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I am saying that people can not prove everything, or even most things, in life. Some things, which I am personally think are wrong, are unable to be proven to be wrong due to time/etc. People allow others, especially for events that happened in the past, so handle issues of proof and truthfulness and so on. As such, if many people believe something to be true over an extended period of time for events that happened in the past and whose truthfulness can no longer be directly probed using the techniques available to forensics, science, etc, then it reasonable to believe it is true. It doesn't make it true, it makes an individual a reasonable person if they believes it to be true.
Obviously many people will believe things to be true that aren't true and things to be false which are true and so on. And all of that is reasonable.
Scientology was created recently enough that we can use tools to probe the majority of it's statements. Mormonism happened recently enough that many of it's statements can be probed although not all. The vast majority of Sikh, Christian, Hindu, etc all happened long ago enough that we can probe the truthfulness at all, or our tools would suggest to someone without very strong priors that the Resurrection happened/etc. The priors aren't even that resurrections don't happen as Christianity doesn't predict that they do happen, Christianity said that 1 (or really, 3) happened about 2000 years ago due to a once in universe history event. It is fundamentally outside of the range of Science unless Science invents time travel. So the strong prior necessary to say that a the Resurrection is definitely false is a prior that Christianity is false, which is a tautology.
But it is even reasonable in the case of Scientology to think it true. Scientology happened a long time ago, and someones interest could be on other things. There are kids raised in scientology.
I am not saying that Christianity is provably wrong. But if you were alive 2000 years ago, or had a time machine, you could prove Christianity wrong. Now you really can't. I mean, you could imagine situations (aliens appear with amazing technology and talk about how they wanted to set us on a better path and so invented Jesus 2000 years ago) which could really disrupt things, but nothing that we can expect to do so.
BTW, there is a fundamental difference between the claims that most/all Christians make about the Resurrection (which make it impossible to disprove and were always the claims that Christians claimed about the Resurrection, this is not a case of the claims shifting as science advances/etc) and those that a few Christians make about Noah's Ark. That is because the claims about Noah's Ark impact the relationship that animals have with one another/etc now.. which is proven (with science) not to be the case. Now you can probably come up with some system (like an alternative universe or world ala Hitchhiker's Guild that Noah existed in and was then transported or connected with this one) where it could both be true.... or you could realize that even if you take the traditional view that Moses wrote the Pentateuch then you have the situation where Moses is writing down myths and legends that he heard (Which might have some truth, but liken't aren't be correct in all details) and not events that he observed or someone he knew observed.
JM
(And of course, the majority of Christians recognize that Moses lived 1600-1200 BC and our first full copies of the Pentateuch are after 500 BC and arguably the first reference to them around 700 BC, unlike Chrisst's Life, Death and Resurrection where we have Jesus life around 30 AD and written stories of His life referenced a few decades after His death with copies that we have available to us now dated to a century after His death.)
Obviously many people will believe things to be true that aren't true and things to be false which are true and so on. And all of that is reasonable.
Scientology was created recently enough that we can use tools to probe the majority of it's statements. Mormonism happened recently enough that many of it's statements can be probed although not all. The vast majority of Sikh, Christian, Hindu, etc all happened long ago enough that we can probe the truthfulness at all, or our tools would suggest to someone without very strong priors that the Resurrection happened/etc. The priors aren't even that resurrections don't happen as Christianity doesn't predict that they do happen, Christianity said that 1 (or really, 3) happened about 2000 years ago due to a once in universe history event. It is fundamentally outside of the range of Science unless Science invents time travel. So the strong prior necessary to say that a the Resurrection is definitely false is a prior that Christianity is false, which is a tautology.
But it is even reasonable in the case of Scientology to think it true. Scientology happened a long time ago, and someones interest could be on other things. There are kids raised in scientology.
I am not saying that Christianity is provably wrong. But if you were alive 2000 years ago, or had a time machine, you could prove Christianity wrong. Now you really can't. I mean, you could imagine situations (aliens appear with amazing technology and talk about how they wanted to set us on a better path and so invented Jesus 2000 years ago) which could really disrupt things, but nothing that we can expect to do so.
BTW, there is a fundamental difference between the claims that most/all Christians make about the Resurrection (which make it impossible to disprove and were always the claims that Christians claimed about the Resurrection, this is not a case of the claims shifting as science advances/etc) and those that a few Christians make about Noah's Ark. That is because the claims about Noah's Ark impact the relationship that animals have with one another/etc now.. which is proven (with science) not to be the case. Now you can probably come up with some system (like an alternative universe or world ala Hitchhiker's Guild that Noah existed in and was then transported or connected with this one) where it could both be true.... or you could realize that even if you take the traditional view that Moses wrote the Pentateuch then you have the situation where Moses is writing down myths and legends that he heard (Which might have some truth, but liken't aren't be correct in all details) and not events that he observed or someone he knew observed.
JM
(And of course, the majority of Christians recognize that Moses lived 1600-1200 BC and our first full copies of the Pentateuch are after 500 BC and arguably the first reference to them around 700 BC, unlike Chrisst's Life, Death and Resurrection where we have Jesus life around 30 AD and written stories of His life referenced a few decades after His death with copies that we have available to us now dated to a century after His death.)
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