because they are the temple of God, we are the children of light, and about 10 more similarities to Christianity. "

Archaeologist #2 (Christian) "Hmmmm, no, that just is a copy of one of the OT books, word for word. I see no such community described and nothing that lays suspicion on my religion of Jesus is Lord and savior."

Your words make no sense. But they are apologetics, so that does track.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

your point is not relevant.

Disagree.

Your point was that religion has answers, and you gave the forbidding of "usury" as an example. I explained how taking loans and paying interest helped me get through school, and later buy a house and car while still young, which allowed me to get to the point where I no longer had to borrow money or pay interest. That's an anecdotal rebuttal of your claim that charging interest is a problem and religion gave the answer.

I'm not surprised that you turn religion into political mumbo-jumbo.

That's pretty much the only way it affects people not in those religions, and generally adversely.

I'm still waiting for you to tell me how any of these religions has benefitted mankind except in doing things that can be done without religions, like the art and architecture of the Middle ages or the building of schools or churches.

And when it comes to charity, nobody does that better than secular agencies like social democratic governments. Where were the churches and mosques during the pandemic? Government funded vaccine development and free distribution, free mask and testing equipment, and supported businesses and families.

I say that these religions are useless and a burden on society with their intellectual and moral impediments holding back humanist efforts to create a just society in which people have social and economic opportunity to pursue happiness as they understand it. In the meantime, the Christians and Muslims are oppressing women, LGBTQ+, and promoting belief by faith as a virtue. Go ahead and rebut that. Show me where a belief in gods has benefitted mankind or made a lasting and valuable contribution to modernity.

The biggest mistake you make, imo, is to equate "a Christian" or "a Muslim" with a religion, when the majority do not practice their faith, and know little.

That's not much of a recommendation for these religions. To the outsider, the majority define what the religion is and does, not its doctrine.

Humanists practice humanism pretty faithfully, because it comes from withing - from the conscience and reasoning faculties. Humanists are all more or less good examples of thoughtful and beneficent people. Look at the ones you encounter on RF. They're well-read, they're constructive, they're decent, they're emotionally stable unlike the emotional responses we see so often from the faithful. Now THAT's what I call a good people building ism. But let them go to a church or a mosque instead, and what do you end up with? Homophobes, magical thinkers, and a "majority [who] do not practice their faith, and know little."

Besides, the individual adherent isn't of much interest to those who see large, organized, politicized religions as a problem. It's the religions themselves that generate such people and which would invade and run our lives according to their religious beliefs if they could that's the target of antitheism.

 

[muhammad_isa]

..compared to the majority? Not compared to the educated majority, they agree. It's the people who don't know better and were brainwashed..

Err, no.
You merely cherry-pick your "educated scholars", and anybody who doesn't agree with them
you therefore consider "uneducated".
That is a HUGE fallacy!

Your words make no sense..

..in your opinion..
..but you are blinkered into believing only people with PhD's in ancient history, who happen to be atheists, are the only educated people in the world.

PS. Not all people who have studied ancient history are atheists, but the majority
of American graduates might be

 

[muhammad_isa]

Disagree.

Your point was that religion has answers, and you gave the forbidding of "usury" as an example. I explained how taking loans and paying interest helped me get through school, and later buy a house and car while still young, which allowed me to get to the point where I no longer had to borrow money or pay interest..

That's selfish!
You are not thinking of the bigger picture.
i.e. there MUST be losers in such a system .. and also that climate-change is a result of usury.

That's not much of a recommendation for these religions..

Nonsense!
People are people, regardless of what religion they claim to follow.
We are ALL sinners, but the pious endeavour to commit less sin.
..and the pious are only few.

To the outsider, the majority define what the religion is and does, not its doctrine.

Well so much for your critical thinking!