RE: What gives a religion the right to claim their fantasy is correct?
November 19, 2016 at 4:26 am
(This post was last modified: November 19, 2016 at 4:39 am by BeeDeePee.)
(November 14, 2016 at 10:01 pm)Casca Wrote: Science is based on evidence, facts, and theories supported by evidence and fact.
So what exactly gives one religion the leg to stand on and say "this religion is true, the rest are false", when there is no evidence or fact to back up their claim?
I can't speak for every existing religion in the world, so I shall stick to mine and what I personally think. As far as I am concerned, I base my choice to be religious upon two things:
1. I'm convinced that Christ's person understood as an existential model is better than any other I have come close to.
2. I find my religious experiences compelling.
Of course, I am well aware that there are numerous questions and challenges that might be posed to these two theses. I don't claim to be 100% certain about my beliefs. In fact, I have doubted my religion over the course of last 5/6 years. I just find these reasons sufficient to convince myself. It's my reasons, not necessarily anyone's else who shares my religious views. That's exactly why I don't go around trying to convince others that I am necessarily right, whilst others has to be wrong. Nor I think that, just because I believe what I believe, every other religion has to be 100% wrong. The truth is that there are similarities, sometimes even substantial, between different religions. It follows that, due to similarities, other religions or denominations (to the extent to which they are similar to mine) has to be true.
As to the 70,000 denominations within Christianity, it seems to be a false dilemma. If most of these denominations originated in a couple of last centuries, from which most of them were established during the last two centuries or less, I fail to see how they can claim to be even a putative candidate for genuine Christianity. To the best of our knowledge, Christian church was established sometime during the first century AD. If we are aware of that, for someone attempting to find genuine Christian church it is legitimate to eliminate all those thousands of denominations. It turns out we are left with a few dozen churches that fulfili this basic requirement for genuine Christianity. In other words, we are left with churches that possess continuous existence from the 1st century AD to our days.
