This argument comes from Dawkins book The God Delusion. It's clever, but also kind of dumb. Trying to discredit contemporary religion based on what people believed 2,500 years ago is like trying to discredit science based on alchemy.
The former of these (which I do not personally hold) is a more sophisticated and plausible than the existence of Thor, while the latter is pretty much on exactly the same level.
Whereas oftentimes they're actually using the same methodology, techniques, and textbooks that you'd find in the neuroscience/physics/philosophy departments, and publishing in the same academic journals. C.f. http://csp.org/psilocybin/
Well, yes. Scientists around the world agree that every scientific topic should be debunked. The ones that are left -- the ones that survive an attempt at debunking -- should be taken as fact, presumably until they are debunked and replaced with something more valid.
> If you asked someone at the Harvard divinity school what the most compelling arguments in favor of religion were today, they'd probably talk about Thor ... -- not at all
Sure, because choosing what to believe in, without a scientific basis, is essentially fashion. And believe me -- Thor is _way_ out of fashion.
This is exactly the same as what many modern religious thinkers would say, which was my original point-- that debunking old dogma doesn't do anything to disprove the 'cutting edge' of religious thought.
edit: Whatever, if you read my archive you'll see I'm probably the most atheist atheist on HN, but at least I'm willing to be intellectually honest and give the other side a fair shake.
Saying we "agree on 519 of 520 and disagree on 1" is a non-statement. The first person's belief in that 1 by definition precludes his belief in the other 519.
The point of the argument is to challenge people to question whether the existence of their god is any more plausible than any of the other thousands of deities whose existence has been postulated.
It works well against Christians or anyone else whose god has specific and well-defined properties. It doesn't work against deists since their "god" is sufficiently poorly-defined to be more plausible than Thor.
No it doesn't.
It amazes me how often I hear Christians say "this argument works well against atheists" and then make an utterly stupid argument that none of the atheists I know would take seriously. This strikes me as much the same -- it's an argument that atheists think should work well against Christians, but that most Christians will think is stupid and misses the point.
Contemporary thinkers might argue that god is well-defined, but ineffable.
I think what you are saying is that a Christian (for example) would say, "of course I don't believe in other god X, because I'm not allowed to". The 519 of 520 argument depends on whether the monotheist can also reject those other gods on their own merits.
You seem to shrug off "what people believed 2,500 years ago" as, perhaps, silly or illogical and then chasten someone for doing the same to current religion :)
Modern Judaism is distinctly different than what was practiced two millenia ago.
Firstly your now considering early Judaism unenlightened. However the core beliefs are still very much the same; and many customs from contemporary Norse times are still observed by some sects.
Secondly that's the practice of religion; which is very different from a belief itself. It is possible to believe in God or a set of gods without following the practices of the organisations themselves. The difference between then and now is that a) you were "sold" the practices as an inherent part of belief in XYZ God and b) to believe without practising them was dangerous. As a result the actual belief in the Abrahamic God is somewhat irrelevant to the practices.
The reason it's not practiced today is 'just' because the decree also states that you have to perform the sacrifice at the great temple on temple mount. That poses a technical problem, since: 1. The temple was destroyed 2k years back, and there's a pretty famous mosque standing in its place. 2. Religious jews have to do a special kind of purification in order to even be on temple mount, and this purification is impossible at the moment, again for weird technical reasons (they need a red cow, don't ask).
BUT, if there was a temple, and there was a purification rite, religious jews would, in all likelihood, be happily burning offerings 3 times each year.
In short, not as different as you may think.
There is a priestly caste, the kohanim. The kohanim have various obligations and duties, most of which are moot in the modern world, and one of which involves the hand gesture made famous by Leonard Nimoy.
There is another caste, the Levites, but they have no remaining duties.
The Jews adopted that even tho the Egyptians reverted relatively quickly to multiple gods under King Tut. Mostly because the priests of all the various gods that had been shut down wanted power back.
From Judaism, monotheism spread to Christianity and Islam and some might say in some minor form to some variants of eastern religions/philosophies.
To answer your point - the answer is yes, and no.
Ultimately it is next to impossible to be sure (assuming we can take the critical rather than the religious view of the history) when/where/how Judaism appeared.
At the time pretty much every country had their own God or gods and considered them superior to the others (though, ironically, appear to have been accepting of the other gods - just considered them inferior). General thinking simply says that at that time one particular country believed in one God - they were imprisoned for the Babylonians for a long while but the religion survived very devoutly.
I'm not sure what the common thinking is about why Judaism survived beyond that and grew to be so important.
Then, yes, Judaism influenced or started pretty much all of the modern religions.
EDIT: I find the birth of religions a fascinating subject, but I'm still churning through the birth/development of Christianity so not back to Judaism yet. All my knowledge above comes from a wonderful book called "A Little History of the World" which touches on the subject briefly.
If by 'all the modern religions,' you just mean the 'big 3.' [namely: Christianity, Islam, Judaism] I've never seen claims that any of the 'Eastern' religions were influenced by Judaism.
There's only speculation, nothing really concrete (at least not that I've ever found.)
Judaism does directly reference several Egyptian concepts. Both Genesis 1 and the plagues in Exodus draw heavily on the Egyptian pantheon (in a negative way -- explicitly rejecting Egyptian gods, calling them weak or stating that they are mere created objects.) But I don't know of anything that links Jewish monotheism to Egyptian monotheism.
There's also virtually no evidence that Jewish monotheism was influenced by Atenism, the Egyptian monotheism founded by Akhenaten. It's a fun theory but not one that most scholars give credence to.
I do think it is quite baffling how you can be consciously aware of all the myriad of religions in the world and still not be a atheist. They can’t all be right and there exists no method of picking the right one except trusting you own feelings. I mean, Christians baptize their babies, Jews circumcise their sons – those religions seemingly don’t even want you to consciously decide to join them. It’s just assumed that you will if your parents have that religion.
I agree wholeheartedly with the first half of that statement: "They can’t all be right". The religions of the world have conflicting beliefs that cannot be reconciled. If there is one true God, then the other religions that worship other gods have to be false. You can't have it both ways.
However, at least with respect to Christianity, the second half "and there exists no method of picking the right one except trusting you own feelings.". is most definitely not true. Christians who believe the Bible to be true and accurate would tell you the opposite -- do not trust your feelings, because feelings don't determine what is true and what is false. In the Bible-believing Christian realm the argument would be "Read the Bible, decide for yourself whether you believe it or not."
I can't say I see differences of that magnitude. In fact, I don't see many significant differences at all.
(E.g. whereas most modern religions are far less bloodthirsty than some historical religions, so were many religious contemporaries of those bloodthirsty belief structures.)
Surely one can be religious and practice science. But in what denomination of which religion is it a requirement?
The non-religious have performed countless similar studies on religious experience, efficacy of prayer, etc. Are you suggesting their activities reflect on the state of religious practice in the modern world, simply because their subject matter is related to religious practice?
To give another example, if I wanted to debunk astrology then I'd start by arguing against the beliefs of Kary Mullis (who won the Nobel prize in science), not some 4000 year old scrolls.
Lame, yes, but valid.
for a theist, it may be hard to imagine not believing in their particular god. but it's easy for them to imagine not believing in those countless other gods