I may have trouble taking someone who cites the awful and intellectually dishonest "documentary" Religulous very seriously.
You say this-
Realist wrote:cslewislover
I checked the source of my 5% theory. The quote is as follows:-
"93% of scientists in the American National Academy of Sciences are atheist or agnostic"
So I wasn't far off.
... and you say this-
Realist wrote:
I thought it was interesting how you claim to be a critical thinker, and question why you believe. How can you not come to the conclusion that it is an accident of birth that you are a Christian and not a Muslim or Hindu or any one of the thousands of religions that have been concocted by the human mind throughout history. Unless you spent many years researching ALL the possible religions - how can you be sure that you have the right one?
If you can ignore whatever research and critical thinking a Christian put into their religious position and call it "an accident of birth", then you can do the same thing for the "93% of scientists in the American National Academy of Sciences" who are atheist or agnostic. Let's try to be intellectually honest, ok?
I've heard that figure quoted over and over again by atheists, but it really doesn't bother me much because there's so much more to it than a simple statistic. Even if it were true, there are so many factors that go into it, I don't see the point of bringing it up other than to say "Haha! Smart people don't believe in God, so I don't have to try to prove anything to you!" And then there's the simple mistake of confusing correlation with causation... if a higher percentage of scientists are atheists, that doesn't prove that it's because of some special insight that they have. Another statistic I saw (not sure if it's true as I don't have the source, but it wouldn't surprise me), is that only 6% of scientists are Republicans. Again, I think there's a number of factors that have influenced the final statistic, just like those numbers on religion. I'm 100% convinced that being a democrat isn't more "scientific" than being a Republican, so imo it just goes to show you that these stats are... pointless. All it serves to do is to try to make someone feel stupid without having to prove anything, which is something that some atheists have become very good at. In fact, that accounts for about 90% of my experience with atheists on the internet, not actual reason or facts, but ad hominem attacks and a few misconstrued stats thrown in there to "prove" that all Christians are ignorant murderers or something.
And all of this is assuming those statistics are accurate... I'm not sure if they are as far as the National Academy of Sciences go, but several surveys of scientists in general show that the number of religious scientists is much higher than that. Some of those statistics are on this website.
Finally, on the "how do you know which religion is right" question. It is true that a lot of people only believe what they're brought up to believe, but the same thing applies to atheists and agnostics, and it doesn't mean that a person can't objectively research the evidence available. Also, many feel that they have positive evidence for the truth of Christianity. If you believe that there is good evidence that Christ rose from the grave and that other things reported by the Bible really happened (there is, by the way, try searching the site for some pretty good arguments), then that means that other religions aren't true. I still spend the time researching other religions (not as much as I used to), but I also believe there's positive proof for Christianity.
Edit- If you want evidence, read the site, there are multiple articles that fit that description. Coming barging in here demanding evidence won't do. For a "critical thinker" like yourself, you apparently haven't read the guidelines for the forum or read anything on the site, and I doubt you've touched any modern Christian literature or philosophers.
