One might argue that a typical theist’s knowledge of the lack of material evidence for his religion is also pure hearsay. Neither most theists nor most atheists personally investigated the relevant archaeological artefacts. Similarly, few western theists directly experienced things commonly believed to be extremely evil (holocaust, famines, ). They are simply “mistrusting the current archaeological/historical” elite.
edit:
Yes, yes, of course virtually no real theists (or even agnostics) use the “it’s all hearsay, I’m merely sceptical” defence. And indeed, large swaths of theology deal with virtually all problems you could think of. I was merely pointing out that an individual theist could, in principle, use a similar defence to the one ArisKatsaris was using.
Religious people aren’t generally skeptical that terrible things happen to a lot of people on a very large scale. A large part of the problem of theodicy is constructing explanations for this. You may have more of a point in regards to archaeology, but by and large most of these issues are pretty accessible (certainly more accessible to lay people than complicated climate models).
One might argue that a typical theist’s knowledge of the lack of material evidence for his religion is also pure hearsay. Neither most theists nor most atheists personally investigated the relevant archaeological artefacts. Similarly, few western theists directly experienced things commonly believed to be extremely evil (holocaust, famines, ). They are simply “mistrusting the current archaeological/historical” elite.
edit:
Yes, yes, of course virtually no real theists (or even agnostics) use the “it’s all hearsay, I’m merely sceptical” defence. And indeed, large swaths of theology deal with virtually all problems you could think of. I was merely pointing out that an individual theist could, in principle, use a similar defence to the one ArisKatsaris was using.
Religious people aren’t generally skeptical that terrible things happen to a lot of people on a very large scale. A large part of the problem of theodicy is constructing explanations for this. You may have more of a point in regards to archaeology, but by and large most of these issues are pretty accessible (certainly more accessible to lay people than complicated climate models).