I recommend that the title is changed to Judaism´s Claim to be Non-Disprovable or something like that. Eliezer can´t just talk and talk about Judaism (I bet he was raised as a jew since he almost always refer to judaism) and then call this article RELIGION´s claim. I know that he is well aware of all kinds of uncommon religions, so I se no reason to be this arrogant.
EDIT: I deserved a downvote here, since EZ also refers to christianity in some respect, even though that is of course not a big thing, since christianity from a historic perspective is a continuation of judaism. So let me update, because my critic is still valid and it is important.
1) Unless you are familiar with every religion in the world, you can´t logically make this claim. I don´t know every religion so I don´t know if it is false or true that all religions claim to be non-disprovable.
2) Even if it is true that all religions claim to be non-disprovable, and all the points in the article are valid, it is still a fatal error to present a hypothesis using only one or two religions as an example. Especially when they are connected to each other. You
don´t claim a scientific hypothesis to be true based on just one specific observation, you can´t pick one data and check if it is true and ignore all other data, however likely they are to also confirm the hypothesis. So even if EZ is making perfectly sense, which I assume he is, it is still arrogant and unscientific to write an argumentative article this way.
3) Will this article convince any non-abrahamic religious believer? Will a buddhist see the logic in the article? Will this article help to convince anyone at all, that is not an atheist and therefore already get it? I think that it would surely help to provide examples that can be proved to apply to all religions.
Unless you are familiar with every religion in the world, you can´t logically make this claim.
I’d like to think we’re to the point in our lives where we understand that unquantified claims like “dogs have fur” and “religions claim to be non-disprovable” are colloquialisms for “(all but an exceptional set of) dogs have fur” and “(all but an exceptional set of) religions claim to be non-disprovable”, and that life would become incredibly tedious if people were only permitted to make logically correct claims. I’ll settle for claims which merely provide good evidence.
You don´t claim a scientific hypothesis to be true based on just one specific observation, you can´t pick one data and check if it is true and ignore all other data, however likely they are to also confirm the hypothesis. So even if EZ is making perfectly sense, which I assume he is, it is still arrogant and unscientific to write an argumentative article this way.
As many, many people have pointed out over the years, the Sequences were never intended to be published as a scientific article.
Also, his initials are EY.
I think that it would surely help to provide examples that can be proved to apply to all religions.
It’s an essay, not a Wikipedia page. The article you’re calling for is five times as long and dramatically more boring to read.
The phenomenon (viz., religions proclaiming themselves to be absolute authorities) occurs in almost every religion I can think of.
Muhammad is considered to be Messenger of God, as is Bahá′u’lláh. A history of Mormon beliefs regarding Joseph Smith shows the same decline from worldly authority to ethical authority.
Perhaps the only religion I can think of that almost doesn’t do this is Buddhism. One has to take refuge in the three treasures together because one can be mistaken about what any one of them actually means.
As far as dis-provability is concerned, all major religions seem to consist of two pieces:
a claim regarding ‘the ultimate truth’ regarding reality (usually focused on the afterlife) which is by definition inaccessible and non-disprovable
a set of guidelines for life, usually claimed as originating from ‘the ultimate truth’, but still testable in reality
If you extract the ideas of karma and rebirth from Buddhism, I’d still consider those two topics a religion which is non-disprovable… while what is left of Buddhism looks more like a testable philosophy on life.
I’m not saying that testing a religion’s philosophy is easy but, as it should have an impact on reality, it is in theory testable. At the very least it is open to comparison to other philosophies and consideration regarding the consequences. As Christianity and Judaism shows, the religion itself survives when some of the non-religious content is disproven.
I recommend that the title is changed to Judaism´s Claim to be Non-Disprovable or something like that. Eliezer can´t just talk and talk about Judaism (I bet he was raised as a jew since he almost always refer to judaism) and then call this article RELIGION´s claim. I know that he is well aware of all kinds of uncommon religions, so I se no reason to be this arrogant.
EDIT: I deserved a downvote here, since EZ also refers to christianity in some respect, even though that is of course not a big thing, since christianity from a historic perspective is a continuation of judaism. So let me update, because my critic is still valid and it is important.
1) Unless you are familiar with every religion in the world, you can´t logically make this claim. I don´t know every religion so I don´t know if it is false or true that all religions claim to be non-disprovable.
2) Even if it is true that all religions claim to be non-disprovable, and all the points in the article are valid, it is still a fatal error to present a hypothesis using only one or two religions as an example. Especially when they are connected to each other. You don´t claim a scientific hypothesis to be true based on just one specific observation, you can´t pick one data and check if it is true and ignore all other data, however likely they are to also confirm the hypothesis. So even if EZ is making perfectly sense, which I assume he is, it is still arrogant and unscientific to write an argumentative article this way.
3) Will this article convince any non-abrahamic religious believer? Will a buddhist see the logic in the article? Will this article help to convince anyone at all, that is not an atheist and therefore already get it? I think that it would surely help to provide examples that can be proved to apply to all religions.
Regarding the edit:
I’d like to think we’re to the point in our lives where we understand that unquantified claims like “dogs have fur” and “religions claim to be non-disprovable” are colloquialisms for “(all but an exceptional set of) dogs have fur” and “(all but an exceptional set of) religions claim to be non-disprovable”, and that life would become incredibly tedious if people were only permitted to make logically correct claims. I’ll settle for claims which merely provide good evidence.
As many, many people have pointed out over the years, the Sequences were never intended to be published as a scientific article.
Also, his initials are EY.
It’s an essay, not a Wikipedia page. The article you’re calling for is five times as long and dramatically more boring to read.
The phenomenon (viz., religions proclaiming themselves to be absolute authorities) occurs in almost every religion I can think of.
Muhammad is considered to be Messenger of God, as is Bahá′u’lláh. A history of Mormon beliefs regarding Joseph Smith shows the same decline from worldly authority to ethical authority.
Perhaps the only religion I can think of that almost doesn’t do this is Buddhism. One has to take refuge in the three treasures together because one can be mistaken about what any one of them actually means.
As far as dis-provability is concerned, all major religions seem to consist of two pieces:
a claim regarding ‘the ultimate truth’ regarding reality (usually focused on the afterlife) which is by definition inaccessible and non-disprovable
a set of guidelines for life, usually claimed as originating from ‘the ultimate truth’, but still testable in reality
If you extract the ideas of karma and rebirth from Buddhism, I’d still consider those two topics a religion which is non-disprovable… while what is left of Buddhism looks more like a testable philosophy on life.
I’m not saying that testing a religion’s philosophy is easy but, as it should have an impact on reality, it is in theory testable. At the very least it is open to comparison to other philosophies and consideration regarding the consequences. As Christianity and Judaism shows, the religion itself survives when some of the non-religious content is disproven.