(July 16, 2016 at 3:38 am)robvalue Wrote: Ignor: thank you
EP: We'll assume the kids have a reasonable well-rounded education up to this point.
Yes, I'm looking for indicators of probable fiction. That's all. If you don't want to partake, that's fine. The point of this is try to get theists to think, and also to see if atheists can come up with new ideas for each other. I'm using fiction to mean "didn't happen as written". This may be due to it being totally made up, or it could be because the account is very inaccurate.
I'll start off then by giving my principles:
(1) Are the events being described consistent with what we know? Do they contain things we don't even know are possible? If they contain such things, it is probably fiction.
(2) How consistent is it? Does it make sense within itself? If it contains a lot of contradictions, then it is probably at least partly fictional due to inaccuracy.
Do people agree with these principles, and what others would you add?
Please don't be patronizing. It's not that I don't want to partake, it's that there's nothing to partake in.
How can the kids both have a good education and not be able to tell fact from fiction? You're contradicting yourself. Your principles wouldn't work on indoctrinated kids, simply because they're impressionable, and if you're telling them the events described aren't consistent with what they know, their priests or immediate family will tell them otherwise. So pretty much, they tell you their religion is fact, they do know Jesus walked on water and all that, because it's written in the bible. All you can do is either teach them to think critically, like I said, in which case they'd learn to tell fact from fiction over a long period of time, and not instantly, or they already know how to do it but they're so indoctrinated that they think religion is fact no matter what you say, so all you can do, really, at that point, is try and make your version of things win over in their heads.
