Re: REVIEW: _Religious_

Justin C <justin.0809@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:slrngcls91.4ir.justin.0809@xxxxxxxxxxxx:


That's different from declaring them to be saved or unsaved.

You what? Condemning a couple to live in sin, and not be saved,
because they can't add to the number of members of the church?

This is your response after I said it was _different" from
declaring them to be unsaved? <sigh>


Come to that, what led you to choose the religion you follow? What was
it about Hinduism, Taoism, and Islam that convinced you that they were
wrong? Did you even investigate the others? If yes, then: All of them?

Yes and pretty much yes. It's not that hard, really, since you can
do the equivalent of a binary search. There are the "big" categories,
so you eliminate the silly ones and you're left with Buddhism
and...uh...Jehovah-ism. I have a reason to reject Buddhism.

In Jehovah-ism, there's Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I
have reason to eliminat Judaism and Islam. In Christianity,
there were only 3 big versions for a long time. (The last
150 years brought us a couple others, Pentacostal, Charismatic
and Fundamentalism/Neo-evangelicalism, most notably.)
These are RC, EO, (Real) Protestant. I have reason to reject
RC and EO. (I decline to elaborate on the previous choices,
but I'll say something here: The difference between RC, EO,
and Protestantism is the choice of "ultimate authority".
In the RC it's the Church. In the EO, it's the Traditions,
in Protestantism, it's The Word. In the RC, the Bible is
important _because_ the Church gives it to us. Therefore,
the Church retains the right to tell us what the Bible
means. In Protestantism, the Bible is the authority and
tells the Church how to act. The difference in choice
of "ultimate authority" makes a huge difference in doctrine.)

So what's left amongst denominations which hold Scripture as
the highest authority? Calvin, Luther, Henry VIII, maybe Wesley.
It's not hard for me to choose amongst these. (Especially
Henry.) So I end up in Luther's camp.

Usually when someone says, "I've studied a lot on these matters"
he really means, "I ponder about these things while drinking
scotch and smoking cigars on my deck." I'm not one of those.
I have on my shelf Mead and Hill's _Handbook of American
Denominations_ 10th ed., and other texts. I have 36 hours
of college theology courses. The point of saying this is:
Yes, I really did think about it and I really came to
the conclusion and I really think I'm right about it.


Putting faith to one side, logically you have to accept that, if there
is a god, you have picked the wrong religion.

That doesn't sound logical to me. Even in your analysis, I have
at least a chance of being right.

you're down to less than a 1% chance of choosing
the right one. How are you able to have such faith that your belief is
correct when you are so likely to be wrong?

It's not that unlikely. You can assign such a probability model
to a die, which has 6 identitically shaped sides which are adjoined
to the other sides in identical ways. But a pile of religions
hasn't such nice geometrical properties. A second error in your
analysis is that I didn't pick my religion out of a hat, so
_no_ sort of analysis which includes randomization (such as
yours) can apply here.

Reminds me of the Monty Hall problem... you're always better off
switching, regardless of how many 'wrong ones' he shows you, you're
*still* not likely to have the right one.

You're not better off switching if you chose the right door to
begin with. So your statement "you're always better off
switching" is false. These two questions have vastly different
answers: 1. What's the probability Bart wins the lottery?
and 2. What's the probability someone wins the lottery?


Back to my original question: How can *you* be so certain you've got
it right, when in every religion there is someone, as convinced as you
are, that *they* are right, and you know, logically, that you can't
*all* be right?

You'll have to decide whether I get to use logic or not. If I don't,
then what's the point of your saying that I "know, logically". If
I do, then you'll have to accept that I have logical reasons for
my choice. I find logical inconsistencies in almost every
religion. I find (real) Lutheranism remarkably clean and
inconsistancy free. It's the perfect religion for a mathematician.

Even though my denomination is relatively small (2 million in the US,
10 million in Africa) our theologians are acknowledged universally
(in Christianity) as the best systematicians (from "systematic
theology" which is the part of theology which deals with making
the whole lump fit together) in the world. If you have good systematics,
you don't have inconsistencies.

B.(It's logical.)

--
Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
.

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