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Comment by rsyring | Hacker News Reader

That's a pretty broad brush to paint all of religion with.

There are plenty of rational arguments for Christianity for those willing to do due diligence:

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/countering-a-dist...

Do you have an example of those types of arguments? The linked article doesn't actually go into any of then and just referenced books I couldn't find. I'm very curious about this subject because in high school I took theology classes and the monks taught about the logical arguments but the arguments were always a little lackluster (the teacher's knew this going into it). The teacher's point during that section was that it would always require faith.

Peruse the short arguments section on Peter Kreeft's website:

http://www.peterkreeft.com/featured-writing.htm

I've just read one (http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/design.htm) and it was less than convincing. In fact, I feel like it's a less-crude version of Mac's argument (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgk8UdV7GQ0).

I don't know much about Mac, but I'm sure he was inspired by others, as was Kreeft. There's a lot more besides the one you read, e.g.

http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-exi...

I've read the Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Kreeft and it tries to make these philosophical topics more accessible to the average reader. There are numerous speakers and writers out there, and you may prefer one of them. For example, Tim Keller is quite different and you can hear him here:

https://gospelinlife.com/downloads/literalism-isn-t-the-bibl...

I've enjoyed reading Dallas Willard:

http://www.dwillard.org/articles/individual/language-being-g...

Sorry, the link wasn't that good in hindsight. Was trying to respond between meetings.

Here is a better jumping off point :

http://www.veritas.org/how-does-christianity-measure-up/

If you want a very in depth treatment, then:

https://www.amazon.com/Doctrine-Knowledge-God-Theology-Lords...

> There are plenty of rational arguments for Christianity

No there aren't. Faith, by its very definition, is irrational.

Faith is not by definition irrational, any more than hope is irrational. It's not provable, but that's different from irrational.

The subject matter of faith may be irrational, but faith-based communities have benefits that ratheists miss out on.

All communities have benefits that those they exclude and other miss out on.

But I'm not joining a communist cell just for the comradeship.

But the thing is: acting rational in every situation requires a lot of mental effort, knowledge, intelligence. Not everyone is capable of this, in fact it is quite rare (because probably you need IQ > 130).

Now, the workaround for people who fail to act rationally on their own was to give them a set of heuristics that they could follow to achieve the same effect without too much thinking, a.k.a. religion.

Of course some religions advocate totally irrational things, like human sacrifices or jihad, but some evolved to the point that following their teachings is a net gain for the society.

Doesn't look like you've provided any in that link?

Yah, sorry about that. I responded above with a better link.

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