[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.)