Religon

"While this may be a reason some are christians, I don't see how these arguments are unique to christianity." Precisely! But what I provided was not a proof specifically for Christianity, I was just using Christianity as an example. What I am arguing there is that there is, a "logical argument that you can make to justify truly believing in any specific religion". I am not yet saying that Christianity IS the supreme religion, I am arguing that a logical argument can be made for believing in a specific religion, of which Christianity could be one. I should probably give my thesis, for ease of reading, forgive me putting quotation marks around my own words, "It is possible to make a logical argument that justifies a specific religion, by comprehensively testing that religion's beliefs about reality, and demonstrating through evidence and reason that these beliefs accurately reflect conditions in reality." Ta-da! That's my thesis. So, do you believe "no logical argument can be made" because you have reason to believe no such argument can be made, or just because you have never come across such an argument? I provided a very broad overview of a belief usually held by Christians, the different pieces of the belief that must be demonstrated, and a bit of the (very, very summarized) evidence/reasoning to support each piece. This is the method by which one can break down a religion's belief into logical pieces, and support each piece with evidence/reason, to construct a logical argument that that particular belief is, in fact, a condition found in reality. "You can see that muslims will use the exact same arguments to prove that their religion is right. Namely with your sections A, B, and C." Certainly! Both Christians and Muslims believe their holy book is the word of God, so the structure of their arguments will be nearly identical. Just for clarity, I'll give the general layout, Religion>individual belief about reality>claims about specific conditions in reality>evidence/reason that demonstrates that these conditions are met in reality. A logical argument is an argument where the premises support the conclusion. Do you agree? In the example I gave, there is a conclusion, three premises, and several sub-premises (if you will.) If the sub-premises support the premises, and the premises support the conclusion, would you agree that the argument is, by definition, logical? I just want to make sure we're on the same page here. I'm on less of a time crunch right now, so I can do more justice to this example! I apologize if my brevity made it confusing. Conclusion : The Bible is the word of God Premise #1: The words attributed to God in the Bible are infallible. Premise#2:The alleged words of God in the Bible contain ideas and knowledge that almost certainly could not have been imagined by man. Premise#3:The Bible records the alleged words of God the same way today as it did originally. Do you agree here that if the Premises are true, the Conclusion is very likely/certain to be true? Hopefully yes. If so, here's the argument in full, Conclusion : The Bible is the word of God Premise #1: The words attributed to God in the Bible are infallible. -Sub-Premise #1: There are no known falsehoods in the words God allegedly spoke in the Bible. Thus, by definition, they are infallible. -Sub-Premise #2: The alleged words of God proved accurate even in regard to the future, as evidence in a HOST of prophecies. Some to consider are Jeremiah 23:8 which correctly predicts that the Jews will be gathered from the "land of the north" and reform Israel, Ezekiel 26 which predicts the destruction of Tyre in explicate detail, Isaiah 44:28 which predicts that a king named Cyrus would rebuild Jerusalem, to name a few. Premise#2:The alleged words of God in the Bible contain ideas and knowledge that almost certainly could not have been imagined by man. -Sub-Premise #1: Ezekial 26:12 is one verse to look at for this. This verse predicts that the destroyers of Tyre, " shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water." This was a virtually unheard of practice at the time in the prophecy was written, but was done when Alexander the Great took the rubble from mainland Tyre and laid it in the water to make a bridge during his invasion of the island. -Sub-Premise #2: Specific prophecies such as the above (or the Cyrus one, or ones about the Messiah etc) could not have been imagined by man with such accuracy. Premise#3:The Bible records the alleged words of God the same way today as it did originally. -Sub-Premise #1: The oldest versions of the manuscripts that make up the Bible, such as the Dead Sea scroll, match the versions we have today without any significant difference. Thus, there is not evidence that they have been changed. -Sub-Premise#2: As long as a religion has zealous followers, they're holy book tends to be defended rigorously from corruption. Christianity has always had zealous followers, thus it was probably kept from corruption. Now, regardless of whether you agree with the conclusion, premises or sub-premises, would you agree that the sub-premises support the premises, and the premises support the conclusion? If so, by definition, a logical argument then can be made for this particular belief of Christians. (And, I would argue, for Christianity as whole.) You are correct in saying that this structure is the same in the Muslim argument, and that the middle two stages are the same, only replacing the "Bible" with the "Quran". The evidence and reasoning part of the argument, however, is very different from the evidence and reasoning used for the Bible. Could you perhaps rephrase your argument here? Are you arguing that the evidence and reasoning supporting the idea that the Quran is the word of God is as good as the evidence and reasoning supporting the idea that the Bible is the word of God? I don't want to jump ahead into a rant about evidence and reason if that is what you are arguing. But would you agree that if the evidence/reasoning demonstrates that the conditions are met in reality, the argument is then, by definition, logical? Let's go over the argument I gave earlier using this structure It often takes many of these arguments to construct the argument that a whole religion is correct, a "comprehensive" analysis. But you can probably see where I'm going with this. "Furthermore, just because you may agree with the beliefs of the religion, that does not mean it came from god or some other spiritual place." True, unless one of the beliefs of that religion is that it came from god or some other spiritual place, which is a belief of virtually all religions. The belief that the beliefs came from god should be tested with evidence and reason like all the other beliefs about the religion. I'm not sure how this helps your argument, could you rephrase it, perhaps? Reading over your arguments, are you wanting to argue about whether it is possible to produce a logical argument supporting a specific religion, or would you like to change over to discussing these specific arguments themselves? It seems like you want to talk about these specific arguments, rather than talk about whether it is possible to produce them, if I'm understanding correctly. Finally, as a side note, " This is obviously impossible, for one a wooden ship that long (as explained by Bill nye) is impossible to build because the wood will twist and the boat will fall apart." This is a pretty bold statement, to say it is IMPOSSIBLE. Would you elaborating on this? What led you to believe the boat would twist and fall apart? If you get a single, really long but sturdy board and place it in a river (with no surface rocks or anything), as long as it's facing the same way as the current, I think it will just be moved along with the current, not broken. Same with Ark in the ocean, but with waves instead of current, right? What evidence led you to this?