It's possible that religious apologists could be wrong about their arguments even if a handful of supernatural beings exist. Here are a few examples (that are obviously just me having a bit of fun, I'm not actually arguing any are real.)
Lacsap is a hipster God who ironically only grants those who don’t believe eternal life. Inversely, Lacsapians and all other religious types are met with an afterlife of everlasting The Nanny reruns, thus reversing Pascal’s Wager. Why would you risk believing if there was any chance an eternal Fran Dreser could be your fate?
The Great Nothing gives new meaning to the theist straw man that atheists must accept that everything came from Nothing. Indeed, Nothing created the heavens and the earth in not six, but three days...and he was drunk on the third...which explains a lot.
Bob the programmer coded our universe to test different structures of space/time. Bob’s universe is likewise coded by a programmer named Ted, who was programmed by Kim. This seeming infinite regress is made possible by a universe in which time has no beginning in which some hypothetical programmer resides.
Loki, if that is his name, is a trickster god who planted various memories, miracles and holy books into our past to mess with humanity. How can anyone be sure of their revelations if everything could be based on lies from a being who can manipulate reality?
Showing posts with label Gods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gods. Show all posts
Friday, January 17, 2014
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Religion and Geography
The following is a syndicated post by the wise Ugo Cei.
"If you had been born in Saudi Arabia, you would have a 98% chance of being a Muslim."
You've heard that argument already, right? You have also probably heard the rebuttal that it's an example of the Genetic Fallacy: The fact that what you believe depends on where you were born does not mean that what you believe is false.
In a sense, those who object to the argument on those terms are right. When interpreted as an argument against god, it just doesn't hold. However, the true power of the argument is not as a tool to prove there is no god and I am not sure whether it is mostly the believers who like to interpret it as such, so they can have an easy job tearing it down, or the non believers, who didn't really think it through.
The fact that, exceedingly, religious affiliation depends on geography or family history, is only useful together with the fact that, for almost every believer, geography is the main reason why they choose to believe in a particular god. All other possible reasons play a very minor role. If this weren't true, we'd see much more of a patchwork in the map below.
The argument is not that, if your belief depends on geography and family history, your god is likely false. That would be an example of a genetic fallacy.
The argument is that, if your belief depends only on geography and family history, then it has no more chances of being true than the god of the muslim guy, or the hindu guy, or the christian guy who lives right across the border.
And this is not a genetic fallacy.
"If you had been born in Saudi Arabia, you would have a 98% chance of being a Muslim."
You've heard that argument already, right? You have also probably heard the rebuttal that it's an example of the Genetic Fallacy: The fact that what you believe depends on where you were born does not mean that what you believe is false.
In a sense, those who object to the argument on those terms are right. When interpreted as an argument against god, it just doesn't hold. However, the true power of the argument is not as a tool to prove there is no god and I am not sure whether it is mostly the believers who like to interpret it as such, so they can have an easy job tearing it down, or the non believers, who didn't really think it through.
The fact that, exceedingly, religious affiliation depends on geography or family history, is only useful together with the fact that, for almost every believer, geography is the main reason why they choose to believe in a particular god. All other possible reasons play a very minor role. If this weren't true, we'd see much more of a patchwork in the map below.
The argument is not that, if your belief depends on geography and family history, your god is likely false. That would be an example of a genetic fallacy.
The argument is that, if your belief depends only on geography and family history, then it has no more chances of being true than the god of the muslim guy, or the hindu guy, or the christian guy who lives right across the border.
And this is not a genetic fallacy.
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