The Argument from Diversity

[spetey]

Hi folks,

First, I'm very pleased to have found this forum. I think more open debate, especially about religion, is crucial to the world's future. It is too easy in the days of the internet simply to find people who agree with you, and post only to their message boards, patting each other on the back for being clever enough to agree. So I salute you all for coming here instead!

Let me start with a little exercise in confronting religious plurality, what I like to call the "argument from diversity". Let's pretend that I believe in a god, but not the God of the Abrahamic tradition. Instead, I believe in Zeus, and the other Greek gods. Of course there aren't really any (or many) Zeus-worshippers these days, but let's pretend as an example, to stand in for all the other conflicting religions that really are out there today.

I suppose many of the Abrahamic tradition (Christians, Jews, and Muslims) would think Zeus-worshipping kind of silly, and perhaps worry that I won't go to heaven. Maybe you even fear I'll be damned for eternity. Nonetheless, pretend I believe in Zeus, and that I'm similarly worried about Christians (and Jews and ...), because if you don't worship Zeus properly--sacrificing lambs and such--you'll have to go to Hades and roll boulders up hills for all eternity, like poor Sisyphys.

Now here's the exercise: can you give me a reason to believe in the Abrahamic God--one that I don't already have for believing in Zeus?

Thanks for your patience... I look forward to a polite and engaging exchange.


spetey

[spetey]

Hello again... once again cutting way down and grimly bypassing lots of things I'd like to address... (perhaps you could focus your points more concisely in future posts?)

Let's suppose that I'm right, and the universe is self-similar.

Of course the universe is "self-similar"; everything is. That's Leibniz's principle of the Indiscernability of Identicals. What is different from itself?

If you mean this in some more technical sense, you'd better explain exactly what it is, and exactly how it's supposed to help your case for the Abrahamic God over Vishnu.

That is, a small sampling of input that properly represents large-scale features of the universe that you would think you would need vast technology to come to understand.

Is this your explanation of "self-similar"? It's not a sentence and I can't reconstruct the grammar you intend. But I guess that by "self-similar" you mean "can be represented accurately in a smaller amount of information"? So computer files are self-similar if they can be compressed?

What this shows is that although there certainly are differences, it appears on the subject of God being truth and God being one, the Hindus and Hebrews were in agreement.

That is not what your quotations say. Look at them again. I'm sure you'd like to read Hinduism as saying there is only one god, but that's not a tenet as I understand it.

Look: there are obvious, fundamental disagreements between Christianity and Hinduism. One says Jesus rose from the dead, the other doesn't. One says there are many gods, the other doesn't. One says not to eat beef, the other doesn't. One says you must be baptized in such-a-way, the other doesn't. One says there is eternal reincarnation, the other doesn't... In each of these cases, at most one of these positions can be true. Right?! Yes, of course maybe they're each only approximately true. But when they contradict, one must be more approximately true than the other, right?

Put it this way: are you willing to say it's only "approximately true" that Jesus rose from the dead?

You see, you can resolve any dispute between two parties by saying that their dispute is so far apart that one has to be false and only one can be true, but I don't think it boils down to those two alternatives. I can image a situation where one religion is like Richard's Feynman's formulation of QED (i.e., the path integral) and the other is like Julian Schwinger's formulation of QED. In the case of science it takes a Freeman Dyson to show that they are talking about the same world, whereas with religion I believe it takes the hand of God over evolutionary periods to show if or how the two different formulations cohere.

Sure it's possible to imagine such cases. Your example of set theory vs. category theory, as a math foundation, too, is a good one. But that's obviously not the case with Christianity and Hinduism. Again, they conflict on their core subject matter.

You are assuming that religion is purely a human invention with no behind the scenes influence by God.

Where in my quotation did I assume that? If Vishnu or God exists, that's not a human invention. Our theories about which exists are human theories, of course (perhaps inspired by God or Vishnu if one does exist).

The thing is this, if the evolution of religion is being influenced by God behind the scenes ...

Remember that when talking to me anything that comes as the consequent to this antecedent will just be ignored. I do not believe that ideas were influenced by the Abrahamic God; that's the very topic we're debating in the first place. Please try to remember that. You cannot possibly convince me that there's reason to believe in an Abrahamic God by anywhere assuming that an Abrahamic God exists. Okay? Do you see how the structure of a debate like this must go?

You know, it really doesn't matter what the quantum scientist on the street believes about quantum mechanics. Most scientists are concerned with their own work, and that work might have nothing to do with which laws of quantum mechanics need to be adjusted. They would perhaps tend to think that's a problem they cannot solve at the moment, and go back to work on quantum mechanics, and would probably have very few reservations on 'selling' QM to potential grad students or the public in general. This is just a part of science.

Yes agreed. But meanwhile there are active fields trying desperately to reconcile the theories in the tiny corners of the experienced universe (yes, yes, of course relative to how we humans experience the universe--after all they're our theories). And if you ask a QM theorist about the conflicts with GR, they won't say "oh well, they're probably both magically true somehow." They will say "oh yes, I hope somebody solves that, because there are tiny corners of my theory where things go wrong."

Similarly, I think most moderate to liberal Christians realize that they do not have every i dotted and every t crossed with respect to Church doctrine.

Again, it's not just dotted i's and crossed t's in the Christian / Hindu debate. Whether or not Jesus rose from the dead is not merely an "undotted i" of the religion. It's not a tiny detail of conflict one can work around.

This is science, not religion. The analogy breaks down in this sense since it is not humans that ultimately decide how two different religions are bridged, it is God.

I hope by now it's obvious what my response is to this sentence and the paragraph that it begins! But just in case: you do not get to appeal to the existence of the Abrahamic God when arguing for the existence of the Abrahamic God.

The support for Abrahamic religion requires the theistic stance to being true, and if true, my argument in this thread, I believe, gets you from there to a reason to support and concentrate one's faith within the Abrahamic tradition.

There's not one "theistic stance". There is the stance of the Abrahamic religions and there is the stance of the Hindu tradition and there is the stance of the Greek gods... as I carefully said above many times, you cannot appeal to the existence of the Abrahamic God to argue your position, whether we are debating the Abrahamic God vs. Vishnu, or (in the occasional somewhat off-topic context of our discussion) the Abrahamic God vs. none.

This thread, as I understand it, is specific to knowing how someone can distinguish between a religion like Christianity and a dead religion like the ancient Greek religion. As a review, it is as follows:

Thanks for the review. I'll not bother to review my responses to each; I'll trust people can look back over the thread themselves. I am a little surprised that you're back to the "evolution of ideas" business, though; I thought you'd finally given that up. But apparently you still feel that Western religious traditions are somehow superior (underwent a superior "process" or whatever you'd like to say) even though you profess ignorance of the Eastern ones and the history of their "evolution of ideas".

Sorry if again I sound a little frustrated... actually I am frustrated, but it's been a long day for reasons other than to do with your posts. Thanks again for your patience and the interesting conversation. (I wonder if we are the only two reading this thread? No one seems to want to help or hinder either of us!)


spetey

[harvey1]

I do not believe that ideas were influenced by the Abrahamic God; that's the very topic we're debating in the first place. Please try to remember that. You cannot possibly convince me that there's reason to believe in an Abrahamic God by anywhere assuming that an Abrahamic God exists... But just in case: you do not get to appeal to the existence of the Abrahamic God when arguing for the existence of the Abrahamic God... There's not one "theistic stance". There is the stance of the Abrahamic religions and there is the stance of the Hindu tradition and there is the stance of the Greek gods... as I carefully said above many times, you cannot appeal to the existence of the Abrahamic God to argue your position, whether we are debating the Abrahamic God vs. Vishnu, or (in the occasional somewhat off-topic context of our discussion) the Abrahamic God vs. none... I am a little surprised that you're back to the "evolution of ideas" business, though; I thought you'd finally given that up. But apparently you still feel that Western religious traditions are somehow superior (underwent a superior "process" or whatever you'd like to say) even though you profess ignorance of the Eastern ones and the history of their "evolution of ideas".

I grouped these responses of yours together, so I can reply without too much repetition...

Let me formalize my position as thus (consider this a rough draft):

1) God exists [Invite me to a new thread and we can discuss this]

2) Generally speaking, God is involved and leads the evolutionary processes of all levels in order to accomplish the divine will and intent for the universe (e.g., gauge theory evolution, molecular evolution, galactic evolution, stellar evolution, planetary evolution, biological evolution, social evolution, scientific evolution, etc, etc.) [Invite me to a new thread and we can discuss this]

3) Generally speaking, structures that go extinct, or are possible structures (e.g., cosmic strings) that do not exist, were not part of God's will or they already fulfilled God's will, hence they are not essential. Therefore their existence or continued existence is allowed to be the result of time and chance. [Invite me to a new thread and we can discuss this]

4) Generally speaking, evolutionary mechanisms over time increase the complexity of the structures that evolve, and, as a result, we see more sophisticated structures, and thus, a progressive move toward God's divine will. In addition to time, severe environmental conditions can speed up the evolution of complexity [Invite me to a new thread and we can discuss this]

5) Generally speaking, religion evolves with God's participation regardless of the religion (as a result of (2))

6) Generally speaking, if specific religions have more evolutionary mechanisms at play (e.g., competition, severe 'environmental' conditions, etc), these religions will evolve complex structures faster, and possibly attain heights of structure complexity that other religions with lower evolutionary pressures would have seen (as a result of (4))

7) Generally speaking, the structures of religious ideas are ideas, and these ideas are intuition based. The source of intuitive answers is not all that clear, but self-similarity in the universe might make unconscious patterns, or even possibly Jungian archetypes, accessible to humans so that a wide range of truths are available to a human mind that weren't previously accessible.

8 ) Generally speaking, the Hebrews and Christians had the most vivid evolutionary mechanisms at play because of their unique evolutionary development. However, due to my ignorance and respect for other religions, I won't contest too much that a few other religions had their severe environmental crises to spur their evolution of ideas, however, I find it very unlikely that any religion was taken into captivity to a foreign land and was returned to their homeland, or that they entirely incorporated the scriptures of competing religions that was not their 'mother religion', etc.

9) Competing religions is not necessarily a conflict to perceiving truth in each (highly evolved) religion, because, as we discussed, quantum theory and relativity theory have been in conflict for over 70 years, and until recently that conflict only grew wider in that 70 years. In addition, science has a long history of incompatible theories that are both 'true' or 'approximately true', and we've even seen how 'true' theories can move to just being considered 'approximately true', and a new theory is considered 'truer' than the previous 'true' theory. Hence, there's every reason to believe that future evolution of religion will sort out conflicts by digging deeper into the intuitive evolution of ideas. This is not to say that every conflict will disappear anymore than we can say that a new theory of quantum gravity will remove every conflict between quantum theory and relativity theory. Conflicts, as T. Kuhn suggested, might be systematic of language, or as other suggested, systematic of our minds, or systematic of reality itself.

10) Since (9) is generally acceptable, and Christianity meets the criteria of intuitive derived truth (based on (4)-( 8 )), and it is not a member of (3) since it has survived intact as an active, practicing religion, therefore Christians are justified in saying that their religion is 'true' in that they, like the quantum theorist, can actively teach, preach, and believe their doctrines without living in doubt. God will decide later, what, if any Christian doctrines, must be changed, and this will be done as it has always occurred, by the evolutionary process which God is active.

Of course the universe is "self-similar"; everything is. That's Leibniz's principle of the Indiscernability of Identicals. What is different from itself?

Wouldn't that be self-identical? In any case, I'm trying to provide an underlying explanation for why intuition appears to work. For example, an author who did a biography on the Indian mathematician Ramanujan called him 'Intuition Incarnate' ("The Man Who Knew Infinity: The Life of the Genius Ramanujan", Robert Kanigel, Publisher: Pocket Books, 1991, p.224). Ramanujan is an excellent example of the power of intuition since he is a modern example that was heavily exposed to modern mathematicians (Hardy, Littlewood, etc). As a result, modern minds got to be exposed to ancient approaches to wisdom (albeit, through the vehicle of mathematics). Since, many people perceive mathematics as truth that can be proved, it makes an excellent example to see how truth can be derived mysteriously through the powers of intuition.

"Ramanujan's continued fraction comprised within a single expression all the correct answers. Mahalonobis was astounded. How, he asked Ramanujan, had he done it? 'Immediately I heard the problem it was clear that the solution should obviously be a continued fraction; I then thought, Which continued fraction? And the answer came to my mind" The answer came to my mind. That was the glory of Ramanujan-that so much came to him so readily, whether through divine offices of the goddess Namagiri, as he sometimes said, or through that Westerners might ascribe, with equal imprecison, to 'intuition'." (ibid, p. 215-216)

Hardy said this about Ramanujan: "His ideas as to what constituted a mathematical proof were of the most shadowy description. All his results, new or old, right or wrong, had been arrived at by a process of mingled argument, intuition, and induction, of which he was entirely unable to give any coherent account" (ibid, p. 216)

Hardy, a brilliant mathematician in his own right, also rated Ramanujan's abilities against the most brilliant mathematicians of his day: "Years later, he would contrive an informal scale of natural mathematical ability on which he assigned himself a 25 and Littlewood a 30. To David Hilbert, the most eminent mathematician of his day, he assigned an 80.

To Ramanujan he gave 100." (ibid, p.226)

In the history of mathematics, Hardy and Littlewood ranked Ramanujan as one of the top three of mathematical geniuses, which would be Euler, Jacobi, Ramanujan. Here is another excerpt of Ramanujan's biography:

"But Euler and Jacobi were not just generic 'great mathematicians'; it was not caprciously that Hardy and Littlewood had compared Ramanujan to them. Rather, these two men represented a particular mathematical tradition of which Ramanujan, too, was part - that of 'formalism'. Formal, here, ... suggests one fairly bubbling up from the formulas themselves., almost irrespective of what those formulas mean... All mathematicians, of course, manipulate formulas. But formalists were almost magicians at it, uncannily selecting just the tricks and techniques needed to obtain intriguing new results... Ramanujan's mathematics, if it fit any category, fit this one. And yet, Hardy could see that if Ramanujan possessed conjurer's tricks, they were ones of almost Mephistophelean potency. (ibid, p. 205-206)

Littlewood would say later "The beauty and singularity of his results is entirely uncanny". (ibid, p.206-207)

So, 'Intuition Incarnate' arrives on the mathematical scene in the form of Ramanujan, and at 26 while growing up in India, without any training or contact from the West, he had created approximately 3,000 - 4,000 math papers, which has been estimated that 2/3 were original mathematics. Euler is another example. He wrote most of his best mathematics while blind.

Of course, I acknowledge genius. Euler, Ramanujan, etc, were all geniuses of some high order. However, even these guys recognized that they had some kind of intuitive gift for ideas. As a side note (and I am sorry...) Euler, in fact, thought he had found a proof of God's existence when he discovered (this equation, is one of the most famous equations in mathematics for its beauty and simplicity of math):

e^(i*pi)= -1


What I've tried to do by introducing the notion of self-similarity, is to try and give a logical means on how the human mind can grasp intuitive truths without appealing to the Hindu goddess Namagiri.

Self-similarity was defined by Mandelbrot as:

"When each piece of a shape is geometrically similar to the whole, both the shape and the cascade that generates it are called self-similar".

As a detailed scientific example, here is a paper on the self-similarity displayed by plants:

http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/fra ... p2004.html

What I think this suggests is that if someone is clever enough, they can spot self-similar 'Jungian archetypes', and with that they can form a religion that gradually takes on more and more truthful properties. In the case of Ramanujan, my speculation is that he became aware of self-similar properties in mathematics at an unconscious level. What applies in math, can apply with the universe. For example, the principle of the mustard seed, I believe, is a self-similar principle about how creation happens in the world (i.e., starts out as small of a seed as possible, and encompasses the whole size of the universe, etc).

What this shows is that although there certainly are differences, it appears on the subject of God being truth and God being one, the Hindus and Hebrews were in agreement.

That is not what your quotations say. Look at them again. I'm sure you'd like to read Hinduism as saying there is only one god, but that's not a tenet as I understand it.

Again, I'm not saying I understand Hinduism all that well, but each time I've talked to someone of Hinduism about their polytheism, they said I have it all wrong. They say that God manifests himself in many different deities, but there is only one God. That I don't know, but this is what I've been told while in India and while in Bali. Go figure. Here is a quote that I've read every now and then:

"In another famous passage, BrhadaaraNyaka (3.9), the sage Yaajnavalkya is asked how many gods are there; he first answers that there are 3306. Further questioned, he reduces the number to thirty-three, and then, eventually, to one. He equates the thirty-three gods to the inner components that make up the self such as the elements and breath (praNa). He goes on to say that the final goal of a person, himself or herself divinely composed, is Brahman, which he identifies with the singular god. (Olivelle 1996, pp. 46-47)"

It just seems to me that if Hindus feel this way about their religion, then they ought to be able to decide for themselves about it. I'm just saying that this kind of thinking is allegorical based, and who knows, it might be true about God to some extent. Of course, you also heard about "God is like an elephant". My understanding that this is of Hindu origin too.

Sure it's possible to imagine such cases. Your example of set theory vs. category theory, as a math foundation, too, is a good one. But that's obviously not the case with Christianity and Hinduism. Again, they conflict on their core subject matter.

Hindus have the doctrine of incarnation, the Trinity, man being made into eternal children of God, etc. And, like I said, the future still must play itself out. Who knows, the world might become Christian to stimulate the world economies in December (just a joke).

And if you ask a QM theorist about the conflicts with GR, they won't say "oh well, they're probably both magically true somehow." They will say "oh yes, I hope somebody solves that, because there are tiny corners of my theory where things go wrong."

Okay. Oh yes, I hope God solves that [conflicts with Hinduism and Christianity], because there are tiny corners of my religion where things go wrong or are allegorical. I think many orthodox Christians can accept this.

Again, it's not just dotted i's and crossed t's in the Christian / Hindu debate. Whether or not Jesus rose from the dead is not merely an "undotted i" of the religion. It's not a tiny detail of conflict one can work around.

The Hindus have no problem with Jesus rising from the dead, they have a problem though when Christians say that Jesus is the only way to salvation. I have no answer for this, but I believe the problem will resolve itself one way or another.

The support for Abrahamic religion requires the theistic stance to being true, and if true, my argument in this thread, I believe, gets you from there to a reason to support and concentrate one's faith within the Abrahamic tradition.

There's not one "theistic stance".

I didn't suggest that there were. I only suggest that in my view the support for the Abrahamic religion requires (4)-(9) [see above] to be true in order for Christianity to be true.

This thread, as I understand it, is specific to knowing how someone can distinguish between a religion like Christianity and a dead religion like the ancient Greek religion. As a review, it is as follows:

Thanks for the review. I'll not bother to review my responses to each; I'll trust people can look back over the thread themselves.

Now, now, I just gave that review so that my arguments appeared together since I thought we were winding down this thread. My bad.

I am a little surprised that you're back to the "evolution of ideas" business, though; I thought you'd finally given that up.

Why would you think that? That's at a core of my view on the subject. It is the evolution of (intuitive) ideas that produces religious truth, regardless if it is Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, or Zeus priests producing the intuitive insights. However, it takes time and vast amounts of evolutionary exposure to evolve. Otherwise, religions remain pretty set in their ways and they evolve like crocodiles over the last 100 million years.

[spetey]

Hi again again again!

First, let me apologize about my snappy last post. Debating earnestly for such a long time with someone who disagrees so fundamentally is a really enlightening exercise in patience. (I don't mean that sarcastically--I mean that sincerely! I am learning a lot about how to be patient, and I'm often impressed by your patience with me.)

Let me formalize my position as thus (consider this a rough draft):

1) God exists [Invite me to a new thread and we can discuss this]

As long as you mean "the Abrahamic God" here, and not "some God about whom the Hindus and the Jews and the Buddhists and the Christians and the Muslims and the Zoroastrians and the Greeks all worshipped somehow the same", then this is the topic of this thread. And of course to the extent that it's difficult to give a reason to believe the tenets of Christianity over Hinduism, I furthermore think that's an argument against rational belief in the Abrahamic God.

Again: is it only approximately true, or is it literally, full-on true that Jesus rose from the dead? If Hinduism doesn't explicitly deny that--and I confess I could well imagine it doesn't, though I'm ignorant of the details myself--then I assure you there are numerous religions that do. Consider Judaism, for example. That has all the cultural evolution and persecution you like, but staunchly denies that Jesus rose from the dead. Are they both equally correct, somehow, on this particular fact? Or is there reason to believe in Christianity instead of Judaism? If so, what is it?

On intuition:

• Ramanujan is an interesting case. But we only glorify his intuition because we were able to verify the truth of his work independently. If we had no idea whether what he said had sound mathematical proofs to them, we would not be extolling his "intuition"--we wouldn't know that he had one.
• This is the thing with intuition--many people have many different ones. Some have the intuition that a different god exists, a fundamentally different god. What exactly is wrong with their intuition? What do we do when people have fundamentally different intuitions and there is no independent way to verify whose is right?

Suppose, for example, you have some mathematical intuitions about some theorem, and others have radically conflicting intuitions about the same matter. And suppose no proof exists yet either way. (I don't know, on the Reimann-Zeta function or something.) Do you get to appeal to the strength of your intuition as an argument that you must be right? If so, why don't the contrary mathematicians get to do the same? If not, then you don't have an argument to give either way--right? You have to appeal to things other than intuition to settle the matter.

8 ) Generally speaking, the Hebrews and Christians had the most vivid evolutionary mechanisms at play because of their unique evolutionary development. However, due to my ignorance and respect for other religions, I won't contest too much that a few other religions had their severe environmental crises to spur their evolution of ideas, however, I find it very unlikely that any religion was taken into captivity to a foreign land and was returned to their homeland, or that they entirely incorporated the scriptures of competing religions that was not their 'mother religion', etc.

Of course you can find and appeal to traits unique to the history of the Abrahamic tradition, but I don't see why those guarantee that truth will result. If I did manage to hijack all Hindus for a while, taking them to a foreign land, would that somehow help guarantee that Hinduism was correct after all? Or if we found out that Hindus, strangely enough, had an exactly similar history--would you then grant the truth of Hinduism? Or suppose they had been taken to a foreign land even more often than Judaism, or we found some other religion that had been--would you then be ready to say that their process was still more superior, and abandon Christianity? (And again, depending on what you mean by a "foreign land", the Hindus were hijacked by the Islamic invasion....) And what would you say to someone who said that the best "process" for the evolution of ideas is to have several powerful revolutions from within, as the Hindu tradition did? It's easy to pick some unique feature of your favored religion's history and claim that's the only good kind of history for getting religious ideas right.

Of course the universe is "self-similar"; everything is. That's Leibniz's principle of the Indiscernability of Identicals. What is different from itself?

Wouldn't that be self-identical?

(Self-identicals are a fortiori self-similars; they share all their properties so they obviously share many. Furthermore self-similars are self-identicals: they just are the things. Everything is similar to itself, so everything is self-similar; everything is identical with itself, so everything is self-identical.)

In any case, I'm trying to provide an underlying explanation for why intuition appears to work.

I see. And I see you mean "part similar to whole" as in the case of Mandelbrot's beloved fractals. What I don't see is

1. how this proves that intuition is a reliable process (is there evidence that the brain is fractal in nature? Is there reason to think fractals are key to intuition? Are you suggesting that we know the Abrahamic God exists because a tiny "self-similar" god is in our heads?)
2. how, even if intuition is somehow thereby a reliable process, the intuitions of the Abrahamic tradition outweigh the intuitions of other religious traditions.

Ramanujan's mathematics, if it fit any category, fit this one. And yet, Hardy could see that if Ramanujan possessed conjurer's tricks, they were ones of almost Mephistophelean potency.

I don't know the relevant biography, and I only skimmed your details. But if Ramanujan was a formalist in the Hilbert sense, then he was an extremely rigid theorem-prover who in the end did not rely on intuition in the smallest detail. You might say that the whole point of Hilbert's Program was to eliminate intuition from mathematics. (And why? Because it was intolerable--it allowed disagreement where there should be reason.)

Euler, in fact, thought he had found a proof of God's existence when he discovered (this equation, is one of the most famous equations in mathematics for its beauty and simplicity of math):

e^(i*pi)= -1

I'm impressed by math, but I don't attribute its beauty to God. Actually I would think this would be much more ugly if God just made it that way, instead of it emerging out of the beauty of mathematics itself. As though God had just squeezed pi to be exactly 3, so that it would look prettier in texts. What a crass trick that would be.

Hindus have the doctrine of incarnation, the Trinity, man being made into eternal children of God, etc.

If so, I very much doubt those are understood in exactly the Christian way--it would be a remarkable coincidence if so. But it's easy (and diplomatic of you) to find points of similarity between the two. But: are there or are there not fundamental differences, too? If not, does that mean you would be just as happy as a practicing Hindu for the rest of your life? Are you ready to throw out your crosses for statues of Ganesh? I know, it would cost you precious time and you do QM not GR. Is that honestly--be very honest now--all that's holding you back? You could just as easily be a devout Hindu if you just had the time to study it more? You are ready to stop praying to Jesus?

Again, it's not just dotted i's and crossed t's in the Christian / Hindu debate. Whether or not Jesus rose from the dead is not merely an "undotted i" of the religion. It's not a tiny detail of conflict one can work around.

The Hindus have no problem with Jesus rising from the dead, they have a problem though when Christians say that Jesus is the only way to salvation. I have no answer for this, but I believe the problem will resolve itself one way or another.

I appreciate your honesty here, to acknowledge at least one genuine conflict (whether or not Jesus is the only route to salvation). I of course think there are many more than that. But anyway, isn't this a huge problem? Suppose you met a smart Hindu who didn't think Jesus was the only route to salvation. What might you say to this smart Hindu as a reason to accept Jesus--what would you say that doesn't already appeal to faith that an Abrahamic-tradition God is deciding the evolution of ideas, and not Vishnu? If you can't give a reason, aren't you ready then to say it's pure faith? How could the problem even begin to resolve itself one way or another through reason? I can see how it could be resolved via tanks, or outspending, or out populating, or by cultural invasions from Hollywood (or Bollywood)... but how by reason? That's the process I'm asking you to begin with me.

The thing is, even if you're right that the only differences between Christianity and Hinduism is in minor details, the analogy with QM and GR still breaks down. Because in the physics case, we know how to go about trying to solve the problem. We actively seek to settle the conflict. But there is no established way even to go about settling the "tiny" differences between Christianity and Hinduism, and no one seems interested in doing so as a live, major theological problem. You might say that's the point of my thread. And it's this behavior that makes me think it's not a matter of rational investigation, as the sciences are--that it's a matter of faith, instead.


spetey

[harvey1]

As long as you mean "the Abrahamic God" here, and not "some God about whom the Hindus and the Jews and the Buddhists and the Christians and the Muslims and the Zoroastrians and the Greeks all worshipped somehow the same", then this is the topic of this thread. "

No, I am not referring specifically to the Abrahamic God here. I am referring to some metaphysical entity having capabilities to create structures (namely, the universe) and still being able to elude scientific investigation.

Again: is it only approximately true, or is it literally, full-on true that Jesus rose from the dead?

It would be of great disappointment to me if I found out that Jesus was just another Krishna who came every millenia:

"Whenever there is a decline in religious practice andd a predominant rise of irreligion--at that time I [Krishna] descend Myself. To deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to establish the principles of religion, I Myself appear, millennium after millennium." (Bhagavad-gita (4.7-8 ))

If this is how God united the two religions (someday), then it is God's will. However, I believe rather, that the point of unity might be that Jesus will somehow be revealed to be the greatest point of light (the Christ) that has come to humanity (i.e., the full manifestation of the Christ). But, as you can see, evolution has not finished it's job yet, so there are bridges to cross. The good news, I guess, is that telecommunications and who knows what else might start speeding up the evolution of religion. So, it took over 2500 years for most modern religions to evolve, it might only take another 1000 years for them to completely evolve - I don't know.

As far as Jesus' resurrection to be an approximate truth or not, my main point in all of these posts is that Christians do not have to doubt or try and compromise with Hindus, etc, because God will influence the world to believe as his will requires it to all happen. All we have to do is go out and believe and share the good tidings of what we believe. The rest will take care of itself. Christians in a far away generation (or nearby generation) may come to reflect on the Pauline doctrine of an incorruptible resurrected body (i.e., non-physical), and this might evolve to where they say Jesus' resurrection was an 'approximate truth'. But, as for 2005, no Christian is in a position to move in that direction. The same goes for the Hindu on their beliefs. They are not required to say that Krishna was less of a manifestation of God than Jesus (at this moment).

Or is there reason to believe in Christianity instead of Judaism? If so, what is it?

The same principal applies. Judaism isn't going to convert to Christianity unless evolutionary routes were to lead them to that result. As far as I believe, the world will come to accept Jesus. The reason why I believe that is because all of my studies have led me to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, and that it fits in perfectly with the history of God's involvement with the world (e.g., the mustard seed principle). But, that is a different thread.

[*]Ramanujan is an interesting case. But we only glorify his intuition because we were able to verify the truth of his work independently. If we had no idea whether what he said had sound mathematical proofs to them, we would not be extolling his "intuition"--we wouldn't know that he had one.

This is why I brought up Ramanujan. His case is thoroughly documented by those who's opinions would be trusted in the modern sense, and it is mathematics which we are discussing which, to most people, is as true as any field. In fact, if mathematics isn't 'true', then physics is also in doubt since theories are based on the soundness of mathematical theorems.

[*]This is the thing with intuition--many people have many different ones. Some have the intuition that a different god exists, a fundamentally different god. What exactly is wrong with their intuition? What do we do when people have fundamentally different intuitions and there is no independent way to verify whose is right?

I put in italics your last sentence, since this seems to me the crux of our disagreement. My position is that you don't have to verify claims for those claims to be believed (i.e., as an act of justification for belief). If it was so that the doctine of verificationism was the only justification for a belief, then in my opinion a good deal of scientific beliefs should be trashed. Popper, of course, is famous for trashing verificationism (the love strategy of the positivists), and he went for falsificationism (which has also since been shown to be fallible). Hence, it is not a matter of promoting verificationism or falsificationism. Rather, it is a matter of pragmatism. The pragmatic explanation, that is it's utility, is the only justified requirement for a belief. Now, if you say then that rationalism will be thrown out the window if pragmatism is *fully accepted*, then I say no because rationalism is just another form of pragmatism, and that it is a very important aspect of pragmatism. So, as long as a view doesn't conflict with a pragmatic use of rationalism, then you won't run into much problems (generally speaking).

In the case of the conflict with quantum theory (QM, QCD, QED) and relativity theory (GR/SR), these theories have been in conflict for over 70 years. Seventy years! It might as well be 3500 years because the principal is that a conflict is a conflict. What I'm saying is that you don't see QM taught any differently than elucidated by Heisenberg, Born, Bohr, etc. And you don't see SR or GR taught any differently than elucidated by Einstein. The fact of the matter is that you could step into any classroom on quantum mechanics or special relativity tomorrow morning, and every single aspect of the two theories will be taught as fact. True, tomorrow someone could come along and show that Lorenzian symmetries are only violated at the quantum, but they won't admit to that right now.

You say it is reasoning that is at work that will decide the two issues. Of course, reasoning is at work, but it is not the only determination. There are unknown and unpredictable experiments that have nothing to do with the conflicts (or at least in the mind of the experimenters) that could possibly affect how this debate is settled. In other words, there is something unknown about how these conflicts will be settled. There's a kind of scientific evolutionism at work which isn't necessarily mysterious, but it isn't exactly a well-defined route that has all the tailmarks of laid out reasoning either. Science is simply not done that way, and it works just fine.

What I'm saying about religion is the same thing, except instead of using the scientific method to justify itself, it uses Ramanujan-type intuitive argument to justify itself. You say that intuitive reasoning is not always effective, difficult to know who's right. But, that's not true. Intuitive disagreements have a way of working themselves out just like scientific disagreements. It's just the way they are worked out is left to other people (which often happens in science), and it is those other people's intuitive reasoning that decides the issue.

What you need to consider is that the scientific method is not holy to me. I don't acknowledge the scientific method as they only one and true way to knowledge about the world. It seems at first in this discussion that I need to convince you that religion must prove it is right. But, we've already agreed that science itself does not put itself in that position of being 'right'. It puts itself in the position of being 'approximately true', and even that is seriously questioned by antireaslists such as Barrett. I'm not going along with the antirealists (which, if I did, this would further frustrate you, I'm sure). However, I feel perfectly justified in looking at the intuitive method, believing that intuitive ideas correct themselves with intuition (and even science can kick in and help, believe it or not). So, I'm left here puzzled as to why you think only the scientific method is reliable when Ramanujan, Euler, and Jacobi were the three top mathematicians (according to Hardy), and these used intuitive means to get to where they were.

Suppose, for example, you have some mathematical intuitions about some theorem, and others have radically conflicting intuitions about the same matter. And suppose no proof exists yet either way. (I don't know, on the Reimann-Zeta function or something.) Do you get to appeal to the strength of your intuition as an argument that you must be right? If so, why don't the contrary mathematicians get to do the same? If not, then you don't have an argument to give either way--right? You have to appeal to things other than intuition to settle the matter.

Later, more and more intuitive results will emerge, and then someone will come along and say "hey, that Reimann-Zeta function by spetey has something wrong with it...". That is how the intuitive process corrects itself. If you go off the path, then the results of later mathematicians starts to look funny, and that's when people start looking at what went wrong. This is how religion works. For example, the Hebrews were taken captive to Babylon, and they said "hey, that Jeremiah guy might have been right...". The whole religion digs up the writings of Jeremiah, and then they start doing an inventory about themselves and their beliefs. The process of intuitive direction is corrected, and they have advanced their evolution of ideas. They take a step closer to the Hindus, if you prefer.

Of course you can find and appeal to traits unique to the history of the Abrahamic tradition, but I don't see why those guarantee that truth will result.

Regional misplacement is a very significant reason as to why species evolve. If humans would have stayed in Africa (warm climate, etc), then I wonder if there would have been the kind of evolution that occurred. Now, I'm not going against the 'out of Africa' hypothesis. I'm only saying that evolution does better when it leaves its local terrain and encounters new environments. It leads to greater stress on the gene pool, and leads to more evolutionary events.

In the case of the Jews going to Babylon (and then the Persians coming in with their Zoroasterianism religion), the situation was very similar to biological evolution. They were very exposed to other intuitive processes and the way another totally different culture with a completely different evolutionary heritage came to their intuitive beliefs, and this, combined with the loss of the homeland knowing they needed to listen rather than convert, made them receptive to new meme pools of another very bright culture. This has significant impact on the development of intuitive ideas. Had Ramanujan been paired with another intuitive mind, such as Euler (alive of course), then who knows what they could have accomplished. It might have been unbelievable results. However, even Ramanujan benefitted greatly from being taken out of India and exposed to the Cambridge mathematicians and according to all information, it greatly influenced Ramanujan in positive ways that did not reduce his intuitive approach (i.e., Hardy put a priority that he didn't want to interfere with Ramanujan's approach to mathematics).

[*]how this proves that intuition is a reliable process (is there evidence that the brain is fractal in nature? Is there reason to think fractals are key to intuition? Are you suggesting that we know the Abrahamic God exists because a tiny "self-similar" god is in our heads?)
[*]how, even if intuition is somehow thereby a reliable process, the intuitions of the Abrahamic tradition outweigh the intuitions of other religious traditions.

No, I'm suggesting the Abrahamic God exists because there have been many, many Ramanujan's in the Hebrew-Christian faith, and their collective works combined with "them heading to England" did some pretty amazing stuff. I'm not saying that other religions lack Ramanujan's either, but let's face it, when Ramanujan went to Cambridge his mathematics was exposed and it changed the mathematical world. Had he stayed in his homeland, the world would not have had access to his math. Similarly, if the Hebrews had never left Palestine or the northern tribe taken to Assyria, then I'm not sure how indepth their religion would have been. The prophets were treated as prophets (e.g., Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc) because of their intuitive perception of what was occurring to them, and what would occur if they didn't seek an intuitive based life, would have been ignored. Huge parts of the Hebrew Bible were written as a result of these two events. I think chances are very high that such a religion would never have evolved further.

[spetey]

Hi harvey1 (and any lurkers out there, the existence of which I also doubt...!). Sorry I haven't been back in a few days! I'm in a play that opens Friday, and tech week is always busy...

You know, I think you're right harvey1--this thread is winding down. Do you say, then, that at base the position of Christianity relies on an "intuition"? If so, I'm satisfied. I tend to call this "faith" rather than "intuition", but I don't think much hangs on the difference for me--the main point is that when confronting those who don't have that faith (or intuition) already, nothing can be done to convince them. This is all I mean when I say there are no "reasons" to believe in the Abrahamic God over the Hindu gods. I guess I use 'reason' in a somewhat idiosyncratic way according to which they have to be shareable with other rational creatures who disagree. But I see there's a sense of 'reason' where intuition counts, even though it can't be appealed to in an argument.


spetey

[harvey1]

Do you say, then, that at base the position of Christianity relies on an "intuition"?

No, the basis of Christianity relies on the evolution of human thought that makes larger use of intuition-based reasoning over the 'scientific method'.

If so, I'm satisfied. I tend to call this "faith" rather than "intuition"

I don't think they are equivalent terms. Faith, in my view, is a resolve to stick with a certain perspective despite circumstances that might cause doubt for that perspective. Religious faith, is a perspective that is particular to religious beliefs. Doubt, of course, can occur in any situation, and to overcome doubt one would need faith or resolve in their beliefs. Some might lose faith if the doubts were too great, for example.

Intuition is just another form of reasoning - as Ramunujan et al. demonstrated. Paul Dirac, for example, said: "Physical laws should have mathematical beauty and simplicity." This is a criteria that even today drives many physicists to accept string theory. Certainly no one can consider such a view a pure act of faith.

but I don't think much hangs on the difference for me--the main point is that when confronting those who don't have that faith (or intuition) already, nothing can be done to convince them.

This is missing a fundamental point of our discussion. Let's take Dirac for example. He was a genius, no doubt about it. In fact, he was the one who introduced a technique to remove infinities from the first QED equations, and is therefore the father of QED. This technique is called renormalization. Now, renormalization is still a foundation of relativistic quantum theory (and now gauge theories) in order to eliminate unwanted infinities that appear in the equations. But, point of fact, Dirac was never happy with renormalization. He discovered it. He used it to gain his fame. However, he felt it wasn't good physics. Feynman agreed, but it was Dirac who was most unhappy about it. He even said "it is not mathematically legitimate".

Most scientists who use renormalization probably wouldn't ever lose sleep over this technique (they would lose sleep if they were no longer able to use it in the future though...). So, who is right? Well, Dirac and Feynman are looking at the intuitive appeal to renormalization, and this is why they disliked it so. However, it didn't stop science, it only helped science. In fact, nothing you could have said (if you lived at the time and knew Dirac) could have possibly changed his mind about renormalization. Your appeal to all the successful theories notwithstanding, Dirac would have rejected all of your arguments (many of his friends tried to convince Dirac it wasn't so bad to use it while waiting for another approach).

This is an example, but the issue is much more general than this. The truth of the matter is that if you cannot convince someone of an idea by appealing to some intuitive part of their brain, in fact you will convince them of nothing. This is true in science, and it is true in religion, it is true in mathematics.

Now, you might get them to go along with certain elements of your view simply because you can demonstrate certain abilities, but that does not mean you can convert them. Einstein is a good example. From what I gather, Einstein never fully accepted quantum theory as a base theory. Rather, he was not intuitively satisfied with the antirealist aspects of the theory, and he felt that QM would be replaced by another theory. Try as you might, and Bohr tried mightedly, you could not have convinced Einstein that QM didn't need to be replaced. That's not to say it could have been replaced, everybody agrees that's possible, but most scientists today (and even when Einstein was alive), felt QM could well be a foundational theory, in fact, everything we know points to no 'hidden variables' as postulated by Einstein.

I would go so far to say that there is an Einstein and Dirac in each of us on every topic that we hold a belief. If it strikes against your intuition, chances are that you will reject some aspects of a belief, and you will keep your mouth shut while you look for something to substantiate it. This is one of the major reasons why there are so many points of view in the world.

What you are trying to conclude with regard to intuitive beliefs as faith, is just not so. Just because an intuitive belief (e.g., Einstein or Dirac) is stubbornly held, does not mean it is faith based. Rather, it is just as much a part of their reasoning process as their ability to create famous equations. Actually, their unique intuitive perspective is why they created famous equations.

This is all I mean when I say there are no "reasons" to believe in the Abrahamic God over the Hindu gods. I guess I use 'reason' in a somewhat idiosyncratic way according to which they have to be shareable with other rational creatures who disagree. But I see there's a sense of 'reason' where intuition counts, even though it can't be appealed to in an argument.

Even die-hard fundamentalists will strive to think rationally. It is just that their intuitive concepts of rationality are different than say a non-religious fundamentalist, and hence the conflict comes from having a different concept of rationality. But, that doesn't mean that fundamentalists will believe anything that is fundamentalist, or that non-religious fundamentalists will reject everything that is fundamentalist. There are shared intuitive values of rationality, and these shared values are the common ground by which someone changing their mind by argumentation is possible. If you really didn't think religious people were capable of changing their minds, I doubt you would be here spending your valuable time. What you hope, I would imagine, is that you share enough values on rationality, that you can change or influence a perspective with someone reading this now or in the future. However, you cannot do so if you contradict their base of intuitive thought anymore than you would be changed by a fundamentalist argument that didn't strike an intuitive chord with you.

Well, I hope you come back for more discussions. It was fun. Good luck with your play.

[spetey]

Hello old threadbare thread, I'm back to treat you nice again! I had to go away for a while, you see, and establish something of a groundrule for the discussion here:

• It is irresponsible in the context of a debate with someone of opposing views to say "well I can no longer give you reasons for my view, and I can't respond to your reasons against me, but I will just continue to believe anyway."

Now, given that groundrule, that we are seeking reasons we can give each other for our beliefs, I'm still quite curious about why one should believe in the Abrahamic God--what reason is there to believe in such a God that doesn't also straightforwardly apply to Zeus or Vishnu?

Harvey, I believe you'd gotten as far as saying that you believe in God because God directs our ever-changing ideas toward belief in God. You called this the "theistic evolution of ideas". My question for you in particular: what reason do you have to think that the Abrahamic God is directing our ideas, rather than (say) Vishnu, or Zeus, or no deity at all?


spetey

[harvey1]

It is irresponsible in the context of a debate with someone of opposing views to say "well I can no longer give you reasons for my view, and I can't respond to your reasons against me, but I will just continue to believe anyway.

So, does that mean you are an infinitist? That is, a belief that "holds that a belief can only be properly justified by ’an infinite set of non-repeating reasons'" (see Peter Klein review). How else can you hold a position where you must argue for infinity if agreement does not happen along the way (a scary thought for our discussions...)?

Now, given that groundrule, that we are seeking reasons we can give each other for our beliefs, I'm still quite curious about why one should believe in the Abrahamic God--what reason is there to believe in such a God that doesn't also straightforwardly apply to Zeus or Vishnu?

Yes, and we discussed that issue. The evolution of ideas disfavors Zeus because that religion is extinct, therefore the probability is very low it will ever come back. And, as far as Vishnu, I really have no issue with Hindus believing in Vishnu as long as it is a belief that is consistent with our current knowledge of the world. This is also true of the Christian God too.

Harvey, I believe you'd gotten as far as saying that you believe in God because God directs our ever-changing ideas toward belief in God. You called this the "theistic evolution of ideas". My question for you in particular: what reason do you have to think that the Abrahamic God is directing our ideas, rather than (say) Vishnu, or Zeus, or no deity at all?

The Zeus religion is extinct whereas the God of Abraham already encompasses 1/2 of humanity. There's a heck of a population growth rate expected for people of the book as well. So, without even turning to the beliefs themselves, I think there's a strong case that an evolution of ideas will continue to be dominated by the Abrahamic tradition for quite some time.

[spetey]

Hey...

It is irresponsible in the context of a debate with someone of opposing views to say "well I can no longer give you reasons for my view, and I can't respond to your reasons against me, but I will just continue to believe anyway.

So, does that mean you are an infinitist? That is, a belief that "holds that a belief can only be properly justified by ’an infinite set of non-repeating reasons'" (see Peter Klein review). How else can you hold a position where you must argue for infinity if agreement does not happen along the way (a scary thought for our discussions...)?

All I'm claiming is that when there is not disagreement, you have to keep trying to give reasons. I don't think that process would go on forever. I could be wrong. It's worth a try anyway. I'm very glad you've agreed to that process.

Yes, and we discussed that issue. The evolution of ideas disfavors Zeus because that religion is extinct, therefore the probability is very low it will ever come back.

Ah. So if by circumstance a vast majority of Christians died--say, if Muslim extremists manage to nuke most of the Christian world, or if some weird but deadly virus spread from the factories that make communion wafers--then that would prove that Christianity was wrong?

Or, if atheism should continue its trend of becoming more and more popular, that would prove Christianity wrong? Just the fact that it's more popular? It sounds like the way you feel we should determine who is correct in religion is by taking a head count. So should the demographics shift toward the Hindus--as isn't all that unlikely--you will then convert?

And, as far as Vishnu, I really have no issue with Hindus believing in Vishnu as long as it is a belief that is consistent with our current knowledge of the world. This is also true of the Christian God too.

Huh? I didn't ask if you have an "issue" with Hindus. I asked if you had a reason to believe the Abrahamic God exists and Vishnu doesn't. Is it "consistent with our current knowledge of the world" that Vishnu, Ganesh, and all the Hindu gods exist?

The Zeus religion is extinct whereas the God of Abraham already encompasses 1/2 of humanity. There's a heck of a population growth rate expected for people of the book as well. So, without even turning to the beliefs themselves, I think there's a strong case that an evolution of ideas will continue to be dominated by the Abrahamic tradition for quite some time.

Eh, probably for a while anyway, assuming that communion wafer virus never surfaces. And unfortunately astrology looks like it will be around for a long time too. I don't think that's any reason to think astrology is true. I similarly don't think the popularity of Christianity is any reason to think it's true.

I know, you want to say that Christianity will survive and flourish, while astrology will die out. But you see, that begs the question. Why will Christianity flourish? Because it will continue to appeal to the wishful-thinking, uncritical majority who really want there to be an afterlife and a loving God-Father, like Santa Claus only bigger? Or because there are reasons to believe in Christianity? If the latter, I ask again for the umpteenth time: what are they?


spetey

[harvey1]

So, does that mean you are an infinitist? That is, a belief that "holds that a belief can only be properly justified by ’an infinite set of non-repeating reasons'"

All I'm claiming is that when there is not disagreement, you have to keep trying to give reasons. I don't think that process would go on forever. I could be wrong. It's worth a try anyway. I'm very glad you've agreed to that process.

It sure sounds like you subscribe to infinitism. Where in this process of giving reasons does this process terminate with both sides reaching some kind of foundationalist or non-foundationalist set of assumptions?

Yes, and we discussed that issue. The evolution of ideas disfavors Zeus because that religion is extinct, therefore the probability is very low it will ever come back.

Ah. So if by circumstance a vast majority of Christians died--say, if Muslim extremists manage to nuke most of the Christian world, or if some weird but deadly virus spread from the factories that make communion wafers--then that would prove that Christianity was wrong?

Truth in this sense is mind-independent, and something we don't have access to in terms of whether it is true or not. We can talk about reasons for a belief, and I know that's what you want to talk about. But, this is wasting our time since this kind of discussion is dependent on own particular conceptual schemes. I'll say my evidence e within a Christian conceptual scheme C(e), and you'll say, "no", you believe e has a meaning or non-meaning in your particular atheist scheme A(e). We'll go on forever never agreeing since I'll always be confident that C(e) is correct, and you'll always be confident that A(e) is correct.

The way around that problem is to focus on what we can both agree. That's why we took the around the world tour through the land of epistemology. Even though we both disagree on where knowledge comes from and we disagree between a 'strong fallibilist' or 'weak fallibilist' position, we still hold many views in common. Therefore, it is easier I hope, for you to see why an evolution of ideas is not nearly the radical claim as Christianity (where our conceptual schemes are completely different). Now, when I cite evidence e, I'm stating it withing an epistemic scheme that at least you can translate to your scheme (E1 --> E2). So, in a sense, I was hoping to succeed at least on one level here. If I could provide my evidence as E1(e) and not as C(e), then our chances of communicating is much better. That doesn't mean you'll agree, but you will understand how a reasonable person could think that ideas that go extinct are no longer part of the "gene pool" of thoughts which humans will form "true beliefs."

So, to answer your question from an E1(e) perspective (and not C(e) perspective), "yes", beliefs that go extinct or near extinction have a less likelihood of being true. That doesn't mean they aren't true (fallibilist concepts prevail here), but extinct notions are less likely to make a resurgence back into the "gene pool" of ideas - with the ones that survive as moving closer to the truth as they age. The three different Abrahamic traditions are all surviving for thousands of years and they dominate 1/2 of the worlds population, and as we discussed, interacting systems tend toward a homogenous set of beliefs. Therefore, the Abrahamic traditions are in good standing to be included in that homogeneous set of beliefs. If the Peircean view of truth is right, it would give support to the idea that the Abrahamic view is right.

Or, if atheism should continue its trend of becoming more and more popular, that would prove Christianity wrong? Just the fact that it's more popular? It sounds like the way you feel we should determine who is correct in religion is by taking a head count. So should the demographics shift toward the Hindus--as isn't all that unlikely--you will then convert?

It's a more objective truth indicator, although its a fallibilist one. I should say by the way, if you are in a particular conceptual scheme you don't and shouldn't have to accept the belief because it conforms to popular movement. The perspective I'm speaking about is outside any one particular conceptual scheme. This Peircean-like dynamics of belief would have an effect on all beliefs - not just religious ones. For those who disagree that the popularity matters in this instance, all I can say is that they should at least agree that any 'objective' likelihood (i.e., likelihood as it is perceived outside any one conceptual scheme) is not in their favor.

And, as far as Vishnu, I really have no issue with Hindus believing in Vishnu as long as it is a belief that is consistent with our current knowledge of the world. This is also true of the Christian God too.

Huh? I didn't ask if you have an "issue" with Hindus. I asked if you had a reason to believe the Abrahamic God exists and Vishnu doesn't. Is it "consistent with our current knowledge of the world" that Vishnu, Ganesh, and all the Hindu gods exist?

Under fundamentalist rules it is not. However, both religions have strong non-fundamentalist currents, so it is entirely possible that an image of God that includes key aspects of Yahweh and Vishnu will be incorporated together in a way that 23rd century Hindus and Christians will go to the churemple (or, church-temple) together.

Eh, probably for a while anyway, assuming that communion wafer virus never surfaces. And unfortunately astrology looks like it will be around for a long time too. I don't think that's any reason to think astrology is true. I similarly don't think the popularity of Christianity is any reason to think it's true.

What is? Sooner or later your beliefs must terminate somewhere, or you have to accept something strange as infinitism which means that you're only right if you can't ever prove it (since infinity is a little longer than our lifetime). Either way, reasons only go so far in establishing something as true. If many people are right about the obstacle of agreement that conceptual schemes present, then the situation is much more gloomy. The Peircean-like perspective provides at least an objective way to look at likelihood of a belief being true, and as far as I'm concerned that's better than nothing at all.

I know, you want to say that Christianity will survive and flourish, while astrology will die out. But you see, that begs the question. Why will Christianity flourish? Because it will continue to appeal to the wishful-thinking, uncritical majority who really want there to be an afterlife and a loving God-Father, like Santa Claus only bigger? Or because there are reasons to believe in Christianity? If the latter, I ask again for the umpteenth time: what are they?

Ideas ultimately prevail in a Peircean-like scheme because they are true. The more certain ideas prevail, the more they are likely to be true, but they must also meet some key epistemic standards which have also been proven through Peircean dynamics.