If you give someone free will, then it's obvious they are going to use it to make mistakes. However, people are still responsible for the choices they make.

Sin is a bit of a silly word. It's a word that carries with it the image of wild-eyed lunatics burning innocent people at the stake. "Hey, Bob, why'd you set Mrs. Windham on fire?"

"Because she SINNED!"

More than anything, it's a blanket term for "they did things we don't like". Don't go to church? Sinner! Have sex before marriage? Sinner! Say something we don't like, do something we don't like, dare to question our beliefs that we need to feel like something actually gives a crap even though logically it looks like our invisible buddy is a frigging sadist that created us to have creatures to screw with like an imbecilic child pulling the wings off of bugs to see how they react, assumed they exist at all? SINNER! SHUT THEM UP, BURN THEM, KILL THEM, WE CAN'T HANDLE SOMEONE WITH CRITICAL THINKING PICKING AWAY AT OUR SECURITY BLANKETS! REALITY IS SCARY!

That is neither direct nor indirect evidence for anything. Baseless assumption would be the correct term.

That was a different guy. Flashpulse just said that two pages ago and then I proceeded to tell him about amazing trees, which probably went right over his head, since he ignored that fascinating tale.

It's nice that you think so, but I'm still waiting for you to come up with an example of how someone could form a belief without anything indicating to them that it is true. There is evidence that indicates Christianity is true, and I think the evidence is sufficiently strong to prove to me that it is true. You can deny reality all you like, but it won't do you any good.

Definitely flashpulse

I will again pull out the widespread cult which believes that we will be remedied by 50 000 invisible ships in the earth's orbit. Basis for a belief can quite simply be someone very persuasive, rich or just lucky.

Problem is that people are curious creatures and want answers. How do things work, how did we come to be, what is the purpose of life. Religion happens to offer answers comprehensible to an average joe, therefore it's not difficult to spread.

"Because daddy frowns when people say otherwise."

Not really, at some point a person is no longer a Scotsman because they're actually an Englishman.Which is the case here. Mormons have an additional entire volume to the Bible that was written in the 19th century and with all the extra stuff in there, they are about as Christian as your average Christian is Jewish.

In the case of Catholics, they do a fair amount of things that are expressly forbidden in the Bible. Idolatry is rampant and there's all sorts of Church sanctioned cleansing of sins that aren't in an of the Christian sects.

One can certainly declare them to be Christian or not, but it's foolish to pretend like the rather major doctrinal choices made by the hierarchy don't lead to a certain degree of ambiguity. I mean Limbo, thankfully they've finally done away with that foolishness, but it's hardly the only example of the hierarchy writing its own rules.

Tradition.

People are still saying, in this very thread I think someone said it in fact, that we only use 10% of our brains.
Actually, he said scientists said that, but that wasn't true either.

You hear something from your parents. You accept it. You hear something from your friend. You accept it. Then you repeat it to someone who trusts your credibility and then passes it on. No one does their homework because they assume someone else already did it.

Unless you're asking how someone can form a belief without even a source of information of any kind, since your dad telling you something combined with your trust in him still indicates to you something is true, then I don't have an answer for you because you're basically asking how someone can form a belief in a total vacuum.

The problem here, is everyone thinks their specific form is true and all others false, thus it is the no true scotsman ordeal.

I completely agree that evolution could have been part of how God created life on the planet. The Bible doesn't actually say how old the Earth is, but some people have interpreted it to say that it's around 6000 years old, so evolution doesn't contradict the Bible, it contradicts their particular interpretation of it. However, there are people that insist that their interpretation is correct and that evolution does contradict Genesis, and if Genesis is wrong, then that calls the rest of the Bible into question. Personally, I base my belief that Christianity is true on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. I'm fine with the possibility that I've misinterpreted something in Genesis, but if Jesus did rise, then my faith is in vain.

It seems strange to me that no one is capable of perfectly living up to a high moral standard, even when they set the standard themselves. Why do you think that is?

Actually, evolution doesn't necessarily speak of age of the planet. Some bits that are considered part of a sum of theories called evolution do talk about primates, dinosaurs and whatnot, but the important one is the one which speaks of adaptability, not of history. Basically, God created Adam and Eve 6000 years ago - whatever, that's something I won't attemt to disprove. It seems silly to me given other evidence, but all right. Evolution, on the other hand - the act of adapting to your surroundings on genetic basis - let's say Adam and Eve, and all life in the world was created with this ability. Suddenly, you get self-sustaining life-forms, whose skin slowly gains in pigmentation to accomodate for more temperate climates. Admittedly, 6000 years is far too little for that to work all that well...

A baseless assumption would be to spontaneously assume that something was true without anything indicating that it was true. Rather, he based his inference on the size of the universe. Circumstantial evidence still counts as evidence.

No, he did not infer that aliens exist because the universe is big, he said it increases the likelyhood for it. That is not evidence. His evidence for the existance of aliens is most likely our existance.



Right, I mixed up my religious admirers.

If someone is persuasive, then that means they are good at presenting evidence that indicates what they are saying is true. Dawkins is an authority on biology, so someone can believe what he said about biology to be true based only on the evidence that he's an authority. If someone perceives a cult leader as being an authority, then the same thing goes for them. I'm not coming against evolution, but the same thing could be said about evolution providing the answers about our origin as a species. The fact that we're seeking answers doesn't imply anything about validity of the answers we find. It just means that we need to try to be aware of our on biases and that we need to be careful about how we interpret evidence.

I'm pretty sure that there is no one on the planet that completely has their act together, where everything they believe to be true corresponds to what is objectively true. Learning is a constant process of weeding out false beliefs, taking in new true and false beliefs, and reinforcing what we consider to be true beliefs. It's important to always be willing to reexamine our beliefs, especially those that are most important to us.

That's not what the No True Scotsman fallacy is. The fallacy is saying that no Christian would do such and such and then change that to no true Christian would do that when the original statement turned out to be false.

That does not however relate to the issue at hand. At some point there is a line beyond which somebody is no longer a Christian. The Book of Mormon and the associated teachings is clearly on the other side of the line. The idolatry and attempts by Catholic Clergy to convince people they have some pull on who does and doesn't get into heaven results in them being in a rather questionable spot. There's valid reasons in both directions and the practices deviate sufficiently to make it a legitimate question.

It's like Jews for Jesus. They're not Jews, once one accepts Jesus as their lord and savior one passes beyond the point of Judaism.