A conversation with Robvalue about religion.

[Mystic]

The only "evidence" ever presented for religions is:

1) Religious texts
2) Fallacious or irrelevant philosophical arguments

But none of these stand alone. Religious texts along with philosophical arguments, make use of features in reality and in our souls. This is from my point of view. A lot of hinduism for example about all forms being manifestations of God are true. They aren't true because the text says them, but the religion is pointing something about God and his relationship to reality.
Philosophical arguments will never be undeniable, because, everything relies on some properly basic beliefs. But if we know those beliefs to be true, the argument built upon them are reliable.
What I mean by know is have justified warranted belief in them.

1) All of these books are exactly what one would expect to see from primitive societies trying to make sense of the world around them. Even if they happen to contain some things that are true, and even if those things are impressive by the standards of the time, that in no way validates the truth of the rest of the book. It also doesn't validate claims about where those truths came from, and certainly doesn't give the author free reign to write a load of magic stuff and expect us to just believe it. If you get to the point where you will believe whatever someone writes based on what they have already written, you are literally prepared to believe anything. I don't consider that a good position to ever be in.

Actually Quran is exactly what I would not expect a primitive society to be able to make. I will get into why in details later. It's sophistication with regards to philosophical discussions that are recent, somethings taught for example today in the structure they are in universities regard political science (I will get into details of this later), I feel are indications of something more then just primitive society or power hungry man.

2) Abstract arguments are never evidence about reality on their own. They require producing a model of reality, and then manipulating that model. When manipulated correctly, all we have are conclusions that are as true as the initial assumptions of the model. They would be true in a reality that followed this idealised model exactly. But inevitably, our models are simplified. The only way to be sure that our abstract, idealised reality bears any resemblance to how reality actually works is to go back to reality and study the results. Otherwise, we can never be sure that we haven't gone wildly off target, and are considering a fictional reality that is in line with what we want it to be, or what we can understand.

What do you mean by reality? If God was the existence by which all things exist, what would this (what you wrote above) mean for example?

The idea that these arguments can produce results that the whole of science cannot is ludicrous.

Science doesn't discover or prove everything we can know.

And further, every religion uses the same arguments to try and establish some sort of entirely abstract "God", without any evidence to check it's actually anything real, and then makes the huge non-sequitur jump of assuming "their God" is the real God.

Oversimplification over the issue, and if you read Quran or hadiths or irfan or sufism, you should know this is a huge over simplification. There is many hadiths, many verses, and much mystical philosophical writtings about this issue. You should address the position of the religion and not just assert a refutation without looking at it's position.

If there is a "God", then we currently have no way to learn anything about it with any accuracy.

Why do you assume that? I would assume the opposite, if there is a God, everything we can learn and know would can help guide us towards a more accurate position about it. Falsehood on the other hand would of course not reveal anything about God. This is given there is a god.