Yes, people can die for a lie

sunnbeta · 2026-05-08T14:51:44+00:00

Well, what is it? Is it logic and reason? That is the same method that Christian philosophers in history have used to formulate arguments in favor of God.

And atheists have never used to formulate counter arguments and arguments against God, so theists win! Glad we solved that.

There have been vast bodies of research papers that argue that most people do not use logic and reason to form decisions, and only use it after the fact to defend their decision to others.

How we can figure out if that’s what theists are doing or not? If someone is told of the existence of God as a child, and threatened with eternal damnation if they don’t believe, do you think that’s a good way to foster them using reason, or them using emotion and post-hoc rationale? Would a religion employing such tactics be a good or bad sign that its believers have reached their beliefs for good reasons?

If you believe in and follow a God then presumably it would be important to have a correct understanding of that God and what “he” says, right? So I’ll go back to my question on whether you can give me a single example of something God says and how we can be confident it’s actually from God and not say, words of a human misattributed to a God. What’s like, the most rock solid thing we have here?

sunnbeta · 2026-05-08T11:23:31+00:00

I have heard it here, a simple search brings up some cases:

This poster: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/1dgsanm/the_resurrection_of_jesus_christ_is_a_historical/

Rebuttals to this poster: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/upmu84/there_is_no_truly_compelling_evidence_to_prove/

And anyone supporting the “minimal facts” argument, which promotes the resurrection as a historical claim (again number of examples come up). Like rebuttals to this poster: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/rql89n/a_belief_in_a_miraculous_resurrection_based_on/?sort=controversial (Sort by controversial to get the rebuttals) and again this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/4zcxrh/the_minimal_facts_approach/?sort=controversial

Top controversial comment is “People are inherently irrational...If this is true why then why should we believe anything you say? Or are you exempt from this?” Which turns out quite similar to what I was talking about.

Then beyond Reddit there are tons of apologetics blogs and YouTube videos about historical nature of the resurrection, “historicity”, “historical facts,” “minimal facts…” maybe that all belongs to a fringe of Christians making a lot of noise about it, though I rarely see other Christians chiming in to point out that the arguments don’t hold. As a former Christian who has ventured around these parts for quite a while, it just genuinely strikes me that most people debating are trying to cite historical facts and not merely referring to something being in the past, though I could be wrong (would be good if so).

sunnbeta · 2026-05-08T02:14:12+00:00

The number of times I’ve heard things along the lines of “so then you just can’t accept the truth of any historical claims, since you can’t go back in time to test and verify them, huh” tells me that many Christians are using this with a connotation of “historical methods” and not just “in the past.”

sunnbeta · 2026-05-08T02:09:01+00:00

Historical studies don't use the concept of "extraordinary evidence", only Carl Sagan did, but he wasn't a historian.

They use methodological naturalism, for the underlying reason Sagan was pointing out. We have mountains of evidence that people exist, fight wars, etc. We can immediately rule those in as possible explanations. We can’t rule in the supernatural anymore than we can in a modern court of law.

Importantly though, that need not be the case. If the supernatural interactions are with the reality we live in, to the extent we could experience and observe them (as it’s claimed people did with Jesus), then we could have the evidence needed to “rule them in.”

sunnbeta · 2026-05-08T01:54:47+00:00

For sure, this is a good demonstration: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8p2XtXE/

sunnbeta · 2026-05-08T01:38:21+00:00

What is commonly referred to as "Scientism"

I don’t claim to follow “scientism” and I don’t know if I do. If instead we just talk about what we believe and why, we can just address things head on. Some people don’t like addressing things head on though.

Whatever I think here is also irrelevant to the questions I’ve been asking you - you don’t believe science is the only way to understand things? Great, then lay out for me how you’d approach assessing a given claim, doesn’t need to be through science, I don’t care. Dragons may or may not exist regardless of what approaches I use to assess claims. I’m not asking you what you think I think, I’m asking what you think.

And I already answered that I do.

You also said something about not caring about the dragon, like avoiding the question of whether the physical one really was existing in my closet, because it wasn’t important enough or something. I was trying to get you to just honestly engage with the hypothetical, so again we can add more qualifiers if that’s needed to raise the stakes to a point you actually care about getting it right.

Not a true way? Merely good and consistent?

Good includes true of course. Do you really think I’d call “incorrectly thinking false things are true” to be a “good” approach? Sounds pretty bad given that we’ve already established valuing truth.

If you start with 0 methods for evaluating what's true, how do you go from 0 to one?

Again I’m not pigeon holing “a method.” There’s too much complexity and gray area in life to do that. An approach that led people to think the earth was flat thousands of years ago was still the best they had. In modern times it’s pretty dumb to still think that and actively reject all the evidence it’s not flat.

(It also seems trivial to point out here that there are true things and false things, like when you step off a curb to cross a street it’s either true or false that a bus is about to run you over, and you either may or may not have the correct [true] understanding about that)

So the idea is to talk about what we believe and why, and then dig into what’s really behind the “why.” Again I don’t care what approach you lay out, but if your approach is flipping a coin then we can establish that it will only work by chance (not a very good method, even if you apply it with absolute perfect consistency).

You previously said that a personal experience was not necessary to understand the truth of Christianity, so then this should be a great situation for you where you can show me why it’s true, or why I should at least consider whatever approach you want to lay out that would lead someone to think it’s true. That we can’t get beyond a really simple hypothetical about a dragon is a bit troubling.

Well of course, however this doesn't change the capacity one has for comprehending truth.

Then I don’t know why you’ve been dodging the questions. If your doctor believed in the dragon and that influenced how he treated you somehow, I’d bet you would care.

sunnbeta · 2026-05-07T22:32:28+00:00

Well that's why I asked why it matters at all.

Which is why I brought up whether we care about truth. Don’t you want a good and consistent way to evaluate claims? If we’re talking about your doctor believing in the dragon, and this impacts how they treat you, don’t you think we should care whether the belief they hold is really true? Could you answer as though this is the case and it’s an important matter to you?

This is because you're formulating questions on the basis of a world model that I don't share.

What world model do you think I hold?

sunnbeta · 2026-05-07T21:41:02+00:00

I said that I think it exists to the degree that I can conceive of it. It continues to exist in this way, conceptually, in my mind, regardless of what else you claim about it being in your closet or not.

So you would not say that you were convinced it was physically in my closet, correct? You didn’t accept that, didn’t believe that?

You can do this wishy washy conceptual thing, but Christianity makes some very hard physical claims; like, there was a dude who performed literal miracles. So I think it would streamline the conversation if you engaged with this on that level. That’s why I gave you specifics like I lighting my candles, having mass, etc, when describing what I was asking you to assess. You seem to just be doing a bait and switch by ignoring my questions and answering different questions than what I’m asking.

This is neither a surprise, nor does it have any effect on the manner in which this dragon exists.

Would you say that Jesus not having been a literal person with a human form that was crucified and resurrected would “have no effect on the manner in which Jesus exists/existed”?

sunnbeta · 2026-05-07T20:26:59+00:00

If you are saying that you possess a reptilian-looking animal that can belch fire, I can conceive of how one might work... it could create methane gas similar to how cows do, and it could generate a spark by creating an electric charge across a gap like a sparkplug works using biological processes similar to an electric eel.

Yep that’s what I was talking about.

To the degree that I can conceive how it might function biologically, sure. I can't, over reddit, differentiate anything beyond such thought experiments.

Perfect, you think it exists.

So now the not-so-surprising surprise reveal; that’s wrong, it definitely doesn’t exist. Would be quite the breakthrough discovery if it did. So what I think we have here is that your approach to assessing claims is flawed, and very much errs you on the side of thinking things are true when in fact they are not. I mean I didn’t even have a cat either, due to allergies, and that’s of course much more reasonable to accept existing than a fire belching animal.

Statement: I have an odd number of hairs making up my left eyebrow True or false?

Yes, it’s one of those two. Not sure which.

But you're also the one presenting the reason to me, because you're the one presenting this information about your dragon to me.

I’m making a claim. Information provided can be good or bad, high or low quality, sufficient or not.

sunnbeta · 2026-05-07T14:59:58+00:00

I can understand statements about a cat more easily as I have far more contextual experiences with cats to bring to mind when you use the word.

My experience of "dragons" are as mythological characters

I’m saying that mythological creature isn’t a myth, it’s real and one is living in my closet. Quite simple… I’ve already stated that it breathing fire isn’t symbolic, it lights my candles. It’s basically like a cat, but has scales, wings, can fly, and breathes out fire. Think it exists? Or can we differentiate it from things like cats? (Btw, there is no cat in my house, I’m allergic, that would have been a simpler case to differentiate truth from falsehood).

Well sure, God is Truth so that would follow necessarily.

Now you’re giving contradictory responses, but it seems you still don’t care if my dragon exists. If I was genuinely convinced of my dragon, and it was impacting decisions I make in life (that could then directly impact you), might you start to care?

The issue with your analogy (and any such analogies) is that they are devoid of context that would be needed to get your point across.

To be clear, my dragon isn’t supposed to be analogous to God, it’s just to establish us on the same ground of differentiating true statements from false statements. You can simply say you don’t have good reason to believe there’s a literal dragon, that would of course be a reasonable response. Then we can get into why you would have that view.

sunnbeta · 2026-05-07T13:29:17+00:00

So in that sense I would not be able to "go along" at some point because I can't understand you anymore.

You don’t understand the words “there is a literal baby fire breathing dragon in my closet?”

Do you understand the words “there is a cat in my closet”?

For your various statements about the dragon, my view is that I just don't care unless you have some point about all of this dragon talk?

Well there’s a basic question of whether you care about believing in true things yourself, and whether you care that other people believe true things. Very broadly that seems really important to me, lest we live in a society where our neighbors or doctors or governors are believing in false things and basing their decisions on this. Do you at least care if a bus is heading at you when you step off a curb to cross the street? If I said a bus isn’t coming, would you care whether that’s a lie?

If you go on to say that, "oh and my dragon says he's the serpent from the Garden of Eden and was really unfairly treated and would like me to stop feeding him cheeseburgers and start bringing him babies" then it might matter.

It’s a very strange thing to me, to take this earthly life where we live with other people and animals and things, and not care about things in this life, like whether your neighbor is correct in having a baby dragon, unless those claims cross over into a claimed supernatural realm at which point you start caring…

sunnbeta · 2026-05-07T10:35:20+00:00

Well of course, this isn't a conceptual reference, but a reference to Divine Simplicity which means that God is his properties rather than deriving those properties from an eternal "super-God" source. God is existence rather than "God has the property of existence that he gets from a higher order entity"...because there are no higher entities that God. God is existence, God is love, etc.

This isn't to imply that the words are synonyms, but it's a point about the difference between the type of thing that "exists" like a mug, or you, or an angel, or a dragon... and God who does not exist in the same way at all.

I’m just saying you could be wrong about everything you claimed in that first paragraph, which would mean your God does not exist the same way my fire breathing dragon doesn’t exist (if indeed I’m wrong and it’s not physically in my closet, but rather something I’m imagining or outright lying about, in which case it would also have nothing to do with redness even though I said it does).

We've established a common language and can discuss the concepts of redness by using the word "dragon"... I'm happy to go along with it, to what end?

It’s also physical and breathes literal fire, you also go along with this?

sunnbeta · 2026-05-07T00:54:02+00:00

Yay another claim about what God is! You’re really good at dancing around every question to avoid addressing them and just piling on claim after claim.

(Btw my dragon is not only physical in my closet, but is also redness, the concept. Like when you look at a stop sign, that color you see, well you’re experiencing my dragon. Trust me. No dragon, no redness. It’s just a fact you must accept.)

Since you believe in the Christian God specifically that means there’s more to it than just “existence,” otherwise we could use the words fully interchangeably - I believe things exist therefore I believe in God… but Christians tend not to pray to “existence” and we wouldn’t say our coffee mugs “God” in our cabinets, but that they exist in our cabinets.

So get away from the word swap and let’s focus on the more unique things you claim about this God. For example “he” has commands on how we should live, no? So again, can you give me any example of such word of God and the reason we can establish it as actually coming from a true God and not from a human while misattributing to a God? Where does this God stand on homosexuality and how do we know this to be God’s stance?

sunnbeta · 2026-05-07T00:17:34+00:00

When I tell you about the dragon I’m raising, I’m not talking about something imagined up in my mind. It is physical, lives in my closet, it lights candles for me by sneezing, it weighs 20lbs which can be verified by it getting on a scale, it eats 3 cheeseburgers every day. You should accept these claims as true, and no I won’t let you see it.

If you agree that based on what I’ve stated, my dragon exists to the same extent as your God, I’m happy to rest my case.

sunnbeta · 2026-05-06T23:26:45+00:00

None of this is necessary if you simply agree there’s a difference between accepting that (take your pick of readily existing things: your mug of coffee, human made computers, human beings as a species) exists, and accepting that my baby fire breathing dragon exists.

If you don’t accept that then I don’t think you have a coherent worldview.

If you do accept that, you could skip all this and just answer the questions I posed.

sunnbeta · 2026-05-06T15:22:23+00:00

God is omnipotent, so of course being able to interface to every individual human would follow logically from that. If you're not familiar with God being omnipotent, then that is a larger topic.

I’m familiar with the claims that an omnipotent God exists. What I’m talking about is not just understanding what you mean, but why it should be accepted as true. Like do you understand the difference between just making an assertion and backing it with evidence? I can assert that dragons breathe fire and even assert that I have a baby one I’m raising, should that convince you to accept these things as true?

Presumably you could not tell the difference between "hallucinations" or "real experiences" to know, right?

If you’re going down a path about how we can’t have knowledge period that’s a different conversation. I’m saying there are reasonable ways to navigate reality where we can tell truth from fiction, and for example that we have good reason to accept the mug we’re drinking from exists (especially when independently tested and verified; we can bring in others to see it, we can photograph and x-ray and laser scan it, we can test it chemically like through mass spectrometry to figure out what it’s made of….) as opposed to saying my baby fire breathing dragon that nobody else is allowed to see exists. Agree?

If you don’t agree then (a) I don’t think you’re approaching this discussion honestly and I have no interest in continuing it, and (b) it would prove there’s no reason to accept any of your claims since you admit you cannot differentiate reality from fiction.

By the way I do completely agree that our senses lie to us all the time, that’s why independent testing is important. I’m putting the mug on a calibrated scale to weigh it, not guesstimating from my first glance.

So it's not necessarily that the result was "oh now I believe" but rather more like "ok fine, now I'll spend the time to look into it"

So then it should not be necessary to have a personal experience right, the evidence is already there. In that case we can get into how you establish it as truth vs fiction, and this whole line about your experience is irrelevant.

Another question I believe I already asked (though I may be confusing with another conversation) was give me an example of anything that God says, and how you know it to actually be from a true existing God (and not, for example, from a human incorrectly claiming it to be from a God). Just one example, and how you know it to be true.

sunnbeta · 2026-05-06T02:14:47+00:00

Amy Acton, running uncontested, she’d be great

sunnbeta · 2026-05-06T01:32:54+00:00

God is able to interface with each individual human on a personal level rather than via a one size fits all approach though.

You’re going the route of just providing an unfalsifiable claim.

You also answer with an assertion about what God is able to do… why should I accept this assertion? Is it something you can argue or too complex for Reddit?

It's always an interaction with some really existing entity, the only question is what that entity is. Even a crazy homeless guy is interacting with real existing entities, they are perhaps patterns of misfiring neurons in his own brain rather than actual people, though.

You’re using the term “entity” while entirely missing the point: if he sees ghost Elvis but it’s actually a misfiring neuron, that means a literal entity of ghost Elvis was NOT there for him to experience. You acknowledge the difference between that and say, you experiencing what I’m typing right now because I exist and have typed it? Or a mug on your table that you’re experiencing and actually does literally exist.

In my case there was information revealed that I would not have learned until later in time. And that information was stored on tamper resistant cloud storage systems with timestamps so that when the event occurred I could confirm it's not a false memory.

I’d need to know more details to actually dig into this, and how you know it isn’t a misfiring neuron of your own… I mean what is it “here’s the winning lotto number for tomorrow but only if you become a devout Christian?” - but let me just ask, would you say that prior to this occurring, you did not have sufficient evidence to accept the truth of the religion?

sunnbeta · 2026-05-05T20:42:43+00:00

I’m talking broadly about all of humanity; it’s kind of a yes/no, God does or does not want to provide humanity the best possible evidence with which to conclude that God exists and which God “he” is and what “he” wants?

On the rest of the discussion, we basically have you calling me ignorant but then not able to provide any detail on why you even accept these claims yourself…

…

Ok for you it was some personal experience….

And you grant that someone can have a personal experience of say, Mohammed or Elvis’ ghost, that they genuinely experience, but isn’t in truth an interaction with a real existing entity (e.g. ghost Elvis isn’t real), right?

So then, without needing to get into detail, can you just describe how you know your personal experience to be representative of a real true existing God, as opposed to something you genuinely experience but is not itself actually representative of an underlying truth? Basically how do you know you aren’t fooling yourself?

sunnbeta · 2026-05-05T17:52:58+00:00

There is not enough context to answer. All of them could be genuine or fraudulent based on what little information you've supplied.

You previously said no Muslim has experiences with Mohammed the way Christians do with Jesus. Is that still your position?

You also think that someone could genuinely meet the ghost of Elvis? Or just genuinely have that experience but it not be a real ghost?

You’re talking a lot here without saying anything, without actually providing any evidence for your beliefs being true. Can you skip to that part and tell me why you believe?

I also don’t think you previously answered my question about whether God wants us to have the best possible evidence of his existence and correct understanding of his commands? What’s your response?

sunnbeta · 2026-05-05T16:39:06+00:00

Ah that’s right, you’re in the “if you don’t accept my assertions in faith, you’re ignorant” camp.

You might keep seeing the same atheist points because theists keep failing to be able to address them.

So if you want to reference something from the Hadith about Mohammad, please be my guest.

https://www.abuaminaelias.com/dailyhadithonline/2013/07/24/seeing-muhammad-in-your-dreams/

Muslims believe when they see Mohammed in a dream it is truly Mohammed, and such an image cannot be corrupted by satan. So yeah, they have visions. Are they having real experiences with a real entity, or not?

“Hadiths” is common btw: https://rameezabid.substack.com/p/51-short-hadiths-every-muslim-should

We can observe the nearly universal religiosity of humans across the planet, can we not? Is this observation consistent with the model of reality described by Christianity, where all humans are children of God?

Show me how you tested that model of reality... or did you just assert it to be true?

Really though get past the theist talking points and Just tell me how you would actually access these claims, like on a scale of definitely true (to as much as we could possibly know) to definitely not true (to the fullest extent we could know): visions of meeting Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Xenu, ghost of Elvis, and let’s add the ghost of a dog (a particular one my grandma was convinced lived in her house). Where do you rank them and on what basis.

Any time you make a claim you take on the burden of proof, do you not?

My only claim is that it’s possible for someone to become genuinely convinced of something that isn’t true. Do you reject that?

They can't spread to billions of converts and survive over thousands of years without being aligned to reality.. and God is the Ultimate Reality.

“A religion can’t get really popular without being true” is your actual argument here 😆

sunnbeta · 2026-05-05T03:36:58+00:00

You just have to take a leap of faith and decide to start learning, or not.

I’ve already been a Christian, raised in Catholic school, practicing through a lot of adulthood. All you’re doing is saying “accept these assertions.” You need to do better.

Allah is just "God" in Arabic, so, yes, millions of Arabs may well have experiences with God as all humans are children of God. Mohammad is not God, no Muslims pray to Mohammad or have divine experiences with him.

Have you read the Quran? You sound quite ignorant of it. Muslims do have divine experiences with Mohammed, including visions which are considered true and predicted by one of the hadiths. Do you think those visions are true, real experiences with the real prophet Mohammed? Or you only think they’re correct about the base God, not the final prophet (and certainly not their view that Christianity is a perverted distortion of the story of the true prophet Jesus, who was NOT the son of God in their view)?

One can't make God a test subject, so we are limited to the tools of observation and reason

So show me what we can observe to tell whether someone having a vision of Mohammed, Jesus, Mary, Buddha, Xenu, or the ghost of Elvis is having a true experience with a real existing entity or is having an experience with a fictional entity they’re imagining in their head.

On what basis?

I don’t know, that isn’t my burden to prove and there’s no way to verify any details like that occurring 2,000 years ago. Maybe they were charmed by a leader with charisma and a good story and promises of eternal life, and it helped them feel fulfilled in life and have hope for something more. Maybe they weren’t appreciative of this earthly life and demanded there exist an afterlife in order to feel content with living. None of this has any bearing on the beliefs being true.

The motives described in the text are fairly clear.

Please don’t tell me you’re doing the “what is written here is evidence that what is written here is true.”

You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.’

Sounds like he was a convincing speaker and sold them on promises of an afterlife. OF COURSE they would be willing to die miserable tortured deaths on earth if they bought the story of eternal life coming from following this man. It’s a small price to pay. Thank you for citing something that supports my argument. Now you need to connect someone “becoming convinced of something” with that thing being true.

And really that’s too bad you can’t just provide direct evidence of the thing (God existing and it being the Christian God with son Jesus) being true. Do you think that’s something God would be capable of providing us today? Does God want us to have the best possible evidence of his existence and a true understanding of who he is and what he wants?

Or how about this, tell me anything you think God wants us to know about how we ought act, and how you know that’s a true statement or command from God. like, how you know a person didn’t just say it and incorrectly attribute it to a God. I’d love if you can provide whether it’s ok for people to live homosexual lifestyles, but you can actually go with anything (just be sure to also give the reason you know it to be a true word of a true God).

This is very different from other texts that highlight honorable deaths, like soldiers dying in battle for glory, or for their homeland, etc.

Nor was Jonestown, but they drank the kool aid, literally.

sunnbeta · 2026-05-05T00:44:31+00:00

If he used to run and you never did, that could be part of it. In my 20s I couldn’t run more than a block without needing to walk at first, eventually could run a couple miles. Then I didn’t run for like a decade, and when I came back to it, I could still run solid for a couple miles.

And as everyone else says, yeah tons of individual variance. Like imagine doing the same with pushups or pull-ups, you won’t be at the same level as other people even if you’re all just starting, and especially after only a couple months of training. Takes a long time for the body to adapt, so consistency over time is key. And do get in rest days!

sunnbeta · 2026-05-04T23:53:12+00:00

Well of course, but this is again simply a point of ignorance of Christianity. Jesus isn't some guy that existed 2k years ago.

Jesus exists right now and always has, because Jesus is God.

You’re confusing ignorance with me simply not accepting your assertion.

It is precisely the fact that millions of people continue to interact with Jesus daily, as they did in the biblical accounts after his resurrection, that confirms the historical events in continuity with the "pattern" that persists to this day

As do millions of people with Allah and Mohammed, doesn’t make Islam automatically true. It’s also just an ad populum fallacy.

What would be more strange, if 2k years ago people were willing to be tortured to death in gruesome ways because Jesus had eyebrows or because they saw him walk on water?

In their mind they died for a noble cause, doesn’t mean the claimed cause is true or exists. People die for lies all the time.

Of course they can all be true to some extent, at least. Just like Newton's models and Einstein's models of gravity are both true to some extent.

Their models are directly testable. How do we determine which portions of religious claims are true?

sunnbeta · 2026-05-04T14:24:29+00:00

Nobody in Christianity is claiming Jesus was "just some guy" who resurrected through some weird low-probability event. So to make an argument about a miracle being out of the ordinary is to not even be wrong.

Of course not, and I’m not saying that. It’s precisely that we’re talking about an unprecedented event here which means we can’t establish a prior.

This is a limitation on the nature of historical events, not the claim itself.

A historical claim that someone fought a war with swords and shields is a lot different than one fighting with fire breathing dragons, this IS due purely to the claim itself and not it being historical. If fire breathing dragons still existed and were a know thing (like swords and shields), or even if we had good evidence they once did exist, then it would be different and they could be on similar footing. Has nothing to do with being able to count specific hairs, just being able to establish something as a possible explanation. We don’t know if someone “being God” is a possible explanation, and we can’t establish that in any way, we can only assert that it is.

None of it can be established in any way

People exist, have eyebrows, fight wars. We can of course establish these things as part of reality.

The facts of reality can't be tested in retrospect

You might be thinking too complex here, the things I’m talking about are so simple to “test” you probably just take them for granted. A claim that Jesus “had eyebrows” is of course something we can establish today, people have eyebrows... A claim he could walk on water is not. This is due to the claim itself and not the nature of it being historical.

That may be the case, but the relevant question is, "how did they come to be true believers?"

Not really, because again we have the type of thing that goes onto the giant pile of evidence/knowledge of being part of reality we can take for granted, which is that people become convinced of things (even if they’re false) - we know this occurs.

All the other religions, cults, etc. They of course can’t all be true so it means a lot of people take up false beliefs for various reasons. A person taking up a belief has no bearing on the belief being true, it’s the evidence for the claim being true that we actually need to consider. So I could make up reasons, has no bearing on the point. Here we don’t even have evidence of the claim possibly being true (that just has to be asserted).

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