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Penn Jillette on religion (midwest.social)

submitted 8 months ago by Lanky_Pomegranate530@midwest.social to c/atheistmemes@lemmy.world

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[-] Gabu@lemmy.world 41 points 8 months ago

While the quote presents a correct conclusion, it's also problematic in that it makes a slip of logic and paints a target for fallacious rebuttal.

The slip of logic: one cannot conclude that no gods exist because all religions are clearly wrong – all that tells us is that none of the specific gods depicted by these religions exist. The path to disprove the existence of ALL gods must go through philosophy instead;
Painted target: by juxtaposing science and religion, he invites the religious nuts to perceive and treat both things as belonging to the same class of intellectual activity, i.e. the "you have your opinion and I have mine" crowd.

[-] tacosanonymous@lemm.ee 4 points 8 months ago

Scientifically, we'd have to carry out the scenario of erasing the religions to see if the hypothesis is true. But how would we compare if they were erased?

[-] Gabu@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

The trick is that you don't actually need to do it, as we already have the functional equivalent analogue – the development of countless different religions in the past, in different regions of the globe – as evidence. If at least one of these religions were right, you would've expected it to show up in at least more than one region in the past, but we can clearly trace all similar religions to patterns of human migration, which strongly suggests humans created all of them out of their cultural beliefs at the time

[-] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Yeah, that was always my question. If Christianity (or any religion) was objectively the truth, why didn't we find one out of hundreds (if not thousands) of Pacific Island tribes/nations that had the exact same Bible, with the exact same teachings?

[-] tacosanonymous@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago

I agree that it’s a different kind of evidence.

[-] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

Oh so like crabs

this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024

708 points (96.8% liked)

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