A Word on False Dichotomies and Religious Debates

This will address the fallacy of false dichotomies in religious debates


A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false premise

A false premise is an incorrect proposition that forms the basis of an argument or syllogism. Since the premise (proposition, or assumption) is not correct, the conclusion drawn may be in error. However, the logical validity of an argument is a function of its internal consistency, not the truth value of its premises

For example, when someone says " The Genesis accounts happened just like God says, word for word, and if you don't believe it, you are calling God a liar "

All too often people take the bait of this false premise and start arguing against the claim instead of pointing out the underlying fallacious premise

This is why creationist apologetics will fail every time, no matter how many twists and turns are made, and how many supporting verses are included, whether they be Christian or Jewish

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Literal interpretations of Genesis are rare

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_evolution#:~:text=Classical%20rabbinic%20teachings,-Biblical%20chronology%20indicates&text=This%20age%20is%20reflected%20in,Genesis%20is%20rare%20in%20Judaism.

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What if instead of it turning out that either group A or B was " right " or " wrong " about " God ", but instead everyone was just a little right ?

People never discuss this, but it's a possibility

It's entirely possible that most, if not all, the world's religions are not entirely correct, but at the same time share some basic things that turns out to be true, which is primarily the existence of God

There are two ways in which we can apply the word " religion "

We can apply it to refer to the general group of adherents under one system - like " Christians " ,or we can use it to refer to an individual's religion

An individual's religion is often rife with personal biases and private interpretations known as " eisegesis ", whereas the general ideas presented from a religion as a group would be based on " exegesis ", which would come about as a result of academic consensus and not personal intepretations

You could look at the concept of a world religion as a scientific model in that it is generally held by it's adherents to be the the thing that makes the most sense based on scrutiny, rationale, logic and proper methods

A scientific model will always admit itself to be corrected by new information, otherwise this is not science ( Falsifiability ), and a world religion does exactly the same thing

An example would be " Biblical " Archeology ( Covering fields as diverse as ancient literature to numismatics ) that leads to new insights on modern religions in general, like more " Dead Sea Scrolls " for example that shed light on the Hebrew Bible's traditions

In such, when people say that science and religion are completely at odds, they are presenting a false dichotomy, which is a position that holds no water

A person's personal beliefs when it comes to the Bible, evolve with time as they read or study, ( At least it should ) and in such they evolve in time just like a scientific model does

New information slightly reforms the general view, and this means that both science and religion are based on the exact same foundation. People might not like that, but it's a cold, hard fact

Unfortunately, while false dichotomies are really just convenient platforms for dilettantes, they also comprise a majority of debate and argument, which essentially means they are basically useless bloviating

This would include most if not all arguments and debates on " Christian " forums or in Christian chats










Any scientific model is always only going to be " mostly correct ", and that just follows from the foundation provided by the scientific method and falsifiability, FLRW cosmology for example ( What is colloquially known as " Big Bang " )

This is merely the model that we have built through consensus, yet there is a raging debate in the scientific and academic community on whether it's central pillar, which is the inflation and expansion of the universe, is even falsifiable

Normally, in science, when something is not falsifiable, it's discarded as bad science

I've found that out of all the people of religious persuasion I've encountered online that attempt to somehow discredit the consensual scientific history of Big Bang cosmology, using the Bible as the only source of information...

....not a single one is even aware of this potential fatal flaw to the idea of universal inflation in the Big Bang model, which, if I was a religious extremist and a Biblical literalist, that would be the very first thing I would point out if I were attempting to somehow discredit the model

After all, if you're trying to cause a house to collapse, you knock out the thing/s that props it up

It should give the reader pause for thought when they consider that people having these arguments wouldn't even be familiar with the potential biggest fatal flaw of the thing they're attempting to discredit

So then you have to ask yourself, are all these people you see having these arguments even really that educated about the subjects to begin with ?

Obviously, the answer is " no "

So then if you compare the confidence someone has in their knowledge on a topic VS their actual competence with understanding the minutiae of the subjects, where do you think a majority of the people engaging in online debates of this nature fall on the curve below ?

Are they at the peak of " Mount Stupid ", where they've convinced themselves they are " experts " and readily dispense their wisdoms in chats and forums ?

Or are they are at the Plateau of Sustainability ?

If they're at the peak of Mount Stupid, they're just ultracrepidarians, ( People who readily give their wisdom on things they know little to nothing about ), and these are the types of people to avoid, and this is the behavior we ourselves should avoid

Nobody knows less than the person who knows it all

So this brings me back to the concept of religion and the concepts of Exegesis VS Eisegesis

The Bible calls adherents to have answers when people ask questions, this in in 1 Peter 3:15

" ..be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you... "

However, this is often misinterpreted to mean " be ready to have all the answers ", and you'll find that this is common that many religious people, especially extremists, fundamentalists and literalists, will not readily admit to potentially being wrong about something or that they are perhaps missing some critical piece or pieces of information

" I don't know " is a perfectly acceptable answer, and the Bible never says it's not okay to not know something

Knowing everything would actually be completely antithetical to a book that calls it's adherents to study, and if it were true one knew everything about the Bible, reading it would be pointless, and studying it would be doubly pointless

This is sometimes alluded to in the statement: " If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him ", attributed to a ninth-century Buddhist ( Lin Chi ), and it means that if one thinks they have all the answers, they need to get back to studying

Now, the Bible likens debate to war and battle, and the words of the book themselves are referred to as the sword of the warrior who wears the " armor of God "








.....but, it turns out that Bible is most often wielded like a weapon by those least trained to use it in battle, which is polemics, and what the New Testament calls " war " ( Polemos )

It's like an amateur swordsman waded into the thick of the battle with a flimsy paper sword, but decided to blindfold himself beforehand, and just blindly swings the sword, but his blade never really finds it's home and certainly isn't going to bite deep, after all, it's made of paper and not steel

And his " spiritual armor of God " that the Bible describes isn't a finely crafted suit of armor meant for the rigors of warfare, but instead a suit constructed from aluminum foil and Scotch tape

This person has fooled themselves, and I often see this in religious chats and forums where a few members have such strange and extremist views that the entire battle sometimes stops while both sides watch a blindfolded swordsman flail around with his paper sword, watching from a distance with pained amusement

They know they're observing a fool in their own midst, and they know that they are what we call " guilty by association ", yet this is often handled by simply by having been normalized in religious communities, much in the way that homelessness has become so normalized that people turn a blind eye to it instead of boldly addressing it

Now, I believe that the Bible should indeed be wielded like a weapon by those that claim to adhere to what it says, but as time goes on in the modern world, more and more people reject literalism and religious extremism in their attempt to find answers

In other words, atheists and agnostics tend to reject the answers from these paper sword bearing warriors and instead turn to the Bible and exegesis themselves to get their answers

This means we oftentimes have atheists and agnostics actually being more well educated on religion, religious history, and religious literature, while religious adherents are bogged down with personal interpretations and biases

Basically, those that deny the claims of those who believe, actually study the Bible more that the people who say they love it

Ironic, isn't it ?

The reason this is true, is because those atheists and agnostic don't " hate the Bible ", as claimed by quite a few Christians, they don't buy the answers being peddled, and they don't have respect for people who say they are devoted to something but really aren't

This is one of the reasons why false dichotomies and literalism in religious debates are doomed to fail from the start

They are foundations of sand

This also means that the people who are asking the most questions, usually referred to as the " non-believers " are actually the ones who have the most hope that the Bible's statements and claims turn out to be something that's nothing like what they've been sold

They are the ones that deep down inside, believe there's something to it, and they have this want, this desire, to know truth on a very deep level

There is no simply no bigger nightmare for a loudmouthed religious extremist, than to have what they're peddling, be proven in the end to be shoddy goods

Say, for a Gedanken, ( A thought experiment ), that a majority of the extremist Christian views held about " End times " and people literally burning in a fiery place called " Hell ", turned out to be " true ", but not literally and in the way they they want on a personal level

You know as well as I do that this is something that would make a person like that drop their supposed beliefs like a hot rock, and walk away in disgust, embarrassment and disappointment

This is what the Bible calls " apostasy " ( In the Book of Thessalonians )







They would have nobody but themselves to hold responsible for misinterpreting the content of such a complex book built on such incredible foundations

The word " Hades " is actually written by taking the word " eidos ", which means " understanding, knowing, perceiving, etc ", and using what's called a negative particle prefix in Greek, which means you take the letter " alpha ", and attach it to the word to give it the connotation of " not "

For example: " Theist " VS " Atheist ", we are attaching " A " to " Theist " to mean " Not a Theist "

English negative prefixes are : a–, dis–, il–, im–, in-, ir–, non–, un–

So, properly, the word we know as " Hell ", in Greek, actually means " Not knowing, understanding, perceiving "

In other words, what people attempt to claim is a literal place, actually refers to ignorance

We can know this for certain by looking at the Greek word that precedes " Hades " in Greek, which is " in "

Unlike English, in Biblical Greek there are 3 different words translated as " in " to English

If I told you " Help! I'm in trouble ", you would automatically know that " trouble " is not a place, but rather a situation, and that " in ", does not mean physically standing in some specific location

This is exactly what people threatening you with an eternity in a fiery hell are doing, when they claim it's a place you get sent forever

They are confusing the message to mean that " trouble " is actually a town you're in

This is also ironic that " Hell " essentially refers to ignorance, and that this isn't known by people using it to threaten others with it, and they themselves are actually the ignorant ones

They are ones " in Hell ", and they are the ones who are in what the Bible calls " Darkness ", which is from the Greek word meaning " spiritual ignorance "

Again, " Eisegesis VS Exegesis "

Those who cannot ask the questions cannot reveal the answers

To get back my question of what would happen if it turned out everybody was simultaneously a little right and mainly wrong ?

False dichotomies do not allow this possibility to exist in a debate, and this is a maneuver that religious extremists and literalists take to avoid cognitive dissonance

" It either happened or it didn't and the Bible says it happened so I believe it's true " is a person making a cowardly move of running from battle, which is exactly the opposite thing that a " Christian warrior " is supposed to do

It's perfectly acceptable for you to believe that accounts in the Bible are not literal, and at the same time still have faith and belief that it is " true " on some level, and therefore still " God's word ", and those who tell you cannot have this view are liars

If you don't think they are, then ask them to explain what the history of literature that has historically been held to have been associated with either " God " or " gods " prior to the Bible, actually is

Ask them, for example, why Akkadian lunar priests like Sin-Leqi-Uninni ( The scribe of Gilgamesh who tells the story with himself as Gilgamesh, - in 1st person narrative ) considered the table of mathematical data of the lunar god Sin's movements through the heavens to be " God's or the gods' word/s " and therefore " sacred "

If they aren't even remotely familiar with such topics, they're liars and have no idea why literature would have even been considered such a thing, and certainly have no right to tell you how to form your beliefs and ideas about the Bible

There are way too many people running around in various religions spending their time telling everyone what they should believe when they should spend the time studying instead. A little bit of knowledge in the wrong hands is dangerous, and a prime example is with extremists

The effect it has on how Christianity is seen to the people who don't buy what's being peddled, is like one step forward and 10 steps back. It works against establishing gravitas for Christians on a personal level by making a black mark on Christianity as a whole

If you were ( Or even are ) a Christian, then certainly you could handle things if it turned out you were wrong about a few things but also right about about a few critical things, like the existence of God and Jesus Christ, and the Bible being the " word of God "

Your faith could turn out to be justified like the Bible promises, yet your interpretation could not. You certainly can't justify holding extremist views formed from being in " Hell and darkness " ( Ignorance of the Bible that comes from lack of serious study )

Or would that have you leave your faith like a petulant child, merely because people who didn't buy what you tried selling aren't going to end up in some literal places of torment, bathed in fire for eternity ?

I would hope not. If that were the case, I'd say you need to rectify some personal issues that might be deeply seated in your mind. They might be affecting how you conduct yourself in the world as a Christian, who is a representative of Christ