What true accounts would you suggest religions are based upon?

Well in modern times today, eye witness testimony still carries much weight, and still being used to determine truth in a court of law. So therefore, the eye witness testimony of hundreds of commoners, including the inner circle of disciples and apostles who saw Jesus Christ in flesh and blood and attest to his miracles in person, plus the third party accounts by roman and jewish independent observers and historians alike.

I have never heard of any true historical proof of the existence of Jesus whatsoever. No eyewitness accounts, no Roman accounts, no Jewish accounts, etc.

And to top it off, his story ends with him rising from the dead!8-))

It’s hard to be sure of anything that happened so long ago, but there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence, and scholars almost universally agree that there was at least a person by that name doing things in the area at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of... are two good places to start.

Anecdotal evidence? Two thousand years later? "Consider the source!"

The evidence which I described as ‘anecdotal’ starts a mere twenty or thirty years after Jesus’s death, and comes from sources who didn’t have any particular interest in promoting the Christian agenda. It seems that I may be unlikely to convince you, but if you’ve already got a strong opinion on this it might help to come at it from the other direction and start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory#No_independ... first.

Personally, I don’t really think it matters much either way (the events of a few decades being much less influential than the following two millennia of activities by people who did believe he existed), so I default to taking the word of people who’ve actually studied the matter in depth; but as he was one of several Roman-era Messiah claimants wandering around (we know of at least two others, and there were probably more whose names never made it into the histories we have) it seems reasonable that the group which happened to catch on would have also originally coalesced around an actual person.

You can be easily disabused of this ignorant view by reading the wikipedia page for the historicity of jesus. Jesus mysticism is a fringe, crackpot view in historical scholarship. People adopt it because it suits their priors not because it has the weight of literally any scholarship or investigation behind it. It is , simply put, a ridiculous proposal in the light of what is known about the NT.

My understanding (from reading a book called "who wrote the Bible") is scholars generally agree Jesus existed, but out of the 5 main objective criteria for "did a character exist", he only satisfies 3 of the 5. IIRC, the fact that he plays so prominently in modern life acts as an effect size: in the 3 categories he can be confirmed, he is off the charts.

So it is generally accepted he existed, even if the criteria used to judge other historical characters is loosened for JC.

Edit - but please try to not say things like "ignorant" or "disabused" unless you meant to attack OP. Those are pretty loaded words for a collegial discussion.

Even bart erhman has published in his hostoricity

Existence of historical Jesus has been well established. First century Jewish historian Josephus and Roman historian Tacitus wrote about him... For eyewitness, you can find first person account in the New Testaments.

> First century Jewish historian Josephus

Two mentions. One is almost certainly fabricated, or at least heavily rewritten by later Christians.

> For eyewitness, you can find first person account in the New Testaments.

The Gospels aren't first person accounts. The closest you get to first person accounts of Jesus in the NT are brief mentions of Paul's conversion experiences in his epistles. The Gospels probably draw on first person accounts to some extent, but they themselves aren't first person accounts.

There's a very strong case to be made for the historicity of Jesus, but you make a misleading one by leaving out some very important context regarding Josephus and mischaracterizing the accounts of Jesus in the NT.

> No eyewitness accounts, no Roman accounts, no Jewish accounts, etc.

debate the authenticity all you want, but what exactly do you think the new testament is?

The criteria with which you dismiss the historical Jesus is also applicable to any other historical figure of antiquity. By your measure, no one without a photograph, video, or audio recording can be counted as anything other than a myth. The historical Jesus is very real (as is His Divinity, but that is beyond the scope of this response).

Jesus is ahistorical - no documents, no records. Everything about him written long after he died.

In contrast Pontius Pilate is historical - there are extant documents with his name and title.

Simply b/c Pontius Pilate was real doesn't mean Jesus Christ was real. And it certainly doesn't mean he rose from the dead!

So you agree then that documented eye witness reports of non-Christian gods prove that those gods also exist? That the Christian god is just one of many?

Also, who was there to witness god creating the universe? Any eye witness account of that? And if not surely that part of the bible is just made up?

What religious accounts can you prove are not true?

The default state of a human is an agnostic. If you are born and nobody tells you the Good Word, you live your entire life without religion. If someone comes to you one day and tells you a man lives in the clouds with a deep-seated interest in your sex life, the onus is then on you to convince the agnostic. The burden of proof is on you.

If I told you the story of our lord and savior Sauron, could you prove to me it's not true? Could you prove to me any of the Lord of the Rings didn't happen?

We don't generally require proving a negative.

>The default state of a human is an agnostic. If you are born and nobody tells you the Good Word, you live your entire life without religion.

There are some interesting arguments that we evolved to become hard-wired for religion. Fear during early evolution was probably the driver for this, all the earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, death by germs etc. We invented religion as a means to explain stuff - the solar cycle, disease, etc, etc. Turns out those explanations were wrong, but our biology is still the same ..

I'm with you there, I believe humans did evolve a capacity for religiosity. I'm pretty sure that a child that grows up on an island however isn't going to spontaneously regenerate the new testament haha.

No but they will believe some form of religion. Christianity and others survived because they were just able to compete against other religions in that area and time period.

Look at the context of this discussion. The claim was made that all religion is based on misinformation.

I argued that that claim is wrong.

Someone responded saying, "find one true account that religion is based on". I responded asking whether they could find an account that is proven false.

The context here is important--I'm not arguing my belief in religion, or that you must believe in religion. I'm arguing that not all religion is based on misinformation. I brought up my question to point out that his question is irrelevant, and he can't prove anything to be false, therefore he can't prove that it's all misinformation.

If I see a bird fly over my head, then claim to you, "a bird flew over my head", I can't prove it. Neither can you disprove it. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, or that my claim isn't real, or that my claim is misinformation.

~2000 years ago people witnessed Christ die and some claim they saw Him come back to life. They wrote about it. Those letters still exist today. I agree that this information alone is not enough to justify someone changing their life to believe the letters--merely existing doesn't "prove" that what's in them is true. But pretend for a second it really did happen. What evidence/proof do you think you'd find that could prove it?

This is honestly getting watered down a lot though, with people jumping in without reading everything. I don't blame them--I do the same on HN.

If someone wishes to discuss why I personally believe, and what I believe in, that's a different thing altogether that I'm happy to discuss but not here on HN.

I'd argue that the problem with this analogy is that a bird flying overhead is something we know is possible and indeed common. According to all scientific knowledge and evidence, resurrection is not possible. So absent significant evidence, it's not logical to believe that this happened. We also know that religion has historically provided numerous benefits to societies, allowing for trust, cooperation, and trade in societies that predate effective government. So it is logical to assume that such belief systems would develop, and that societies that developed them would prevail over those that didn't, even in the absence of supernatural evidence.

Given that religion contradicts what we know about the physical world, and that its existence is explained without reliance on the supernatural, it's not logical to believe its supernatural claims.

So if something cannot be observed by you, within your 15-100 years of life (assuming you fit within that range), that simply means it's impossible for it to have occurred? And that any claims otherwise are misinformation?

No one claims that someone is resurrected every day. The claims of Christianity are that it occurred once, and that it was a miracle.

The thought that it's impossible for something to have occurred unless it's commonly overserved isn't sound. There is no such requirement. There are plenty of rare events that occur, with and without scientific explanation.

Update: Perhaps here's what we're missing. There is information, misinformation, and then there's claims that cannot be proven or disproved. I do not believe that all things are false until proven true. I believe that Christianity, and many other religions, can be neither proven or disproven using modern science. It is neither misinformation or information. It is a belief.

> I do not believe that all things are false until proven true. I believe that Christianity, and many other religions, can be neither proven or disproven using modern science. It is neither misinformation or information. It is a belief.

Where we disagree is that you think that a 2000 year old text that's been translated 7 or 8 times and by what we would consider today to be idiots (human IQ has increased dramatically over time, in 1910 alone the IQ midpoint would be today's 70, which is a full standard deviation lower) - should be given the benefit of the doubt and be granted a reverse burden of proof. Idiots mind you who would have you burned at the stake for the laptop you're replying on.

The scriptures should be approached analytically with modern techniques. Does anything in there line up with observable reality? No. Is there a plausible explanation? No. Ergo, we should assume its false unless we discover some evidence that it might be true.

The challenge with doing that is religions rely on indoctrinating the youth before they're capable of making rational evaluations and play to our evolutionary weaknesses (the need for an explanation).

> There are plenty of rare events that occur, with and without scientific explanation.

Indeed but I'm not going to recommend telling a 4 year old I've just dunked under water about them based on a book written by an idiot 2000 years ago.

> It is neither misinformation or information. It is a belief.

It's a myth. Myths are fine, but shouldn't be presented as fact. And they certainly shouldn't be true until proven false.

By this token, until you prove otherwise, the whole world was started on a giant turtle. [1]

[1] https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/turtle-isl....

I think calling ancient people idiots is ingenuine. Just because you know trigonometry and someone 2000 years ago didn't know trigonometry doesn't mean that person is an idiot...

I agree there are many strangeties that are in the Bible that don't seem to be plausible, and we should not accept them as fact, due to the nature of translating ancient texts and the corrupting influences of government and religions. You are right that certain stories shouldn't just be believed or accepted without evidence. But you are wrong to say that there is nothing in the scriptures that lines up with observable reality.

The Bible contains many many stories about Human behavior and emotions. Mob violence, rape, drunkeness, greed, corruption, and contain many good lessons on understanding these behaviors in order to overcome them. These are behaviors we observe in our everyday lives.

There are great teachings in the Bible if that is what you are looking for. If you look in the Bible to try and find every falsehood or inconsistency you will never actual find anything of value to your life.

"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter." - Proverbs 25:2

> I think calling ancient people idiots is ingenuine. Just because you know trigonometry and someone 2000 years ago didn't know trigonometry doesn't mean that person is an idiot...

Nothing to do with trig, it's based on IQ assessments. [1] Human intelligence has increased dramatically as a function of nutrition, as a function of living in cities, as a function of education and so on. It's even happening to raccoons who live in cities. [2]

It's not their fault, but compared to modern humans, they were big dummies.

> There are great teachings in the Bible if that is what you are looking for. If you look in the Bible to try and find every falsehood or inconsistency you will never actual find anything of value to your life.

Yeah, it's a modern Aesop's Fables. It's a bunch of stories, some made up, some collected from experience, which are used to provide guidance to living your life.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence

[2] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200416-how-city-life-ca...

You are making the case that if I cannot disprove any religious text, then by default, it's information and not misinformation even though it flies in the face of observable reality. That isn't really how we look at things.

Everything is misinformation until proven otherwise.

The bigger and grander the claim, the higher the burden of proof. With a bird, the claim ain't exactly grand, and I'm willing to take you at your word. On the other hand if you told me a bird flew over your head, turned into a plane and wrote "I'm Your Lord and Savior" in skywriting, well, I'm gonna need more than just your word on it.

See my response to tempestn.

It doesn't really matter if those events long time ago actually happened, and were interpreted correctly at the time, with the knowledge people had at the time.

What matters is do you today believe heaven and hell are real, and will you go to either one when you die? Will you be judged by some know-it-all entity, and what rules does (s)he judge you by? Do you need to follow the roman, greek, egyptian, viking, moslim, christian, catholic, protestant, ..., rules to go to heaven? And if you follow the christian rules, and god turns out to be allah, will you go to hell?

The onus is on the person making the initial claim; you can't make an assertion without evidence and then expect people who disagree to prove the negative. Could say the same thing about claims of rigged elections.

See my response to arcticbull.

What does it mean to “have faith”?

Having faith can be applied generally. To me, this is the philosophy of Christ that taught me the most. Do you have faith in humanity? Do you have hope that people will choose goodness over wickedness? I do. History has taught me that humans move forward. I have faith in humanity that progress will continue. I believe that righteousness and justice can be the fuel to drive us forward. If I didn't have any faith what would I have? If everyone was a cynic, where would we be? Certainly much worse off than we see ourselves today.

My point is not that having faith is wrong or bad, rather, that to believe in the kinds of myths many religions espouse requires faith.

It is impossible to believe in the teachings of the Bible without having faith. I'm sure you bring an equal amount of faith when reading other stories. You don't? Why not?

Belief or trust in something. Oftentimes that something is not something proven using scientific methods.

That's exactly right. You can see how well the above compliments misinformation right?

Go ahead and read any religious text (I've read many!). Nearly every culture has one or many myths. Do you believe them to be fact? Or do you only believe your religious text to be true? And if so, why?

I don't mean to take a stance against religion in general. I agree with the above commenter that the impact of religion in a general sense does seem to be positive! A shared mythos can be a very powerful way of building community. This can have very real positive affects on a population, and, depending on that mythos, on an individual. But to suggest that religion doesn't require "faith" (i.e. believing in something despite no evidence) is... well... naïve.

Is something false merely because it can't be proven?

I've gone through other forks on this thread. Here's my conclusion. No religion that I'm aware of can be proven or disproved based on scientific fact or observation. Yet that does not mean they are all false or true. One could very well be true. Or they could be false. But simply because we can't prove it doesn't mean it must be false. You cannot claim "misinformation" without proving its false. I cannot (and am not) claiming it "information" without proven it true. Its neither.

There is a different question to ask, which is how and why people choose to believe in religion provided that they cannot be proven. I have my reasons, my personal evidences, that have led me to believe my religion is true. I also believe that you can learn for yourself whether or not my religion is true. If you wish to learn more about my experience and what has led me to believe, I'll share it in a venue that encourages respect and understanding. Unfortunately online forums rarely provide that.

I am honestly not trying to argue whether one specific myth is true or not. You are missing my point.

There are many myths from many cultures that seek describe where we came from or how we ought to live. For example, nearly every culture has some story about the creation of man/the earth. They all cannot possibly be true. I'm sure we can agree that man/the earth wasn't created as many times as there are stories about it.

So you are making claims about truth! How can you square the above with your belief in your own religion using the thought paradigm you outlined above? By claiming that your creation story is true (or as you may put it, "not proven false") you are also making a claim that all others are not true. A claim you have just argued cannot be made... It's all a fallacy.

The most interesting question worth answering is: Why do you believe the myths that you do?

Statistically speaking, the answer is because it is the one your parents believed. It's hard to explain away the eerie correlation between a person's religion and where they were born. Why is it that a child born in the Middle-East is so likely to follow Islam, a child in the West Christianity, in India Hindu, etc. etc.? It's almost as if these religions are a product of the people, not some greater truth.

And for what it's worth, I see no meaningful difference between something that is false and something that cannot be proven to be true:

"There are 2,145,124,152 birds in flight above the earth right now." - do you believe me?

"Jesus Christ just came down and told me personally that Hindu is the one true religion" - do you believe me?

"I just saw a red 2018 Toyota 4Runner drive past my house" - do you believe me?

"One of the above claims it true" - do you believe me?

What role does "faith" play when appraising the above questions? Are you applying "faith" in the same way to the above as you do to your religion? Probably not.

I agree, I cannot see how all the stories could be true. I believe one to be true, and the rest to be false. Does that mean I have scientific proof that one is true? No, and I have never claimed to. Does that mean I'm asking you to believe what I believe, simply because I believe it? No, I'd never do that. But this is beyond the point.

My arguments on this thread have been about the claim that all religion is based on "misinformation". I feel a bit like a broken record here, but in order for something to be misinformation it must be proven false. Claims can either be proven true, proven false, or simply not proven true or false. There are 3 states--not 2. Religions fall into the last category, where the claims have not been proven or disproved. It's not misinformation until it's proven false. It's also not information until it's proven true. Which gets back to the key differences between faith and scientific fact. Faith is belief in something not (yet) proven true or false. Belief in science is based on something science has proven true or false. You're trying to take the way you approach science, likely because it's what you've been surrounded by in your recent life, and force it upon religious views. It doesn't work, because the basis for faith in a religion implies that the thing isn't proven using science.

> Statistically speaking, the answer is because it is the one your parents believed. It's hard to explain away the eerie correlation between a person's religion and where they were born. Why is it that a child born in the Middle-East is so likely to follow Islam, a child in the West Christianity, in India Hindu, etc. etc.? It's almost as if these religions are a product of the people, not some greater truth.

What environment have you been raised in? Western world, analytically educated? Atheism is a religion. It's the belief that there is no higher power--but it's still a belief... based on faith (not science). Science has neither proven or disproved the existence of God. Agnostic is also a religion based on faith. Whatever your actual beliefs or lack of beliefs are, it's not based on scientific fact.

The word "myth" implies the account is proven false (through science). It's not accurate to use, unless you're able to prove the religious accounts false.

I'm not asking you to believe me. I'm not asking you to believe in my religion. I'm simply stating that claiming all religions are based on misinformation cannot be done until they're all proven false.

You've made great leaps about why I believe without understanding me, my faith, or the process I went through (and continue going through) to obtain and keep my faith. You can make as many assumptions as you want, but they haven't been accurate and likely won't be if you continue to do so.

> What role does "faith" play when appraising the above questions? Are you applying "faith" in the same way to the above as you do to your religion? Probably not.

I do not have faith in any of the claims you've made, no matter how reasonable. I'm not arguing that any one of them is true or false.

> The most interesting question worth answering is: Why do you believe the myths that you do?

I agree, this is the more interesting question. But it's not something I wish to discuss on a public forum. It's deeply personal. If you are genuinely interested, I'd happily share it in a different venue.

You are arguing that religious myths[0] cannot be claimed to be true or false while simultaneously claiming to believe your religious myths to be true and all others false. I was hoping to lead you here without saying it explicitly, but that is what I was getting at when I asked what it meant to "have faith". It means to hold a belief that cannot be rationalized.

With the above inconsistency in mind we can explore what it means to "prove something false":

https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-mean-to-prove-something-f...

The top answer here summarize the current state of our understanding. The key terms on which to focus are "inconsistent" and "contradiction". Can you see how believing in something that cannot be rationalized is inconsistent or a contradiction? It is the belief in a religion itself that is the contradiction. It doesn't matter whether any specific event can be proved true or false (again that is not my point). My point is that "having faith" is to recognize this contradiction and choose to believe anyway. By simply "having faith" you are, yourself, proving it false.

That isn't to say having faith is a bad thing! I will again commend organized religion as a valuable tool to both the individual and society. People are not rational. Feelings are not rational. I genuinely believe that the good that comes from religion outweighs the bad. That doesn't mean I can't recognize it for what it is...

And I am not an atheist! I guess it depends what you mean be "God" though... I don't believe in any region as an ideology, but I do believe in religion as an institution (I do go to church on occasion): Was there a person name Jesus? Probably. Did he inspire good things? Mostly likely. Are the lessons we learn from his story valuable? Absolutely! Did he turn water into wine? No. Did he rise from the dead? Of course not.

In this way I believe in religion, but I don't "have faith".

[0] The word "myth" does not always denote something that is false.

This conversation is getting a bit technical :D.

> You are arguing that religious myths[0] cannot be claimed to be true or false

I'd correct this to say "You are arguing that religious myths[0] cannot be claimed to be true or false [using science]"

> It means to hold a belief that cannot be rationalized.

I think you're ignoring the possibility for people to believe things for reasons other than science. If I have a spiritual experience that leads me to believe something is true, I have reason to believe, yet I cannot prove it to others. Does that make it rational? I think it could be argued that it is, especially for the person who had the experience.

I'm okay with "myth" being used then.

Thank you for the respect you've demonstrated. I value discussions like this.

Humanity has yet to find a greater way to seek objective truth than the scientific method.

This discussion started as an exploration of the claim that [all] religion is based on misinformation. And I can see, upon reading that word, how someone could interpret "misinformation" to connote a negativity towards religion. I personally do not see it that way, rather, as an accurate and objective description of the phenomenon. This is because believing in religion requires faith, and to "have faith" means [look at discussion above].

In other words religion is a paradigm based on information that cannot be proved true (not just that it hasn't been proved true). I would classify the above as misinformation -- information that cannot be believed (i.e. rationalized). Choosing to believe anyway is each individual's prerogative, but I don't think it changes how we should talk about it.

I don't mean this as a critique to living a life of faith. Though I personally cannot "have faith" (I cannot believe a person walked on water), it doesn't mean I don't believe in God or the values that many religions profess. It just means that "God" means something different to me. It probably means something different to everyone. As you say, "It's personal".

I’d say faith can be belief in anything you haven’t seen yourself, including thing done through scientific methods. I have to have faith in scientist that they know what they are doing and correctly reported their results and in the committees that review them.