You Know You're A Fundamentalist If...

Originally posted by Digi
It makes a certain amount of sense that non-religious would have the most rounded religious knowledge though. Theists are, largely, accepting a single doctrine, whereas atheists are rejecting ALL of them. At least a cursory understanding of what you're rejecting seems a prerequisite for being able to call yourself against it.

I find the knowledge of those rejecting "all of it" to be lacking, as well. Rife with ignorance, myths, and long-since destroyed arguments plague the common atheist/anti-theist. It is only at the academic level do we start to see knowledge so dense and delicious as to make things interesting.

It is quite true, as all knowledge can be seen as relative and subjective, that the common atheist may actually know more, academically, about more religions than one deciding upon a religion as a youngster. But is such a comparison an "apples to apples" comparison? I do not think so. The proper comparison would be one to a person that had searched through various religions to 'find' what they were looking for. Those two would be closer to equivalent. You would find the searcher of religions to be more versed in religions than the one rejecting it, generally. This is my opinion and observation, of course.

Originally posted by dadudemon
I find the knowledge of those rejecting "all of it" to be lacking, as well. Rife with ignorance, myths, and long-since destroyed arguments plague the common atheist/anti-theist. It is only at the academic level do we start to see knowledge so dense and delicious as to make things interesting.

It is quite true, as all knowledge can be seen as relative and subjective, that the common atheist may actually know more, academically, about more religions than one deciding upon a religion as a youngster. But is such a comparison an "apples to apples" comparison? I do not think so. The proper comparison would be one to a person that had searched through various religions to 'find' what they were looking for. Those two would be closer to equivalent. You would find the searcher of religions to be more versed in religions than the one rejecting it, generally. This is my opinion and observation, of course.

But it's a similar perusal of various religions. Atheists just reach a different conclusion. Someone who leaves Christianity, and that's it, is probably not going to identify as an atheist. The atheists will be those who reject all religions, which requires at least a cursory understanding of it.

You're right that the one searching through everything to "find" something is probably, on average, going to know more about religions. But the comparison here is between atheists and theists on average, not atheists vs. the statistical margins of theists that have researched numerous religions. It's just selective data comparison at that point.

You're also assuming that someone who becomes an atheist is looking into a religion solely to be able to reject it. I would see a "searcher A" and "searcher B" as looking into it in roughly equal amounts...one just happens to reach a different conclusion at the end.

But my point goes beyond that to general intelligence, not just specific to religious knowledge. Higher general intelligence in non-religious actually has greater support in terms of volume of credible evidence. You're also very aware of the data for atheist/Jewish religious knowledge. So in either case, there's credible evidence to refer to.

Perhaps the greatest reason why I don't buy into anything religious and why I'm not convinced by any of it is the fact that (with some rare exceptions) religious belief systems don't contain actual inductive or abductive arguments as to why any of it is true and rely on the charisma of the founder(s) to start up and subsequent societal indoctrination to keep going.

At least Descartes tried to prove God's existence, he didn't just write 'God exists' and expect people to believe him.

Though on Descartes, it seems to me like everything that follows Cogito Ergo Sum is pretty weak and by the time he gets to the "God is real and good, ergo no evil demon" he's just grasping at straws.