re: Do you find it hard to reason with staunch religious people?

quote:

---

Of course he hasn't.

---

Keep reading proty

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

quote:

---

People who throw up their hands and say, "gee, no one can really know what's true" are the worst type. They are also spineless

---

Claiming "no one else can really know" is a spineless debate tactic and also directly conflicts with agnosticism since someone who says they don't know already admits the possibility of god and cannot at the same time claim to know if a god hasn't made itself known to others.

However, on a personal level, there's nothing spineless or illogical to admitting that you yourself don't know, which is my position, and, I believe, perfectly reasonable.

I'm not sure what you mean by the word "reason", but, if it means "to argue with" then that is just going to lead nowhere. Nobody on a message board is going to convert from his religion to yours because you "won" an argument. It's counterproductive to even try it and it does nothing but cause fights and ill-will.

Here on the Off Topic Board, there's no rule against people SHARING their own religious beliefs and explaining the rational basis for their religion. This is not arguing. Sharing info and explaining is good. Arguing is bad.

In summary - it is pointless to argue over Religion. Nobody should even try it around here. It just causes ill-will.

It causes ill-will among people who have a great deal in common and in real life would probably be very happy living in the same neighborhood.

A person either believes in eternal life are they don’t, and they try to follow the rules of the faith to which they are called.

quote:

---

summary - it is pointless to argue over Religion. Nobody should even try it around here. It just causes ill-will.

---

For the most part, I agree. I was raised around people that were highly religious and also very intelligent (some even brilliant like my uncle Hugh), so even though I never became a believer myself, I learned early on that religious belief and intelligence don't correlate. These people were fully capable of realizing the same fallacies as I was and believed anyways, so there's an x factor somewhere that that was missed by me. For all I know it's that God really was speaking to them. That's fine and I can't think of any good reason to dissuade them from their beliefs.

The only time I really find myself trying to "reason" with believers is when I see them using false arguments and misconceptions to argue against science (almost always evolution) because they're unknowingly spreading falsehoods (like man coming from monkeys) and they should at least be arguing against the actual theories and not using bullshite arguments that were designed to make the science look ridiculous.

Ask a person who believes the Bible is 100 percent literal truth about how Noah's ark was possible from a pracitcal stanpoint, what did they eat, drink how did they poop, who cleaned that? There are something like 19,000 birds species of birds, how did they fit, how did the lions not eat everyone else? How was it, in the days before Air Conditioning, possibel to keep penguins and polar bears alive? Oh, you say it was cold, so how did the warm desiring creatures survive?

quote:

---

Some people believe the Bible is 100% accurate, yet they question documented history simply because it isn’t mentioned in the Bible. It’s hard to reason with people like that.

---

I treat them like Neanderthals and resort to moaning noises when they’ve been cornered.

Why do you take the postion that people who do not think that the Bible contains historical fact are the same as people who think that a man can become a women? The world is not black and white. There are many, many people who are in the grey area.

I find it harder to reason with a liberal. Most young liberals believe that slavery didn't start until 400 years ago.