GenesisNemesis

"One religion says their right, and all the others are wrong. But the problem is, all religions say they’re right. So they can’t all be right, because the others say the one who is saying their religion is right is wrong. One of them can’t be right, because all of the other religions are saying that one is wrong as well. So, therefore, they are all wrong, and none of them is right. They cannot agree on a common ground, based on faith. If one religion were right, we’d expect everyone to be that religion. If one religion were right, it would be appealing to everyone"

I wrote this in my "What I believe" Microsoft Word document. Is it valid? Correct it if you wish.

Not sure where this belongs: EoG, or GRD?

ABRAM I COPAN

Now some liberal christians are gonna come in here and give you the old blind guys describing an elephant metaphor:

one blind guy, holding the trunk, says 'an elephant is long and tubular.' the blind guy holding the tail says an elephant is thin and rope-like. Moral of story: all the world's religions are seeing different sides of the same great truth or some bullshit like that.

Personally I feel sorry for the blind guy who thinks an elephant looks like two giant bean bag chairs.

Alf

To elaborate on the elephant thingy.

The point is that all the blind men are wrong, yes, they see part of the truth one might argue but this is what makes it wrong. The truth is only truth when you see the whole truth, partial truths is not truth.

One should probably also mention that this whole elephant story is based on a poem that describes how wrong religions can be because they are like blind men encountering an elephant. As such it can hardly be used as support of religions.

Alf

premjan

http://cs.wwc.edu/~aabyan/Poetry/blindmen.html
The idea is that we are all like blind men and our knowledge of the truth is obscured by our parochial view. It is originally a Hindu parable which has been written into a poem by John Godfrey Saxe.

Oxymoron

Another problem: one religion says the trunk is tubular; another insists it's planar; and another says it shaped like an inside-out doughnut. So you're back to the same problem as in the OP because the religions are not mutually exclusive. Besides, an elephant is an elephant, not a god. The existence of elephants is not in question by either the blind or the sighted; and even someone who had not encountered that specific animal before would not be totally astonished to discover an animal of some description. No doubt a dedicated team of blind people could determine the morphology with only a modicum of collaborative effort, eh?

As for the original argument: it's a very a priori line of reasoning, in that it is quite common for a number of groups of people (scientists for example) to think they are right and everyone else is wrong. Of course, the devil is in the detail: if one merely asserts one's righteousness (pretty much the definition of faith) then any baseless assertion can - to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens - similarly be dismissed baselessly. And so the whole thing just falls to bits before it can assemble itself. If one wishes to argue one's correctness, on the other hand, then it will be on the merits of the argument that the case will be decided upon. So far, religions have pretty much failed to give a decent argument for their side; most arguments for god end up advocating the existence of everyone else's god, too.

Cheerful Charlie

If there are so many religions that are basically contradictory it means we can make up religions that are wrong. The question is, is any religion right? The only way to know is to have hard evidence for any given religion's underlying basic claims.

Since it is obvious that man can be wrong abou treligion, the problem is all religions may indeed be wrong. Thus all religions must be assumed wrong until proven true.

This is what philosopher Antony Flew termed the Atheist Presumption. The burden of evidence is upon religion to prove a given religion is in fact true.
We thenstart with the presumption atheism is true until some religion can prove itis indeed true.

A big problem for religion is that definied gods are easily shown to be impossible if their claimed attributes contradict each other. And religions are usually constrained by being claimed to know about their gods from revelation that makes it impossible to reject many contradictory claims.

Cheerful Charlie

premjan

An inside-out doughnut is also a doughnut right?

Oxymoron

Er... no idea!

(I've added a bit to my post as I found some spare time between bug-fixes).

premjan

everting a torus

J. T.

I guess the really tough question is, How stretchy would the elephant have to be to be successfully turned inside out without harm?

Religion has proven itself remarkably stretchy. It can contort itself to fit any enclosure as required. That is where it really differs from an elephant.