<story><title>Thursday = Thor&apos;s day</title><url>http://sivers.org/thor</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sgk284</author><text>I think the argument is fairly sound and is great at concisely explaining why religion is a product of humanity&apos;s imagination and current culture. (With all due respect, don&apos;t take this as an affront on your beliefs.)&lt;p&gt;I like the argument for a number of reasons:&lt;p&gt;- It beg&apos;s the question &quot;Why do I reject those other 529 gods?&quot; Generally there is no good answer for this other than being indoctrinated at a young age. You realize that you believe what you believe because of the circumstances in which you were born. This leads to the conclusion that the religion you follow has more to do with where you live than what is &quot;correct&quot;. (Noting that there are plenty of exceptions to this).&lt;p&gt;- It drives home the point that humanity has been creating gods for thousands of years. Most of those gods have likely been created before your god had even first been mentioned. Any rational person would ask why did humanity move past those gods? You can never disprove the existence of a god, so what happened? Ideally, you realize that religion is much like any trend, just with longer than average turn around.&lt;p&gt;- If you follow the trend of gods, you realize that humanity has been generally moving away from polytheism towards monotheism. This makes you wonder why and conclude that it is tightly correlated to (and arguably directly caused by)  humanity&apos;s understanding of the universe. As we understand more about everything, we don&apos;t need gods to fill in these gaps of knowledge. For instance, we understand why the Sun rises or lightning strikes. As humanity has progressed, one by one we killed the need for Roman and Greek gods. This leads you to wonder what role a monotheistic god fills and realize that the god is generally used to bring understanding to things we don&apos;t understand and reason to things we can&apos;t control. This is hardly a rational reason for a figment that &quot;solves&quot; all unsolved problems.&lt;p&gt;In short, I like the &quot;(n-1) vs n gods&quot; argument because when you think through everything implied by it, a rational being has no choice but to conclude that in all likelihood the religion they follow is not correct. Unfortunately, emotion plays a huge role in religion, making rational thought difficult. On a personal note, I was a theist for 20 years, backed by 12 years of formal study in my religion. Making the mental shift to realizing everything I&apos;d believed was wrong was difficult to say the least, but years later my life is all the better for it.</text></item><item><author>grellas</author><text>The logic here doesn&apos;t hold with respect to monothestic religions such as Judaism or Christianity.&lt;p&gt;The Ten Commandments, which are common to these two religions, have two &quot;tables,&quot; the first of which (commandments 1 - 5) defines the relations between God and man and the second of which defines the relations between men (6 - 10). The very first commandment is &quot;thou shalt have no other gods before me. The next proscription is against idolatry, which basically amounts to a worship of things that are seen, or the creation itself, which in KJV language is as follows: &quot;Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.&quot; In other words, belief in God is everything while belief (in the sense of worship) in anything else is all idolatry.&lt;p&gt;Thus, the logic of a monothestic religion of this type is that there is one true God and every other purported deity is a mere figment of man&apos;s imagination, hence an idol (the very word &quot;idol&quot; derives from a Greek root from which the Greek word &quot;to see&quot; comes from - even the word &quot;idea&quot; comes from a Greek word originally meaning &quot;to see with the mind&quot;) and hence not real.&lt;p&gt;The logic of this piece holds if we proceed from an atheistic baseline, which takes the opposite view that only that which is material is real and all purported deities are only figments of man&apos;s imagination. If you assume that premise, then it is true that my belief in one deity and rejection of the 529 that others have believed in is not materially different from your rejection of all 530 of them (or whatever the number).&lt;p&gt;But this logic falls apart if one assumes there is one true deity (infinite creator and providential overseer of a creation from which the deity is above and apart) and all the rest of the purported deities are simply products of the mind and hence not real or true. In that case, the person who believes in the true deity can consistently say that he as a theist believes in the true one while rejecting all the false ones while the person who denies all of them includes in that denial the one true deity and hence is an atheist.&lt;p&gt;I know this is not the forum to get into religious debates but, if my summary of the logic is wrong, I invite others to explain why. Note that I am not assuming here that any religious point of view is true. I am merely taking that view on its own logic and explaining why it makes perfect sense for someone with that belief to say that he is a theist while one who is not a believer is an atheist. If the premise of one true God is true, it is utterly irrelevant to say that man has concocted a billion fake ones such that we are all atheists in denying them.&lt;p&gt;In other words, from the theistic perspective, the question is whether there is indeed a true deity of whatever type. If so, that is pretty important. If not, then obviously it is not. (Disclaimer: I am a believer and, indeed, a deacon in my church - but I am not making my points from a religious perspective, merely a logical one).&lt;p&gt;Edit (concerning the several replies): I invited you to engage the logic of my argument and you certainly did! My post &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; probably beside the point if all the original piece did was depict a way of steering away from a religious discussion that begins &quot;How can you not believe in God?&quot; or if it was merely a technique for getting a believer to understand the viewpoint of one who does not believe in a particular deity or in any at all. I don&apos;t think I was trying to exalt the theistic point of view or to denigrate those who don&apos;t accept it - merely trying to say what follows from accepting its premises. Got to rush now because I have to prepare to teach a Bible study tonight (really). Thanks for the fine comments - very stimulating.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>grellas</author><text>Nice points, though we disagree. Ironically, I was an atheist for 20 years of my adult life before I went in the other direction (I don&apos;t think I became irrational in the process, but that is where we disagree).</text></comment>
<story><title>Thursday = Thor&apos;s day</title><url>http://sivers.org/thor</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sgk284</author><text>I think the argument is fairly sound and is great at concisely explaining why religion is a product of humanity&apos;s imagination and current culture. (With all due respect, don&apos;t take this as an affront on your beliefs.)&lt;p&gt;I like the argument for a number of reasons:&lt;p&gt;- It beg&apos;s the question &quot;Why do I reject those other 529 gods?&quot; Generally there is no good answer for this other than being indoctrinated at a young age. You realize that you believe what you believe because of the circumstances in which you were born. This leads to the conclusion that the religion you follow has more to do with where you live than what is &quot;correct&quot;. (Noting that there are plenty of exceptions to this).&lt;p&gt;- It drives home the point that humanity has been creating gods for thousands of years. Most of those gods have likely been created before your god had even first been mentioned. Any rational person would ask why did humanity move past those gods? You can never disprove the existence of a god, so what happened? Ideally, you realize that religion is much like any trend, just with longer than average turn around.&lt;p&gt;- If you follow the trend of gods, you realize that humanity has been generally moving away from polytheism towards monotheism. This makes you wonder why and conclude that it is tightly correlated to (and arguably directly caused by)  humanity&apos;s understanding of the universe. As we understand more about everything, we don&apos;t need gods to fill in these gaps of knowledge. For instance, we understand why the Sun rises or lightning strikes. As humanity has progressed, one by one we killed the need for Roman and Greek gods. This leads you to wonder what role a monotheistic god fills and realize that the god is generally used to bring understanding to things we don&apos;t understand and reason to things we can&apos;t control. This is hardly a rational reason for a figment that &quot;solves&quot; all unsolved problems.&lt;p&gt;In short, I like the &quot;(n-1) vs n gods&quot; argument because when you think through everything implied by it, a rational being has no choice but to conclude that in all likelihood the religion they follow is not correct. Unfortunately, emotion plays a huge role in religion, making rational thought difficult. On a personal note, I was a theist for 20 years, backed by 12 years of formal study in my religion. Making the mental shift to realizing everything I&apos;d believed was wrong was difficult to say the least, but years later my life is all the better for it.</text></item><item><author>grellas</author><text>The logic here doesn&apos;t hold with respect to monothestic religions such as Judaism or Christianity.&lt;p&gt;The Ten Commandments, which are common to these two religions, have two &quot;tables,&quot; the first of which (commandments 1 - 5) defines the relations between God and man and the second of which defines the relations between men (6 - 10). The very first commandment is &quot;thou shalt have no other gods before me. The next proscription is against idolatry, which basically amounts to a worship of things that are seen, or the creation itself, which in KJV language is as follows: &quot;Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.&quot; In other words, belief in God is everything while belief (in the sense of worship) in anything else is all idolatry.&lt;p&gt;Thus, the logic of a monothestic religion of this type is that there is one true God and every other purported deity is a mere figment of man&apos;s imagination, hence an idol (the very word &quot;idol&quot; derives from a Greek root from which the Greek word &quot;to see&quot; comes from - even the word &quot;idea&quot; comes from a Greek word originally meaning &quot;to see with the mind&quot;) and hence not real.&lt;p&gt;The logic of this piece holds if we proceed from an atheistic baseline, which takes the opposite view that only that which is material is real and all purported deities are only figments of man&apos;s imagination. If you assume that premise, then it is true that my belief in one deity and rejection of the 529 that others have believed in is not materially different from your rejection of all 530 of them (or whatever the number).&lt;p&gt;But this logic falls apart if one assumes there is one true deity (infinite creator and providential overseer of a creation from which the deity is above and apart) and all the rest of the purported deities are simply products of the mind and hence not real or true. In that case, the person who believes in the true deity can consistently say that he as a theist believes in the true one while rejecting all the false ones while the person who denies all of them includes in that denial the one true deity and hence is an atheist.&lt;p&gt;I know this is not the forum to get into religious debates but, if my summary of the logic is wrong, I invite others to explain why. Note that I am not assuming here that any religious point of view is true. I am merely taking that view on its own logic and explaining why it makes perfect sense for someone with that belief to say that he is a theist while one who is not a believer is an atheist. If the premise of one true God is true, it is utterly irrelevant to say that man has concocted a billion fake ones such that we are all atheists in denying them.&lt;p&gt;In other words, from the theistic perspective, the question is whether there is indeed a true deity of whatever type. If so, that is pretty important. If not, then obviously it is not. (Disclaimer: I am a believer and, indeed, a deacon in my church - but I am not making my points from a religious perspective, merely a logical one).&lt;p&gt;Edit (concerning the several replies): I invited you to engage the logic of my argument and you certainly did! My post &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; probably beside the point if all the original piece did was depict a way of steering away from a religious discussion that begins &quot;How can you not believe in God?&quot; or if it was merely a technique for getting a believer to understand the viewpoint of one who does not believe in a particular deity or in any at all. I don&apos;t think I was trying to exalt the theistic point of view or to denigrate those who don&apos;t accept it - merely trying to say what follows from accepting its premises. Got to rush now because I have to prepare to teach a Bible study tonight (really). Thanks for the fine comments - very stimulating.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>timwiseman</author><text>You make some very cogent points and make them well.  But there are alternative ways of looking at it.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;- It beg&apos;s the question &quot;Why do I reject those other 529 gods?&quot;&lt;/i&gt;
I reject the others specficially because I accept Christianity.  I can neither prove my religion nor disprove (most) of the others, yet by accepting mine I must reject all others.  I acknowledge I do this as a leap of faith, but that is different from being indoctrinated at a young age.  I will agree with your over all point that most people just believe whatever they are told at a young age, but the more thoughtful people of any religion will often be able to bring forth real arguments for it.  This of course is not proof, and many of these arguments involve sometimes personal experiences, but that is still very different from no good answer other than indoctrination.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Most of those gods have likely been created before your god had even first been mentioned.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many religions will disagree with this.  Literalists amoungst Christians and Jews, for instance, will beleive that God was known about since Adam with an unbroken chain of believers.  The reasonable literalists will agree that God was first written about late in history, but that is different.&lt;p&gt;To those people, society did not move past older deities so much as some branched off to false religions and then some of those false religions faded away.&lt;p&gt;(I am not a literalist, but it is an alternate explanation)&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;If you follow the trend of gods, you realize that humanity has been generally moving away from polytheism towards monotheism.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;True as a general rule, but first note that some polytheistic religions are still around, even in relatively highly educated populaces.  Second, note that an alternate explanation is that God is trying to subtly guide humanity to the truth and moving to monotheism is man&apos;s response to this guidance.  I am again not saying I personally believe this, but that is provides a different explanation.&lt;p&gt;You make excellent arguments which I respect, but there are other explanations for everything you bring up and I do not think they would provide much weight to someone who already believed one way or another.&lt;p&gt;[edit: fixed an omitted &quot;not&quot;]</text></comment>