You get bonus points for conciseness.

He gets bonus points for pointing out that you believe because you have to — life makes you crazy and religion might get you through the night, but only an ass then claims that it’s a Justified True Belief.

Your point is very much true. It’s also quite why I’ve stopped caring much about philosophers, logicians and mathematicians. All very useful in their own fields but they tend to aim for such internal consistency that they most often become, err, a bit irrelevant? A bit like theologians except that they are not completely wrong?

When dealing in person with the 1+1=2 issue, I take what I must admit is a little bit of a shortcut, a somewhat crude form of maieutics if you will.

Here’s my approach:

(shuffle shuffle rummage rummage grab thunk put an apple on the table)
Me – See. One apple. One.
Logician – Yes but …
Me – Waaaaait a second!
(shuffle shuffle rummage rummage grab thunk put another apple on the table)
Me – See. One more apple. One.
(point point)
Me – One here. One there.
Logician – Yes but …
Me – Yes but nothing.
(grab grab thunk thunk place the two apples next to each other around the middle of the table)
Me – See, two apples. 1+1=2
Logician – Yes yes sure but set theor…
Me – All right, all right, I see. We have a situation.
(shuffle shuffle rummage rummage dig dig)
Me – Zoot ! Where the heck is that thing?
(more shuffle shuffle rummage rummage clonk cling dig dig grab grab)
Me – Ah! There it is!
Logician – Hey? Hey! Stop!!! What are you planning to do with that baseball ba…
[ BAMMMM! ]
Me – See. One lump
Logician – Arhhh!!! But it hurts! You’re completely cra….
[ RE-BAMMMM! ]
Me – See. One more lump. One lump on your left. One lump on your right. And that makes two lumps on your head. 1+1=2.

At this point, either the logician has become a strongly committed empiricist or I start studying the number 3 :>

I don’t care when people attack the Bible over inconsistencies. I never claimed it’s the literal word of God, and no educated Christian or Jew should, either. But when people equate it with Mohammed’s ramblings (which they claim ARE the literal word of Allah), it gets my Irish up.

The Gospels were written years, if not decades, after Jesus’ death, by the disciples of the original Apostles, so you get the usual errors and exaggeration of transcribed oral traditons with the added effect of the scribes being zealots, as converts usually are. These effects are exponentially worse on the Koran, which was first compiled well over a century after Mo’s death by borderline illiterates in one of the most inefficient languages known to man (only Chinese is worse than Arabic).

The stories in the Old Testament generally are based on a common myth or legend, or a major event. Taking Jericho, for instance, was a real event. I don’t think God brought the walls down, and I think if you read between the lines agents opened the gates from inside.

The Israelites slaughtered the poplulations for a simple reason: to convice the next city not to resist. That was standard operating procedure throughout history, across cultures. Personally, I think declaring that God commanded it was over the top.

And I remember that a British officer, after reading about one of Saul’s sons using a hidden trail to outflank the Philistines (who were Minoan, not Arabs) recognized he was in the same area, and found the trail, using it to outflank the Turks.

The stories in the Koran, on the other hand, are usually Bible stories perverted to make the Arabs look good and the Christians, and particulary the Jews, look bad. Switching Ishmael for Issac and Mecca for the Temple Mount is just one example. Picture an Englishman claiming Washington and Jefferson fought for King George during the revolution.

Mo really didn’t care if his stories meshed with the Jewish versions, or even the last time he told the same story. A few of the early Meccan verses said nice things about what he later declared infidels, when Mo thought he could convert them. But when they didn’t react favorably to having a raving maniac mangle their lore (and Jews, then as now, know their own history better than anyone), he started with the whole “Jews are brother of apes and pigs” thing.

However, You can’t verify every little thing regarding science, math, or logic. Basic mathematical axioms (like 1 does not equal 0) are unprovable. Here is a wiki definition:

In traditional logic, an axiom or postulate is a proposition that is not proved or demonstrated but considered to be either self-evident, or subject to necessary decision. Therefore, its truth is taken for granted, and serves as a starting point for deducing and inferring other (theory dependent) truths.

So, once you accept 1 does not equal 0, you can take 1,000 pages of mathematical logic and “prove” that 1+1=2. But, you must first accept that 1 doesn’t equal 0.

Hope that makes sense to everyone. Even logic has assumptions. But at least they aren’t as incredible as religious ones.

- You believe in God (or Zeus or the Tooth Fairy…)
vs.
- I trust science.

I don’t believe in science. I trust science. It’s means that I can verify every single little bit of science if I feel the need. It would take me a few thousands lifetimes at least to do all the verifying thingy on everything I trust in science, but I could, I could.

You say that ‘naturally, the further back in time you go the less accurate things get’, as if that means we should accept the New testament as essentially factual, while being able to dismiss the Old (though you also say ‘Genesis is mostly myth and legend..’ – ‘MOSTLY’? – what else is it?). There are many people alive today who don’t believe that man walked on the moon 40 years ago, or even what exactly happened in New York on 11 September 2001. That’s with two such massive events, with global satellite communications, endless film and video footage and all the 20th and 21st century technological investigative means we have at our disposal. You then condemn the koran because it doesn’t agree with the bible, even though the bible in many places doesn’t even agree with itself.

Lineages and familial relationships are frequently confused in the bible – Matthew and Luke can’t agree even about Jesus’s lineage. (Nor whether Herod slaughtered the first-born and J, M & J had to flee to Egypt). The whole 40 days in the wilderness bit didn’t happen according to John. Apparently, Jesus came to enforce Mosaic law, though he also came to abolish it. Both books are supposed to be god’s explanation and instructions to his creation – certainly, muslims tend to insist that in the original arabic, the koran is the literal, infalible word of god, while on some levels most xians accept that the bible is a confused patchwork of stories, which frequently disagree with each other, and through history a sizable industry has revolved around ‘interpreting’ these contradictions and inconsistencies in order to make various square pegs fit the round holes. I guess that when it comes down to it, many people who think of themselves as christian, if confronted with numerous sections of the bible, would find it hard to assert that they believed them – literally or metaphorically. They must thank god for cognitive dissonance.

All prayers are answered.

Sometimes the answer is no.”

Well in that case I want to see the ‘With Compliments’ slip