Originally posted by Jedidiah
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Second, that the majority of people believe something is not, in and of itself, proof of truth. We do use concensus in science as an indicator that something is true, but that is based on a methodology that provides a vehicle for testing hypotheses and reliably replicating those tests. Outside of such a methodology, "concensus" has a somewhat iffy record of accuracy. There are a lot of things "most people" used to believe that were eventually shown to be false.
Third, although the vast majority of people in history have believed in gods, that percentage is shifting today - and they don't (and didn't) believe in the same conception of god(s). Indeed, the wide variety of such beliefs leads one to wonder if the reason there is so much variation in beliefs is because there is no binding, underlying, reality to unify them. When one looks at the history of religions all the way back to the dawn of man, one can see this pattern of religions appearing to fill a gap in human knowledge/understanding. Indeed, humanity is tens of thousands of years old, but the idea of a single god appears to be limited to the last 4,000 years of so, and didn't really take root until the last 2,000 years. It took hold and dominated for that time period. We have philosophy and theology well developed across those 2,000 years, but we do not really see widespread use of the scientific method to examine the reality around us until the enlightenment. So that gives the idea of gods tens of thousands of years to take root, a single god a few thousand years to take root, and a rigorous scientific look at our universe a few centuries to take root. And the tools we need to rigorously pursue that investigation have only been around for a few decades.
For these reasons, and others I shared with Seer on a different thread, I do not subscribe to the notion that god(s) have a real existence outside of the human mind and human literature/art. Whther or not you find any of this adequate to raise questions, I have to leave to you. I have enough of a challenge keeping my own beliefs as accurate as possible.
Edited to add: my previous post said, "if it were a priori true, we'd expect to see wider adoption than we do." At first glance, it would appear that my post above is in contradiction to this. Note however, that "a priori truths tend to be widely accepted" and "widely accepted beliefs is not an assurance of truth" are not in conflict. If you think about it, the reasoning is, I believe, sound.
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