r/agnostic

Historically men were shamed and punished for sleeping with other men and yet they were forced to be acting like heterosexual. This implies that it is possible to act like opposite sexual orientation.

In modern age the dating market is hard for men. Not just dating, but education and legal protection is getting hard. That's why I suggest to create a new religion where men will be brainwashed to love men and sleep with men. That will improve our self respect, self worth and carry us much forward.

I suggest all men to come join my new religion as I am the Prophet of the dawn of a new age.

​Hear me out on this one.

​Sometimes when I’m driving, I’ll turn on Joel Osteen Radio on SiriusXM and pretend I’m a completely different person—like a middle-aged mom driving to her job at a craft store. I’ll nod along, throw in a sincere "Yep," "Amen," or "Hallelujah," and recite the opening and closing declarations right along with him ("This is my Bible...").

​It started out as just a weirdly fun roleplay, but it got me thinking. Part of me wants to believe, but I can’t fully commit because I was raised pretty agnostic. At the same time, growing up in the English-speaking world, you absorb a lot of Christian culture through osmosis whether you mean to or not.

​I guess I’ve always been a bit "Bible curious." One of these days I think I’m actually going to attend a Sunday service just to experience it. Walking around as someone who genuinely believes and talks about Scripture with total conviction seems like a fascinating perspective to step into.

​Anyone else ever catch themselves doing something like this, or exploring faith from the outside just to see what it feels like?

In my experience, religious apologetics often don't try to actively prove that their faith is true. Instead, they try to prove that your logical framework for rejecting it has a flaw—and if they find a flaw there, they consider it a win.

A common argument I’ve heard goes like this: People who believe in science actually believe in it blindly. For instance, most of us have never personally verified through our own five senses that a place like Japan actually exists. We haven't checked every satellite feed, and we rely entirely on scientists and media to tell us the truth. A skeptic could theoretically spin a massive conspiracy theory claiming Japan is fake.

The Christian apologist's argument then connects the two: just as you trust scientists and geographers blindly to tell you the truth about places you’ve never seen, they trust the prophets and creators of the Bible.

The Core Flaw in that Comparison

While that sounds clever at first glance, it falls apart when you look at track records and verifiable verification.

Let's look at two hypothetical books:

A book by geologists claiming that Japan is a real place with specific cities, a language, and a history.

A book by religious prophets claiming that God, Jesus Christ, and the spiritual realm such as heaven and hell are real

Why do we rationally trust the geologists over the religious prophets?

It comes down to testability on a micro-scale. If a geologist tells you, "There is a city just south of here," you can get in a car, drive there yourself, and verify it with your own five senses. Because geologists and scientists have a consistent, repeatable track record of making verifiable predictions on a small scale, their macro-claims (like the existence of countries we haven't visited) carry immense credibility.

Religious prophets and ancient texts, on the other hand, don't offer that same mechanism for verifiable, falsifiable testing on a day-to-day basis.

-Main question- What do you guys think? Does this accurately describe the apologetic tactic, and how do you usually respond to the "you trust science blindly too" argument?

I dated my ex-gf of 1.5 years until recently. We were compatible on almost all fronts but religion seemed to become a problem. I wasn't aware religion was important to her (I know I should have asked) but there was never any indication to suggest it. No religious practice or forward presence so I assumed (falsely) that her beliefs were not intense. I come from a muslim background, and never really held strong beliefs after I left home in my early 20s and moved away. I viewed it as a mechanism of control and the toxicity that was probably more culture heavy bled into my life in terrible ways and caused me a lot of trauma that took years to work through. So I became non-practicing and even agnostic. My ex-gf was orthodox catholic and as previously stated never seemed that religious. She had made comments toward the end that made me begin to take notice, like her mother saying I was perfect but "too bad he isn't catholic" and this made me feel more like religion was a problem and that I wasn't enough. She asked me to convert or be open to it as she cannot marry a non orthodox catholic. I told her I did a lot of personal work to escape my own experience and did not want to re-enter into a different organized religion that I viewed as additional control, especially if I didn't truly believe in it as I saw that as a false conversion that would only breed resentment especially when kids entered the picture if I didn't truly believe. It seemed her entire family cared deeply about her marrying an orthodox and that weighed heavily on her hierarchy of importance. My parents don't care who I marry or that I don't practice Islam but apostasy I think would inflict a different type of pain on them, not that I make my choices based on them. She told me she'd marry me if I was orthodox, but I told her I don't think I can convert. So, she ghosted me and stopped talking to me and would not meet in person to discuss it after.

I've wrestled with this in my mind for weeks now and feel crushed by the weight of how much I miss her. I'm not sure if I made the right choice by enforcing this boundary or If I should have considered it.

tl;dr: GF broke up with me because I wouldn't convert to her religion and I don't know If I made the right choice by refusing or If I should have acquiesced

Pls tell me if i have made any errors. I want inputs.

Spiritual Religious Claims are Unprovable and Unfalsifiable, Making Them Unreliable, and Unlikely to be True:

Alright, unprovable is easy enough to understand, but unfalsifiable? At a first glance, something being unfalsifiable (not disprovable) makes it more likely to be correct, but that’s not true at all.

To understand what I mean, let me give you an example scenario: A friend of yours tells you that there are invisible creatures that are constantly dancing on everyone’s heads.

This claim is unreliable, as it’s unprovable, and is unfalsifiable. It can’t be proven, as by definition, there’s no way to measure the existence of the creatures, as they’re invisible. It’s unfalsifiable, as there’s no way to disprove the existence of said creatures, since they’re invisible.

Spiritual beliefs, such as non-physical souls, or cosmic forces, cannot be proven (If there WAS evidence for a religion, I wouldn’t be agnostic). Religions also tend to move the goal post on what counts as debunking them, making them unfalsifiable (E.g. The Christian creation myth being interpreted into a metaphor after it was debunked via evolution, errors in the Bible downplayed to just being a product of human mistakes despite the fact that the Holy Spirit helped them write it etc.)

Before we continue, I must acknowledge that there are some statements that are unprovable and unfalsifiable that ARE accepted as truth. For example:

Logical Tautologies: Statements that are true by definition (like "all bachelors are unmarried") cannot be falsified, but they’re reliable since they’re logically absolute.

Foundational Axioms: Science itself relies on unprovable assumptions, like the belief that the physical universe behaves consistently.

However, as shown, these statements are reliable in other ways, the logical tautology is logically absolute, and the belief that the physical universe behaves consistently can be shown with empirical tests repeating the same results.

Statement 1: Unprovable, unfalsifiable claims are unreliable.

Statement 2: Religious spiritual beliefs are unprovable and unfalsifiable.

∴ Religious spiritual beliefs cannot be considered seriously.

 

If you’re going to accept the unprovable, unfalsifiable spiritual beliefs of one religion, let’s just say, Christianity for example, you're going to have to explain to me why you don’t believe in the spiritual beliefs of any other religion, that are also unprovable and unfalsifiable.

 

…

Hey what’s that?

One’s own consciousness: You cannot prove to someone else that you’re conscious. All proof that your conscious is locked inside you and only felt by you.

Hmm… alright.

Have you heard of the idea that one day, people will be able to upload their minds into computers? (Ipromisethisisrelevant). Although with our current technology, it’s just a sci-fi theory, in a hundred years’ time, which do you think is more likely? That we’ll be able to upload, transfer, whatever our consciousness onto some device, proving consciousness, or we’ll find irrefutable evidence for a religion, or be able to solve the problem of evil, or any number of arguments against religion? 

 

But what about utilitarian arguments for religion?

Well although I recognize that religion CAN have good aspects, and perhaps, arguably, may have even been necessary in the past to keep law and order, in the 21^(st) century where communities can be found easily, acts of charity can happen from human generosity, meaning can be found through oneself,  and new laws can be judged and passed via empirical data and logical thinking, religion simply seems unnecessary, causing more divide and conflict than it does good.