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jhuffman comments on Theism, Wednesday, and Not Being Adopted - Less Wrong
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I'm not sure why you are so dismissive of your first footnote. The question of being adopted is a testable hypothesis. Whether you actually test it or not, you do not need to rely on your trust of your parents to know the truth here. Since the claim that you are not adopted is not particularly extraordinary there is little reason to actually go and test it. Also, knowing the truth here one or way or the other probably would change very little about how you live your day-to-day life.
Religious claims are extraordinary and if true would have a profound impact on how you should live your day-to-day life. Many "religious believers" are in fact so good at partitioning that this is not the case - they do not live as though their beliefs are true.
Yes, I will make value judgments concerning the merits and characters of both those people and people who "apply reason" in an irrationally discriminatory matter.
Yes, this is the crux of the difference between the two scenarios. We accept many things from authority figures at face value, but they fall into two categories, testable and untestable, and we can easily figure out which is which.
I'm not sure those categories are as meaningful as you think. How many scientific findings are you capable of verifying personally, right now? And believing you're capable of verifying them, "in principle," is quite different altogether...