Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Actually, whether people "inherit" their religion or not is irrelevant. First of all, because the majority of religious people will at some point in their lives rebel against their own religion. What draws them back?

Second, whether people inherit religion or not does not touch whether there is evidence for or against the existence of God. At best it might show a human tendency to return for people to the faith of their youth, and that's assuming that people always go back to the religion of their youth, which isn't always the case. But until we can get some hard-and-fast statistics on this, then we're really only speculating anyway.

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I'd like to see some numbers on this, Didymus. It seems plausible here in the U.S., but the world at large? I have serious doubts.

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But while we're at it, Jones, I'd like to see Kef's stats on the number of people who "inherit" their religions.

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Who needs stats? It's just been my common experience. Maybe I'm wrong. *shrug* As for rebellion... come on, everybody rebels at something they believe in deeply at one time or another, be it religion, politics, or even something that would seem insignificant to most people. Sometimes they return to it, sometimes they don't. It's what people do.

You're right that where you get your religion from has no bearing on the existence of God (or which god, for that matter), but I wasn't trying to make those arguments. It was merely part of my argument that people of different religions feel the same way, so how some people feel about things does not constitute evidence of the existence of God. The "inheritance" of these strong feelings (assuming it exists, but I still think simple geographic statistics would show this) demonstrates to me that people do not have them because of sound logical reasoning, or because of some kind of empirical evidence, but merely because some people around them did. Considering the argument that I was making -- that faith itself doesn't point to the existence of a Creator -- I'd hardly call that irrelevant.

- Kef

And my experience is that many religious people, including some of the most devout Christians I know (and while we're at it, including myself), have at some point questioned, or even renounced their faith. That, and not a few of the people I know came to the faith late in life. I was mainly responding to Jones' insistence that I support my point with statistics.

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Oh, you see that's the part you left out of your original post--"my experience." You said "the majority of religious people will at some point in their lives rebel against their own religion," with no qualifiers, as though it were a verifiable fact. Your experience, just like mine, is infinitesimal when we're concerning ourselves with an incalculably diverse population of 6.5 billion, and it's important to recognize that when we're playing our hunches.

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But, as you might note, I was responding to yet another observation based on personal experience. As such, I didn't feel it necessary to place any such qualifications on it. But since this discussion isn't really helping the central topic of this thread, I suggest we apply some colored pigments to some twice cooked bread slices.

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Not sure really. I've just never believed in God. Too many terrible things happen to good people. Gods seem irrational. Also Catholics are fake, their whole religion is too. The catholic bible was made up in ancient rome for political reasons, no crap.

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Not a Fruit, you have no idea what you are talking about. First of all, there is overwhelming manuscript evidence to support that the Bible existed long before Rome ever claimed it. The earliest manuscripts available date back to a time when Rome still heavily persecuted Christians, and the proliferation of the available manuscripts (especially considering how many of those manuscripts must have been confiscated and destroyed, and the fragility of papyrus to start with) is further evidence of early dates for the originals. That, and various parts of that Bible were quoted by men in various documents as early as 100AD.

Let me encourage you, Fruity, please try to contribute to the conversation in an intelligent manner.

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I came across an interesting article that the people in this thread might enjoy and perhaps find useful:

How Not to Embarrass Yourself in an Argument With an Atheist

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I wonder...in the last couple of paragraphs of that article, where it mentioned an actual study involving prayer...were those prayers just Christian prayers, or did they test prayer from varying religions? I would think it would be more appropriate and objective to test different groups of people prayed for using people of different spiritual and theological beliefs.

Moreover, did the study look for any other possible causes for the prayer group to heal faster than the control group? If not, it seems to be a post hoc flaw in reasoning. ("Post hoc ergo propter hoc," or, "After this, therefore because of this. Basically meaning that as B happened after A happened, B happened because A happened, without looking at any other possible causes for B.)

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

Yeah, that's pretty much how I would feel if somebody started preaching at me. Luckily I haven't had somebody try to convert me yet. Moreover, if I do change my mind and "turn to God", it's going to be because my mind was already conditioned for the change at that point in my life -- not because of what some guy trying to convert me is saying. I'm much too introverted to just be magically convinced like that.

EDIT: And Gidley is right, you need to test more than the obvious case before you draw conclusions.

- Kef

I've already pointed out the flaw in this response before, but just for point, I'll do so again. There is a huge difference between JRR Tolkien and the Apostles: Tolkien wrote fiction, fiction which he himself would never wish for anyone to take seriously as a historical narrative. The Apostles, on the other hand, are writing historical narrative, which they intend for people to take seriously as historical narrative. So, at least on the level of literary genre, there is no real comparison between LOTR and Scripture.

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