I’m not sure if you think I disagree with you, or if you’re just echoing me for emphasis.
Just to be clear, I was answering JGWeissman’s question: if a religion were correct, for at least that understanding of “correct” (which I endorse), that’s what I would expect debates with its followers to look like.
I’ve never encountered a religious tradition for which debates with its followers actually looked like that, which I take as evidence that no religious tradition I’m familiar with correctly constrains expectations in verifiable ways.
My point was that the reason you never encountered it is because it would imply rationality, which is incompatible with faith. Not to say that a religious person cannot be rational about other things, just not about their own beliefs. Thus “if a religion were correct” is not a meaningful statement.
I think your proposed explanation for the observed event is underdetermined by the evidence we’re discussing, but it could certainly be true.
Nevertheless, I’m still inclined to attend more to how well a practice is observed to constrain anticipated experience than to how rational its practitioners can be inferred to be on general principles… though I’ll grant you that inferrable level of rationality correlates pretty well to how much energy I’ll devote to making the observations in the first place.
I’m not sure if you think I disagree with you, or if you’re just echoing me for emphasis.
Just to be clear, I was answering JGWeissman’s question: if a religion were correct, for at least that understanding of “correct” (which I endorse), that’s what I would expect debates with its followers to look like.
I’ve never encountered a religious tradition for which debates with its followers actually looked like that, which I take as evidence that no religious tradition I’m familiar with correctly constrains expectations in verifiable ways.
My point was that the reason you never encountered it is because it would imply rationality, which is incompatible with faith. Not to say that a religious person cannot be rational about other things, just not about their own beliefs. Thus “if a religion were correct” is not a meaningful statement.
Ah. Thanks for clarifying.
I think your proposed explanation for the observed event is underdetermined by the evidence we’re discussing, but it could certainly be true.
Nevertheless, I’m still inclined to attend more to how well a practice is observed to constrain anticipated experience than to how rational its practitioners can be inferred to be on general principles… though I’ll grant you that inferrable level of rationality correlates pretty well to how much energy I’ll devote to making the observations in the first place.