If science and religions are both religions, as Christians who are die hard skeptics of science claim, than why is the religion of science necessarily worse than Christianity or Islam? Why, in other words, is it better to start with the assumption that we are born broken and stained with original sin, as religion wants us to "believe" (no evidence to support such a belief, of course, but it does allow religious leaders to get filthy rich selling us an imaginary cure for the made up cancer of "original sin"), rather than starting with the assumption that we are all born perfectly normal, like every other species of animal, but simply different from each other in our tastes and ideas?
Once we start with accepting ANY belief to begin with, our confirmation biases only ever work in our conscious and subconscious mind to shape our perception, mold our memories, and even subtly yet surreptitiously direct our reasoning by blinding us to many of our own unchallenged assumptions.
Only a person's confirmation bias, after all, could ever lead us to claim that most people chose Christianity over science because science leads people to falsehoods and lies, spun by the devil, in order to lure souls to hell. Such claims, and all like them, operate with the assumption that Christianity or Islam is necessarily right to begin with, even though science (even if we accept the hypothetical idea that it could be called just a 'religion') has far more facts to back up it's claims.
Consider speaking in tongues. This is a phenomena that crosses all religions and all geographical and cultures differences, of people who, almost always in a crowd of "believers" who subscribe to it, begin rambling about in gibberish that they will insist is a "gift" of the holy spirit. Of all the useless "gifts" someone could give you!
This is like the scene from Bruce Almighty when Jim Carry plays a newscaster who has been given the power of God, sabotages his news casting rival, played by Steve Carell, by making him babble incoherent nonsense during a news broadcast. It's hysterical. Carry wasn't trying to give Carell a "gift," however, but to get him fired so he (Carry) could have his job. And it worked.
But for those who believe in "speaking in tongues," this is proof that God is real, and that their spontaneous eruption of babble is proof of the Holy Spirit, as described in the Book of Acts.
It has been studied extensively by William J. Samarin, for example, in Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism, and Felicitas D Goodman in Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study in Glossolalia, and has been found to be the result of forces that have nothing to do with a magical sky being turning his followers into Steve Carell in Bruce Almighty.
Those studies don't change the view of "believers" about speaking in tongues, of course, because their "religious beliefs" trump the religion of science and critical thinking all to hell.
But then why give us the ability and the power of critical thinking, if it would only lead us to develop a scientific method of investigation which operates necessarily with skepticism toward whatever claims are made, if the whole point of existence is to reach heaven and avoid hell by following a "belief" that you are expected to always defend as "true," regardless of any amount of evidence to the contrary, and where too much "critical thinking" could lead you to questions that could not only get you murdered for asking, like that famous heretic Jesus Christ, but only produces the kind of untrammeled curiosity which the Bible claims can only lead our heaven father to cast us into a lake of fire for all eternity?
Truly, if we accept the hypothetical suggestion that science is no less a religion than Christianity, even though the former operates with far more evidence and skepticism toward its own claims than the latter, then all those who need to believe in their Christianity over science, clearly do so for no other reason than fear. That fear comes from the terror that death is truly finite, or that without Christianity providing a narrative than can rely on , their entire life has been a meaningless waste of time, or that if they are wrong to stop believing it, they will roast for eternity in hell, or that all of humanity will devolve into it's immoral worst, if the story of Jesus is not defended with their very lives if need be or advanced with bloodshed if God but asks.
None of these reasons for wanting to believe in Christianity over science actually 'proves' that Christianity is true, no matter how many people wishfully want it to be, or give their lives out of hope that it is. It only proves that a belief can defeat any amount of facts or evidence or reasoning it encounters, while at the same time convincing it's host that it blinds them to alternative ways of thinking out of pure love, and nothing else.
Once we start with accepting ANY belief to begin with, our confirmation biases only ever work in our conscious and subconscious mind to shape our perception, mold our memories, and even subtly yet surreptitiously direct our reasoning by blinding us to many of our own unchallenged assumptions.
Only a person's confirmation bias, after all, could ever lead us to claim that most people chose Christianity over science because science leads people to falsehoods and lies, spun by the devil, in order to lure souls to hell. Such claims, and all like them, operate with the assumption that Christianity or Islam is necessarily right to begin with, even though science (even if we accept the hypothetical idea that it could be called just a 'religion') has far more facts to back up it's claims.
Consider speaking in tongues. This is a phenomena that crosses all religions and all geographical and cultures differences, of people who, almost always in a crowd of "believers" who subscribe to it, begin rambling about in gibberish that they will insist is a "gift" of the holy spirit. Of all the useless "gifts" someone could give you!
This is like the scene from Bruce Almighty when Jim Carry plays a newscaster who has been given the power of God, sabotages his news casting rival, played by Steve Carell, by making him babble incoherent nonsense during a news broadcast. It's hysterical. Carry wasn't trying to give Carell a "gift," however, but to get him fired so he (Carry) could have his job. And it worked.
But for those who believe in "speaking in tongues," this is proof that God is real, and that their spontaneous eruption of babble is proof of the Holy Spirit, as described in the Book of Acts.
It has been studied extensively by William J. Samarin, for example, in Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism, and Felicitas D Goodman in Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study in Glossolalia, and has been found to be the result of forces that have nothing to do with a magical sky being turning his followers into Steve Carell in Bruce Almighty.
Those studies don't change the view of "believers" about speaking in tongues, of course, because their "religious beliefs" trump the religion of science and critical thinking all to hell.
But then why give us the ability and the power of critical thinking, if it would only lead us to develop a scientific method of investigation which operates necessarily with skepticism toward whatever claims are made, if the whole point of existence is to reach heaven and avoid hell by following a "belief" that you are expected to always defend as "true," regardless of any amount of evidence to the contrary, and where too much "critical thinking" could lead you to questions that could not only get you murdered for asking, like that famous heretic Jesus Christ, but only produces the kind of untrammeled curiosity which the Bible claims can only lead our heaven father to cast us into a lake of fire for all eternity?
Truly, if we accept the hypothetical suggestion that science is no less a religion than Christianity, even though the former operates with far more evidence and skepticism toward its own claims than the latter, then all those who need to believe in their Christianity over science, clearly do so for no other reason than fear. That fear comes from the terror that death is truly finite, or that without Christianity providing a narrative than can rely on , their entire life has been a meaningless waste of time, or that if they are wrong to stop believing it, they will roast for eternity in hell, or that all of humanity will devolve into it's immoral worst, if the story of Jesus is not defended with their very lives if need be or advanced with bloodshed if God but asks.
None of these reasons for wanting to believe in Christianity over science actually 'proves' that Christianity is true, no matter how many people wishfully want it to be, or give their lives out of hope that it is. It only proves that a belief can defeat any amount of facts or evidence or reasoning it encounters, while at the same time convincing it's host that it blinds them to alternative ways of thinking out of pure love, and nothing else.
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