[Ensorceled]

> I've thought very carefully on what kind of evidence could be presented to me to show that Christianity was wrong

This is inside out. What evidence was presented to you that made you believe Christianity was right?

I became an Atheist in large part because I took Latin my first year in high school and realized that the Roman's actually believed in their gods the same way that I believed in the Christian god. And I gradually realized that they had the same reason to believe that I did ... they were told from a young age that this was real and just kept believing as they grew up.

> I'd be interested in what kind of evidence Dennet would accept to show him that his atheism was wrong.

I can't speak for Dennet, but for me it would just be ANY evidence: a verifiable miracle, proof of life after death, or meeting an angel/demon.

[knightoffaith]

>This is inside out. What evidence was presented to you that made you believe Christianity was right?

I don't think this is really the right way to think about Christianity for many believers. C.S. Lewis says, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." It's not so much that Christianity is just another fact lying out there that we just happened to stumble upon, and now we use scientific tools to investigate whether it's true or false. No - it's a belief that shapes the very way we understand the world. It's a worldview. That's not to say that it's necessarily correct, but just that it's not a belief that we necessarily acquire in the same way we might acquire a belief about what 1+1 is or how many planets orbit the sun. It's much like how someone born and raised atheist doesn't hold their belief in atheism because of some evidence for that view. We can still argue about Christianity, atheism, or other religions, of course, that's fine - but it's not obvious that there's some inherent irrationality in asking "what could show Christianity to be false" instead of "what convinced me Christianity is true".

>they were told from a young age that this was real and just kept believing as they grew up. This is true, but if the implication is that belief in Roman paganism is on just as firm intellectual ground as belief in Christianity, that seems unfair given the rich intellectual history spanning millennia of the latter to which the former isn't really comparable at all.

[Capricorn2481]

I don't have evidence someone is a psychic, but I have common sense that if they're predictions could apply to anyone, they are probably scamming me.

Just like if someone chalks up inconsistencies in the Bible to "God testing us" or the fact that the Bible has been edited repeatedly, picking whatever parts supported their authority at the time, that I'm probably being scammed.

Now Christianity is so fragmented and personal in it's belief system that to say "what evidence do you have that it's not real" does feel backwards. I have equal evidence in any religion as I do in Christianity.

[knightoffaith]

Well, inconsistencies in the Bible are traditionally chalked up to flaws in our interpretation of it. Maybe that sounds like a cop-out to you, but that's fine.

My point was not you, as an atheist, shouldn't ask "what evidence do you have that Christianity is true". Rather, my point was that a Christian, in thinking rationally, is not forced to ask "what evidence do I have for this belief?". You as a nonbeliever might see just as good evidence in other religions as Christianity, great, that's fine.

[edanm]

> No - it's a belief that shapes the very way we understand the world. It's a worldview.

For Christians. You kind of do have to grapple with the fact that billions of people do not have that worldview, and therefore you do have to compare the Christian worldview to the non-Christian worldview.

> >they were told from a young age that this was real and just kept believing as they grew up.

> This is true, but if the implication is that belief in Roman paganism is on just as firm intellectual ground as belief in Christianity, that seems unfair given the rich intellectual history spanning millennia of the latter to which the former isn't really comparable at all.

Maybe that's the case with Roman mythology (though I don't have the dates), but what about Hinduism? Buddhism? Islam? Judaism?

All of these have comparable histories.

[knightoffaith]

>therefore you do have to compare the Christian worldview to the non-Christian worldview.

For the Christian, this is presumably part of asking "what would lead me to believe Christianity is false?". That is, asking whether other religions should lead one to conclude Christianity is not true.

>Maybe that's the case with Roman mythology (though I don't have the dates)

Well, more than just the dates, it's about the intellectual rigor of people thinking about the theology. There is no serious equivalent in Roman mythology to, for example, Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, which includes grappling with questions such as "Whether the existence of God is self-evident?", "Whether God is the supreme good?", and "Whether sacred doctrine is a matter of argument?".

>but what about Hinduism? Buddhism? Islam? Judaism?

These are all fine traditions! Far and above Roman mythology. You could replace "Christianity" with any of these in my original comment, and it would still apply. There's a world of difference between "a silly belief that people held when they were a child and continue to hold just because of inertia" and "a serious belief with a rich intellectual history, though one among several other such beliefs".

[edanm]

> Well, more than just the dates, it's about the intellectual rigor of people thinking about the theology. There is no serious equivalent in Roman mythology to, for example, Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, which includes grappling with questions such as "Whether the existence of God is self-evident?", "Whether God is the supreme good?", and "Whether sacred doctrine is a matter of argument?".

I'm genuinely curious - do you actually know this? Or are you just assuming this based on the age of the Roman empire, the fact that they were older generations, etc? Cause I personally don't know that much about it, but we know ancient civilizations grappled with these kinds of questions all the time.

> These are all fine traditions! Far and above Roman mythology. You could replace "Christianity" with any of these in my original comment, and it would still apply. There's a world of difference between "a silly belief that people held when they were a child and continue to hold just because of inertia" and "a serious belief with a rich intellectual history, though one among several other such beliefs".

Yes, but I think you misunderstood my meaning. I was saying, if you substitute "Roman Mythology" with e.g. "Islam" in the parent comment, you can't just as easily brush it aside by saying "there is not rich intellectual tradition there".

As a Christian believer, I think you do have to grapple with billions of people, some of them as smart and sophisticate as any Christian, who follow a different belief system. That's why you have to argue "from the inside" as it were about why Christianity is right - some reason it is more correct than any other belief, or that other beliefs are wrong.

An Atheist makes a simpler argument - all of these beliefs are wrong. That is applied equally and consistently to all the different beliefs. A Christian by definition agrees with the Atheist on 99% of religious beliefs - namely all non-Christian beliefs - and probably for the same reason (lack of evidence that they are correct).

[knightoffaith]

>I'm genuinely curious - do you actually know this?

I say this because there are no seriously-taken arguments for the Roman mythological gods (or anything like them) like there are for foundational beliefs of the other religions you mention (none that I have heard of in my studies, at least... I'd be very interested to hear them if they exist). And because the ancient philosophers - e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus - generally drifted away from popular mythology to something more akin to monotheism.

>Yes, but I think you misunderstood my meaning. I was saying, if you substitute "Roman Mythology" with e.g. "Islam" in the parent comment, you can't just as easily brush it aside by saying "there is not rich intellectual tradition there".

I see - I made that point about intellectual history there because the implication originally seemed to be that both Roman mythology and Christianity are just silly beliefs that people held as children and continued to hold because they hadn't thought about it. That isn't to say that that alone shows Christianity is true, just that it's a set of beliefs we need to take more seriously.

>As a Christian believer, I think you do have to grapple with billions of people, some of them as smart and sophisticate as any Christian, who follow a different belief system. That's why you have to argue "from the inside" as it were about why Christianity is right - some reason it is more correct than any other belief, or that other beliefs are wrong.

If Christianity was a conclusion reached after a set of rational arguments, you would be right. But belief in Christianity is sort of logically prior to rational argumentation. Of course, we have Christian apologetics, which make arguments for certain aspects of Christianity, but this isn't really the reason to believe so much as it is just motivation for people who think in more intellectual terms to take it seriously. Faith is beyond the domain of human reason - the Christian's belief is founded in a kind of immediate, self-evident spiritual experience that comes logically prior to arguments. We might still discover internal inconsistencies that might motivate us to rethink this worldview, of course.

This might sound kind of silly. But there is a point at which your justifications of your beliefs have to bottom out. Can you start with only naturalist/scientific premises and reach Christianity? No, even if you agree to Christian apologetic arguments, they will not get you to Christianity proper. In this sense, atheism, Christianity, and other religions are each in a kind of bubble that arguments alone can't let you escape from. It still makes sense to talk about internal consistency (inconsistencies should probably lead us to drop the system), but I don't think we can really make any progress by trying to argue about the foundational premises themselves, if that makes sense.

As for your final comment - Christianity does share a lot in common with other religions. It shares a lot with Islam and Judaism, the other Abrahamic religions. It's maybe not apt to characterize Islam and Judaism as "simply false" from the Christian perspective - there are significant elements of truth even though the overall system is false. This is true, I think, even for the eastern religions.

[sdht0]

> But belief in Christianity is sort of logically prior to rational argumentation. [...] I don't think we can really make any progress by trying to argue about the foundational premises themselves, if that makes sense.

Yes! I think this is the crux of the matter. I also think this is why discussions involving religion are often unsatisfactory to me. This very thread started with a discussion on _evidence_. And the rest of the discussion is from a _rational_ perspective. But then evidence or rationality only work with scrutiny, including and especially of the axioms. So if discussions on Christianity start with the _premise_ that Christianity is true, then can there really be any further discussion? For instance, elsewhere in a comment you wrote:

> a Christian, in thinking rationally, is not forced to ask "what evidence do I have for this belief?"

In everyday life, this is fine. But when discussing Christianity rationally, questioning the premise is an important part of the process, no?

I present some of my own thinking below. I am taking Christianity only as an example in the context of this thread, but it applies to any revealed religion.

"I" exist. Presumably the universe I experience also exists. Why? There's a First Cause that brought them into existence. We can call it God. This is the closest religion and science can get, because this definition of God is without any pre-defined qualities. For instance, God can be non-dualistic (God _is_ the universe, or in other words, the universe is its own cause), and even mathematical (Physics' Theory of Everything, Mathematical Universe Hypothesis). We only have a set of possibilities here.

But Christianity then takes certain leaps.

* God is omnipotent and omniscient. Why? Even a God that is only finite in power and knowledge could have created this universe. Think "super-scientists" in a base reality. So do we really have to take God to be limitless in His capacity?

* God is all-loving and personally cares about His creation. Why? God could have just created the universe and stepped aside, not caring at all about human prayers or actions. So do really have to worry about Heaven and Hell, especially as defined in Christianity?

* God is Good. Why? A fallible God (or even the _evil_ Devil) could have created this universe. It would explains the problem of suffering, or why God seemingly revealed Himself multiple times with conflicting mutually exclusive instructions, perhaps due to incompetence or deliberate manipulation. So say God did actually reveal Himself as the life and tribulations of Christ. Is Christ a reliable arbiter of what is true and good? What if it was the Devil who came down multiple times as Christ/Allah/Buddha, just to mess with humanity? This is an important question I think, and would love to hear if there is a better justification than a priori faith.

Faith plays an important role for many of my family members and friends and by no means would I want to take it away. But I do get interested whenever religion wants to be an exclusive arbiter of reality and what's right or wrong. And every time, I have found it to fall short of all its claims.

[gwd]

> This is inside out. What evidence was presented to you that made you believe Christianity was right?

It sounds like maybe some people are taking this as a challenge from me to atheists. I'm not really; just like Dennet is in TFA, I'm talking about general principles for someone trying to live as a rational creature: each of us should examine our own beliefs, and not only ask "What if I'm wrong?" but "How would I know if I were wrong"? That goes for Christians and Hindus and Muslims as much as for atheists. "Take the plank out of your own eye before you try to remove the speck out of your brother's eye" and all that. It's specifically because Dennet is such a deep thinker and effective communicator that I genuinely wonder how he'd answer that question.

I'm not sure what evidence was provided to me as a child that the world was round; but I had relatives who lived in Germany and Thailand, and at the age of 12 I'd actually flown to Thailand and experienced jet-lag. The "world is round" hypothesis satisfactorily explained my experience (both first- and second-hand, through people I knew personally) in a way that the "flat earth" hypothesis doesn't.

In the same way, the vast majority of evidence I had as a child to confirm what as taught about Christianity to me was experiential. But of course, all sorts of people from different faiths have religious experiences; how do I know that there's not some better explanation for my experiences -- either religious or reductive -- which will be more predictive (in the sense of getting better results more efficiently)?

> I became an Atheist in large part because I took Latin my first year in high school and realized that the Roman's actually believed in their gods the same way that I believed in the Christian god. And I gradually realized that they had the same reason to believe that I did ... they were told from a young age that this was real and just kept believing as they grew up.

This seems a bit strange to me... so the Romans believed in supernatural beings, and the Christians also believed in supernatural beings (and of course so did the Greeks, and the Persians, and the Babylonians, and the Egyptians, and...); but instead of this being evidence that there were supernatural beings of some sort (with some people maybe being closer to the truth of the matter than the others), you decided this was evidence that there weren't supernatural beings?

Isn't that like reading several different conflicting scientific theories, and then deciding that all science is bunk?

Sorry I don't have the exact quote, but there's a place where C.S. Lewis points out that being a Christian, he's free to believe that people of other religions were partly right and partly wrong; but that when he was an atheist, he had to believe that the majority of humans were completely wrong about the most important questions in life.

If the entire world were atheists except Christians, wouldn't that be far stronger evidence against the supernatural? The fact that the Romans believed in the supernatural and the afterlife is evidence -- weak evidence, I grant, but evidence nonetheless -- that the supernatural and the afterlife exist.

> but for me it would just be ANY evidence: a verifiable miracle, proof of life after death, or meeting an angel/demon.

What would satisfy your requirements for a "verifiable miracle"?

It sounds like a lot of these might be very personal experiences. First of all, if you had a single experience of an angel, would that actually change your mind? Wouldn't you be inclined to believe you'd had some sort of hallucination (wondering perhaps if someone had slipped LSD into your drink or something like that)?

Similarly, once you had that experience and became convinced, how would you convince anyone else? Supposing there were another person who was exactly like you -- the fact that you were convinced you'd seen an angel wouldn't have any effect on whether they were convinced that angels existed, would it?

FWIW I know a lot of people who started out as atheists and became Christians, and although this sort of rational "apologetics" sometimes did factor into part of their decision, by far the biggest influence was personal experience: first with genuine Christians, then with with Jesus, through reading the Bible and worshipping him at church. I tend not to focus on that kind of thing in a venue like this, because it's the least logically sound reason; but if you're genuinely interested in having a personal experience to let you put Christianity to the test, that's what I'd look for.

As for me, I've got what I consider to be more objectively sound reasons to believe; but "“I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which however [this comment] is not large enough to contain.” Hopefully at some point I'll write it up in a way that's easy to link to.

[sdht0]

> each of us should examine our own beliefs, and not only ask "What if I'm wrong?" but "How would I know if I were wrong"?

The final arbiter is repeatable verifiable data. Everything else to subject to doubt.

So how would I know if naturalism is wrong? God could come down again in a public revelation and agree to undergo a scientific scrutiny His nature. Who can then deny His existence?

Lacking that, how do I know religion is wrong? Well, religion plays two roles: a source of strength in this world full of suffering, and an explanation for our existence. The former is necessary for many people and will probably never go away. But the second role has always been that of a "God of the gaps", with the gaps drastically shrinking with improving scientific knowledge. All arrows are point to a naturalistic explanation of the universe. So pending some strong "evidence", none of the religions seem to be correct in the second role. To me, it is better to say "we don't know yet" than accept something on "faith", especially when it comes with seemingly arbitrary commandments on practical matters of life.

> instead of this being evidence that there were supernatural beings of some sort

This is a good point. I think this would make sense if there was some sort of consistency in these claims. However, almost every religion assert their own mutually exclusive claims on how the world is, and wants us to take up those claims on faith. It is easier to consider these claims as wish-fulfillment of the first role I mentioned above, than any sort of proof for actual divinity.

[circlefavshape]

I myself am an atheist, but I gotta say that this is very well put

> so the Romans believed in supernatural beings, and the Christians also believed in supernatural beings (and of course so did the Greeks, and the Persians, and the Babylonians, and the Egyptians, and...); but instead of this being evidence that there were supernatural beings of some sort [...] you decided this was evidence that there weren't supernatural beings?

[palata]

Not the OP, but I would say that I do not see this as evidence of anything other than "humans have beliefs".

[Ensorceled]

There are millions of Harry Potter fans, is the Ministry of Magic real?

Humans are REALLY good a creating stories and investing in them.

[geye1234]

> As for me, I've got what I consider to be more objectively sound reasons to believe; but "“I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which however [this comment] is not large enough to contain.” Hopefully at some point I'll write it up in a way that's easy to link to.

I think Aquinas's essence-existence distinction, once one understands it (and understands and accepts its premises) is sound. It's impossible to summarise in a combox though, mainly because its philosophical background is very different from the place most people are coming from; so quite a bit of preliminary work needs to happen before it can be understood.

Aristotle's unmoved mover is also sound; there's one point of detail I'm a bit hazy about, but it the main it works. Again, some preliminary work also needed.

[Ensorceled]

> It sounds like maybe some people are taking this as a challenge from me to atheists.

Not at all, I'm engaging in good faith here.

> This seems a bit strange to me... so the Romans believed in supernatural beings, and the Christians also believed in supernatural beings (and of course so did the Greeks, and the Persians, and the Babylonians, and the Egyptians, and...); but instead of this being evidence that there were supernatural beings of some sort (with some people maybe being closer to the truth of the matter than the others), you decided this was evidence that there weren't supernatural beings?

This is a common misinterpretation. Rather it made me rethink why I thought Zeus was a myth and my God was real and that led to me realizing there was no evidence that God was real, I had been taking it on faith.

If there is one thing the explosion of popularity for fantasy stories has shown us is that it is really easy for people to invent the supernatural.

> If the entire world were atheists except Christians, wouldn't that be far stronger evidence against the supernatural? The fact that the Romans believed in the supernatural and the afterlife is evidence -- weak evidence, I grant, but evidence nonetheless -- that the supernatural and the afterlife exist.

Many people believe that vaccines cause autism. There is no evidence that it does and I don't lend the theory any credence. Lots of people believing in something says very little.

But at a basic level, religion has numerous aspects that make it useful, good and bad, to people in general and people in power in particular. Christianity has long been used to manipulate and control for instance; but it also provided community, a common moral code (again, good and bad), shared joy in weddings and births, solace in grief and purpose.

> What would satisfy your requirements for a "verifiable miracle"?

In an age where everyone has a very high quality video camera in their pocket the sasquatch, the loch ness monster and other such things have mostly disappeared but miracles have not appeared.

[gwd]

> Not at all, I'm engaging in good faith here.

OK, I think I see what you were getting at. The first thing you should do is ask, "Is there actually any reason to believe this?" I sort of took that as a given, because I went through that process in high school: "Is this something my parents believe, or is this something I believe?"

And that's certainly useful, but the problem is that you can find evidence for all sorts of things. It's simply not accurate, for instance, to say that "there's no evidence that [vaccines cause autism]". There is scientifically robust evidence against it; but there are tens of thousands of personally compelling "anecdata points" in favor of it. To wit: there are tens of thousands of people who had the experience that their child was given a vaccine, and within a month or so they noticed symptoms of autism. "X happened and then Y happened, so Y may have caused X" isn't a logical certainty, but it's certainly valid Bayesian operation to say that "there's a non-zero probability that Y caused X". If you eat something new and then you get sick, you would certainly do well to consider the possibility that the new thing you ate may have been the thing to make you sick; genes of people who did otherwise would quickly have died out in favor of people who do.

To believe in the scientific consensus over and against your own personally compelling anecdata point (and that of dozens of other people you've met online) takes a kind of faith in the unseen power of statistics (and the reliability of the all-too-well-seen scientific and medical establishments) which many people simply don't have.

There are loads of situations where there's implicit confirmation bias which makes non-things seem like evidence. Hence why it's important to move on to the second question: How would I know if this belief of mine were wrong?

> In an age where everyone has a very high quality video camera in their pocket the sasquatch, the loch ness monster and other such things have mostly disappeared but miracles have not appeared.

Really? I haven't looked, but I kind of assume that if I searched for "faith healing" on YouTube I'd see loads of videos of "miracles". Would this sort of thing count? If not, what kind of video would count?

(To be clear, my basic stance towards these would be skeptical as well.)