(July 23, 2012 at 9:44 am)GodlessGirl Wrote: This argument only works if you are intelligent and well-educated, and you must be honest with yourself. This argument is great because it can refute any religion.
Okay. Imagine we are having a relaxed open and honest discussion with eachother. We have a huge stack of index cards. On each card is one of 1000 different religions, gods or belief systems from the present and past. But none of the cards have your religion on it. I read the belief and all the arguments for it off of each card. Supposed holy books, witnesses, prophets, testimonies, eye-witness accounts, archeological evidence, ect. You tell me all the reasons you dismiss each argument. After we are a quarter of the way through something interesting happens. We no longer have to come up with new reasons to dismiss the ideas we can just refer back to previous cards. We get to the end of the stack, and surprise! Your belief is written on the last card. We could easily refute your belief by reffering back to previous cards.
What happens when all the cards have different elements of your religion in it? Rather than noting just where they differ you consider where they're similar?
Like the parable about the blind men who encounter an elephant, touching different parts of it. If considering the differences it's easy to mistake it as perceptions of entirely different things, when in reality its just one thing. All the card reveals perspectives of men trying to describe the divine, the meaning that pervades the world, and their lives, a sense of the sacred. They all agree that there's something more to all of this the sum of it's parts. And like them I agree.
