Chapter 2: The Fact of Religious
Diversity
This chapter supports my first contention—that people
who are located in distinct geographical areas around the globe overwhelmingly
adopt and justify a wide diversity of mutually exclusive religious faiths due
to their particular upbringing and shared cultural heritage. This is the Religious Diversity Thesis (RDVT), and it is a well-established fact in today’s world.
The problem of religious diversity cries out for reasonable explanation,
something that faith has not provided so far. Attempts to mitigate it or
explain it, as we’ll see, either fail to take it seriously or explain religion
itself away.
Here's an insightful discussion with a young would-be apologist named Cameron Bertuzzi. It took place after I posted QualiaSoup's fantastic video on "Who has the burden of proof?" Note how many times Cameron says my criteria for knowing which religion is true, if there is one, are self-refuting. And what is my criterion? The criterion of sufficient objective evidence. The delusion is very strong with him to think this is a reasonable answer. Faith has a blinding effect on believers. It's plain and simple. It's clear and obvious. To see this portrayed in the best possible way watch the video I share below. It offers three tests for how well you can count. My bet is you will be wrong.
Introducing our discussion I had said: "I've long been a fan of QualiaSoup. This video is on who has the burden of proof. He nails it! Believers who make extraordinary bizarre supernatural claims do, that's who."
I copied this debate we had on Facebook. I can't get the pages sized the same, oh well. I typed much of it on the fly using my phone, so I could have done a bit better if I had a computer. I think I did very well. There's new stuff here. It would be well worth your time to read it to better learn how to answer believers.