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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

As a christian I already have a region that is not debatable. That helps me be more willing to debate all the things outside. Communist, capitalist, jew, muslim, hindu, cannibal, republican, democrat, green, other sect of christian - all the same to me, something I'm not religiously attached to so I can try to understand. Some of those I understand enough to conclude they are wrong.

I know some who are strongly religious about their political party. I was treasurer of my local Republican party for a while, but I was able to leave them when the party it self starting going off of the things I supported them for (the local party is still pretty good). I might return in the future, we will see.

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Genuinely curious what your personal approach is to "picking" a religion to believe in. Generally I know most people don't pick a faith and just have the one they grew up with, but you strike me as someone who actually critically examines their beliefs (based on your comments).

I've had a lot of great conversations with religious people about the nature of their faith, but I have never gotten a good answer on why they chose their particular organized/named faith. Other religions have people who believe just as much as you do that their religion is the "right" one and all the others are wrong. How did you come to choose your particular form of Christianity over the dozens of other named faiths you could choose that have equal levels of historical correlation to their religious texts?

Not OP, but I am a Christian convert. I was raised an agnostic/atheist, but converted due to a combination of philosophical and emotional reasons. Contrary to what is commonly believed, there are not that many intellectually serious religions to chose from. If you are curious about it, I would suggest you check out The Experience of God, by David Bentley Hart (https://www.amazon.com/Experience-God-Being-Consciousness-Bl...).

This is clear in Christianity if you pay attention to apologetics (I’m not Christian, but I find some of that stuff interesting)

When various sects happen to go head to head, it’s like watching an MMA tournament where a very few competitors are well-trained in BJJ and most of the rest seem to hold a white belt in karate from the nearest strip mall. It’s usually not a competition, but a one-sided beating. Caring about some amount of intellectual seriousness would clearly narrow one’s options down a lot.

I chose Pure Land Buddhism (Jodo Shinshu) over Christianity as I found the former to be morally superior and with a higher aim

> Some of those I understand enough to conclude they are wrong.

Sounds like you may be justifying your conclusions instead of the other way around.

There is no objective way to measure most of the above. Cannibals really did exist - not in large numbers. People really did sacrifice their kids to the gods. I'm willing to state both of the above are wrong.

Note that I didn't state everything on my list is wrong.

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