You just said it, they hold a belief. Many believe Scientology is the best religion. They verified it through subjective experience. Many believe Mormonism is the only true word of God, they verified it through subjective experience.
This may be appropriate for them but if you care about what is true it is not appropriate.
Some have tested their belief in white supremacy, verified in their subjective experience. Not a method for finding truth.
And you believe you have a method for finding the truth. So you are no different from anyone else here: believing in things that you can't know to be so, but using your beliefs to try and discredit those who believe differently.
Their experience is valid. It is not true. Truth needs to be demonstrated if you care about believing true things.
Demonstrations don't equal truth. That's just your particular bias talking."Seeing is believing" but neither seeing nor believing is proof of truth.
Subjective arbitrary experiences do not constitute reasonable methods for knowing what is true.
So saith who ... you? Why should anyone listen to you? You don't know any more about 'what is' than anyone else does. And the truth, after all, is 'what is'.
I don't care how you think. I am speaking up for rational, skeptical, logical , empirical methodology as a way to build a foundation of beliefs in life.
Yes, that is clearly your chosen bias. And you believe it is the superior way. But other people have their own chosen biases. And they believe they have found the superior way, at least for them. You say; "but my way logically defeats their way!". Yet their way doesn't care very much about your logic. It relies on other things, like their own direct experience. You say; "but subjective experience is notoriously unreliable!" And yet it's clearly been shown to be reliable enough for them.
The interesting thing about the 'reality of truth' is that is isn't one coherent truth. It's a whole plethora of contradictory truths rolled together. Because the truth is both the inside and outside, the here and the there, the is and the isn't, and everything else, too. The truth is both objective AND subjective. Logical AND illogical. Fact AND fiction. Which is very, very difficult for the human brain to comprehend. Impossible, really.
If you want to disregard that, have a dance party. I'm putting it out there. And I'm examining claims of religions to see if they hold up to logic and evidence.
Why? What ever made you presume that religious claims had anything to do with logic and evidence? It's like saying, "I'm going to assess that painting of the Mona Lisa MATHEMATICALLY! Then, by golly, we'll all know the truth of it!" Religions are about living by faith. Not living by logic or evidence or probability. If people found logic and evidence sufficient by itself for living life, they wouldn't have developed and engaged in religion. But we do engage in it. And we always have. So clearly logic and evidence we not good enough.
Because I care about what is true.
That's a very dubious claim given the fact that as a limited (non-omniscient) human, you can't ever actually know what is and isn't true. All any of us can do is guess at it.
I don't care if you believe stories with zero evidence and claims about supernatural things that are not supported by any evidence? I want people who are not aware that religions sometimes indoctrinate and use apologetics which are not correct, use emotional attachments which happen the same in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and others, and the doctrines being sold are probably not true but fictional versions of reality.
Fiction is one of the most common and effective ways of presenting and sharing perceived truths among we humans. It's a universal form of communication called "artifice". It operates along side verbal language, and the quantized language of mathematics. We use them all to help us understand our experience of existing, and share it with others.
People don't do addition "differently", people don't have a different science or another periodic table. Things are true and supported by evidence or they are not. Religion is not supported by evidence, it's syncretic stories taken from older religions and the morals, taken from morals of the time are not even used. Cultural morality is used. Hence no stoning, death for graven images, women may speak in church, and so on.
Yeah, no one cares about any of this, though, because it's artifice. It's fiction. It's representation, and metaphor. It's how we convey the deeply profound, complex, and mysterious in life to each other. That you're trying to apply logic and evidence to it is just ... weird.
Some humans are trying to promote logical, empirical thought so people are not taken in every time someone is selling something. So they have a personal epistemology that includes skepticism and evidence so they can believe as many true things as possible. So they are ALWAYS trying to debunk their beliefs HONESTLY, from people who know more, and accepting when they have held a false belief.
Like Bart Ehrman did, or Dr Richard Miller among many others who were fundamentalists.
It's good for us to share and debate (to better understand) each other's thoughts on the "truth of existence". But not if we're doing it to "defeat the opposing person's views". Not if we only seek to 'teach', but not to learn. And not if we are foolish enough to think WE have the truth, so THEY must be lying (or deceiving themselves and others).
It's not my fault religion doesn't stand up to evidence and logic.
Nor is it Leonardo da Vinci's fault that the Mona Lisa painting didn't stand up to your mathematical assessment of it.
But then, really, why should anyone care? Why, even, do you?
And as you say all this, you probably feel the same as I do about Islam, which will outnumber Christianity in the US. And Mormonism and all other theologies you find false. That's ok, just not the one you personally believe.
Lots of people have found value and truth in lots of things that I have not. But then I have found value and truth is a few things that very few other people have, or that they even understand. Such is the nature of truth. ... And the limits of mankind.
