lsparrish comments on Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable - Less Wrong

124 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 August 2007 03:21AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (310)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: lsparrish 16 July 2011 07:13:31PM *  21 points [-]

I grew up with lots of intelligent people who believed the Bible. Chick tracts are considered to be slightly exaggerated for comic effect, but the same basic premises actually constrain anticipation for many believers today: heaven or hell after death, demon possession as the cause of (at least some) mental illnesses, angelic protection as a result of prayer, instant healing as a result of prayer. There's actually a robust, sophisticated, highly self-respecting culture (or set of overlapping subcultures) of biblical literalism in the US.

To be honest, I have a hard time reconciling the idea of intellectual integrity with someone who claims to be religious and yet freely admits that their own religion's myths are not true.