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| <<<>>> |
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The "What if I'm Right?" Argument |
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| Created by Decius at
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There is a sort of abyss of an argument that I've never seen an intellectual Atheist really slam dunk on a believer in any singular absolute faith.
The statement is: "What if the Bible is true? Then you'll burn in hell and I won't."
The immediate argument, and the most common one, is to always present a counter-example along the lines of: "What if Muslims are right? Or Hindus? You would be wrong in your belief and you would go to hell if Muslims are right. So how do you choose Christianity? There are a million different people out there with a million different beliefs. What makes yours right?"
This sounds like a solid response. And a logical person can take it and make sense of it. Since there are so many religions, you have to choose the right one based on some accurate criteria.
However, for the Christian, their original question is still unanswered, or debunked. They still "could" be right.
In fact, they can just say "Yes, Muslims are possibly right, so are Hindus. But I know Christianity is. How do you know it isn't?"
There seems to be a large answer to this question.
You have to outline what you are gaining and what the other person is losing. I think that this is attempted to be communicated, but fails to do so. If the purpose of life is exploration, then limiting one's ability to explore by asserting something to be true even though it is improbable is counter-productive.
So, I think the first answer that one must get out of a Christian is the acknowledgement that given that there are a million different beliefs out there, that from a purely statistical standpoint regardless of whether Christianity is true or not, it is improbable that if you pick one religion out of a million you will find the one that is the truth. The odds are 1/1000000.
Most likely, they will agree.
From there, you may have to address certain things the Christian will put forward as historical or scientific facts that make it more likely that the bible is true. Arguing these can be hard or difficult, but in the end there is at least as much historical accuracy to the bible as there is grave innacuracy. The existence of dinosaurs, common DNA, the age of the world, transitional creatures in the evolutionary chain, etc. This should not be presented to prove that Christianity is wrong, just to counter the idea that it is more likely to be true than any other of the million beliefs out there. A chrisitan is unliekly to argue that a belief that is highly scientifically innacurate is more probably true from a statistical standpoint than one that is scientifically sound.
So, at this point both you and the Christian have reached a point where you both agree that Christianity, whether it is true or not, is statistically improbable.
At this point, all you say then is: "In the universe, all we have is probability to determine truth since nothing is ever definite. Since Christianity is improbable, it is unreasonable to subscribe to it as truth if we use probability to determine other decisions and beliefs in our lives."
In other words, if we avoid fire because we believe it will burn us, this is acting in consistency with probability. If we eat because we are hungry it is because we conclude that food will probably make the hunger go away. If we do a hundred different things each day that are in accordance with probability, we certainly prove that we subscribe to the law of probability. Therefore, the reason behind why we choose to believe improbable things is because of some bias or interference that we are not aware of, that either makes it probable to us or makes us want to believe it is probable.
Unless you can provide me with the something in your mind that makes it probable to you, it must remain improbable to me, based on the information shared previously. Further, if you cannot provide that information to me, you probably don't have access to it yourself. If this is the case, you should ask yourself why you believe it is the truth, given that you can't explain why you think so.
In the end, this is the conclusive step form:
1) Prove that Christianity is as improbable as Islam
2) Prove that we all subscribe to probability
3) Request the information that makes Christianity probable.
=) Proof that the Christian is acting unreasonably in their beliefs. |
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| Created by Decius at
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