What are the odds of a religion being the "right one"?

Y

YoYoPapaya

Trump/Norris - 2012
Registered Senior Member
In an extension of a talk about Pascal's Wager in a different thread, I want to ask everyone this question.

There are a lot of religions in the world. New ones are created all the time. How do you determine what the chances are for each of the religions to be real and the other just superstitions?

Personally I KNOW that Pastafarianism is the one true religion, but I'm sure that other religious people feel there same way about their religion as well.

So let's hear.
YoYoPapaya
 
Well that's an atheist point of view. But you can't really prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster isn't real can you?
 
cosmictraveler said:
They are all myths.
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No THIS is a typical troll.
You can't prove they are all myths. One of them might be right. It might be one that is not discovered yet (of course i already know what the right one is but let's say i don't), but how do you determine the odds of a religion being true?
 
Yes but again. You don't KNOW for a fact that they are all myths. If you say you do KNOW this, I would like for you to prove it.
 
YoYoPapaya said:
Yes but again. You don't KNOW for a fact that they are all myths. If you say you do KNOW this, I would like for you to prove it.
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Scholars and clinical researchers in both the social and natural sciences have forwarded numerous questions and theories in clarifying the fundamental nature of scientific fact.[22] Some pertinent issues raised by this inquiry include:



FACT


the process by which "established fact" becomes recognized and accepted as such;
whether and to what extent "fact" and "theoretic explanation" can be considered truly independent and separable from one another;
to what extent are "facts" influenced by the mere act of observation; and
to what extent are factual conclusions influenced by history and consensus, rather than a strictly systematic methodology.
Consistent with the theory of confirmation holism, some scholars assert "fact" to be necessarily "theory-laden" to some degree. Thomas Kuhn and others pointed out that knowing what facts to measure, and how to measure them, requires the use of some other theory (e.g., age of fossils is based on radiocarbon dating which is justified by reasoning that radioactive decay follows a Poisson process rather than a Bernoulli process). Similarly, Percy Williams Bridgman is credited with the methodological position known as operationalism, which asserts that all observations are not only influenced, but necessarily defined by the means and assumptions used to measure them.
 
This whole Spaghetti thing and religion bashing is doing the non-theistic people no favours in the big scheme of things.
I know you're trying to make a point, but this point is usually raised by teenagers.
 
The extra dimension to this is also time. Say a religion was correct, and God really did want women to STFU in church. But now they are even allowed to become vicars. So maybe it was the correct religion, but it's less strict, and now all the followers are going to hell.

Or maybe nobody believed the prophet that was sent, and we never got to hear about the true word.

Or maybe the word was delivered, but to cannibals, and they ate everybody that came to them, and the word never spread.

There are lots of possibilities, maybe we just never heard the truth, ever.
 
drumbeat said:
This whole Spaghetti thing and religion bashing is doing the non-theistic people no favours in the big scheme of things.
I know you're trying to make a point, but this point is usually raised by teenagers.
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I think you are missing the point. All religions were invented by man.

They don't get more true or compelling because they have a patina of age.

A new religion should, in a fair society, be given equal consideration to an old one. It's just we find the idea of inventing a religion ridiculous, but many are too timid to apply that ridicule evenly.
 
phlogistician said:
I think you are missing the point. All religions were invented by man.

They don't get more true or compelling because they have a patina of age.

A new religion should, in a fair society, be given equal consideration to an old one. It's just we find the idea of inventing a religion ridiculous, but many are too timid to apply that ridicule evenly.
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I agree with you. I was not missing his point.
If more people compared the new and the old they would realise the old are sometimes just as ridiculous, but have been clouded by time and many re-interpretations.
 
So from these answers i can make the following conclusion:
The chance for a random religion to be true is 1 divided by number of possible religions. right?

1 divided by infinity then i guess. That's a very small number. Small enough so that we can simply ignore it?
 
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