”Hundreds of millions of people have concluded that God doesn't exist. The World Christian Encyclopedia counts non-believers at nearly 1 billion people.
Also, I did not commit a fallacy. I did not say “Millions of people reject God's existence, therefore God doesn't exist.” That would be a fallacy ad populum, but I never said any such thing.”

Yes, that was sloppy wording on my part!

Yet, not to belabor the point, your suggestion that the “hundreds of millions of people (that) have operated from a position of faith and have still concluded that religious traditions are false” is some kind of evidence against the experiential faith that Mark was referencing – that is an ad populum fallacy. You are supporting the conclusion of your contention by calling on the seemingly increasing popularity of your way of thinking. Just because hundreds of millions of people reach a particular conclusion doesn’t mean that they are correct.

The second problem with this contention is, as I mentioned in my previous comment, that many of the hundreds of millions of non-believers were separated from religion by force. For the peoples of Eastern Europe and East Asia, disbelief was imposed and did not occur as the result of a careful weighing of the evidence. Certainly, there are millions of people in the west that have decided that religious traditions are false but I strongly doubt that the figure is in the hundreds of millions. The figure of one billion includes the several hundreds of millions in East Asia who are still disbelievers by way of coercion.

Either way, the real issue is not about statistics or demographics. You have stated that the scientific method gives us reliable knowledge and is the best way to uncover truths about the world we live in. Yet, given the very best method available to us – the scientific method – the truth about how many people concluded that religion is false through a weighing of the evidence is still debatable, even though there is no shortage of evidence available to us on the subject! So what is the truth? Did hundreds of millions of people sit down and examine the evidence and decide that they just couldn’t believe, or did someone mention “re-education camp” as a de-conversion incentive?

The point is that the information derived from the scientific method can and does get used to reinforce a priori positions regardless of their truth, thereby undermining any notion of critical thinking and diminishing the “truth” value of the information that has been garnered. The implication is that science may well uncover facts and information about the universe but the truth of this information can still be a point of debate and interpretation making the scientific method as reliable a source for imparting truth as the undoubtedly flawed personages that utilize it.

”Defining morality is a philosophical matter. But if this philosophical spadework arrives at a definition of morality such that morality supervenes upon or reduces to natural facts, then science is the best source of knowledge about these natural facts from which we can derive moral facts.”

This is somewhat vague.
I will say that you seem to be acknowledging a limit (and I would say that it’s a major limitation) to the scientific method as a tool for uncovering truths about the world.

”Hundreds of millions of people have concluded that God doesn't exist. The World Christian Encyclopedia counts non-believers at nearly 1 billion people.
Also, I did not commit a fallacy. I did not say “Millions of people reject God's existence, therefore God doesn't exist.” That would be a fallacy ad populum, but I never said any such thing.”

Yes, that was sloppy wording on my part!

Yet, not to belabor the point, your suggestion that the “hundreds of millions of people (that) have operated from a position of faith and have still concluded that religious traditions are false” is some kind of evidence against the experiential faith that Mark was referencing – that is an ad populum fallacy. You are supporting the conclusion of your contention by calling on the seemingly increasing popularity of your way of thinking. Just because hundreds of millions of people reach a particular conclusion doesn’t mean that they are correct.

The second problem with this contention is, as I mentioned in my previous comment, that many of the hundreds of millions of non-believers were separated from religion by force. For the peoples of Eastern Europe and East Asia, disbelief was imposed and did not occur as the result of a careful weighing of the evidence. Certainly, there are millions of people in the west that have decided that religious traditions are false but I strongly doubt that the figure is in the hundreds of millions. The figure of one billion includes the several hundreds of millions in East Asia who are still disbelievers by way of coercion.

Either way, the real issue is not about statistics or demographics. You have stated that the scientific method gives us reliable knowledge and is the best way to uncover truths about the world we live in. Yet, given the very best method available to us – the scientific method – the truth about how many people concluded that religion is false through a weighing of the evidence is still debatable, even though there is no shortage of evidence available to us on the subject! So what is the truth? Did hundreds of millions of people sit down and examine the evidence and decide that they just couldn’t believe, or did someone mention “re-education camp” as a de-conversion incentive?

The point is that the information derived from the scientific method can and does get used to reinforce a priori positions regardless of their truth, thereby undermining any notion of critical thinking and diminishing the “truth” value of the information that has been garnered. The implication is that science may well uncover facts and information about the universe but the truth of this information can still be a point of debate and interpretation making the scientific method as reliable a source for imparting truth as the undoubtedly flawed personages that utilize it.

”Defining morality is a philosophical matter. But if this philosophical spadework arrives at a definition of morality such that morality supervenes upon or reduces to natural facts, then science is the best source of knowledge about these natural facts from which we can derive moral facts.”

This is somewhat vague.
I will say that you seem to be acknowledging a limit (and I would say that it’s a major limitation) to the scientific method as a tool for uncovering truths about the world.

Defining morality is a philosophical matter. But if this philosophical spadework arrives at a definition of morality such that morality supervenes upon or reduces to natural facts, then science is the best source of knowledge about these natural facts from which we can derive moral facts.

>>To say that there are “millions and millions of people that have concluded that God doesn’t exist”, is (apart from being untrue) something of a fallacy ad populum.<<

Hundreds of millions of people have concluded that God doesn't exist. The World Christian Encyclopedia counts non-believers at nearly 1 billion people.

Also, I did not commit a fallacy. I did not say “Millions of people reject God's existence, therefore God doesn't exist.” That would be a fallacy ad populum, but I never said any such thing.

Yup, there is plenty of room for the discoveries of science and the discoveries of theism. It's just that the discoveries of theism happen to be false, in my view. Science doesn't rule out the supernatural, but it just so happens that the supernatural does not exist.

Well it seems as though you are saying that science cannot answer “should” questions and that it also can answer “should” questions. I’m not sure how I could have made a category error when you are, in fact, claiming that science can and pretty much has answered many questions about what drives the human condition and that, if it hasn’t already done so, it will be able to answer all such questions in the future.

I agree that science can offer descriptive appraisals of the variety of factors that humans may perceive to be beautiful or meaningful, but any attempt to confine the process of creativity through a scientific delineation can only lead to a banal conformity to scientific logic. The teen-pop music and advertising industries are two examples of a somewhat scientific approach to the creative process that produce short-term curiosities of little depth and promote a degree of conformity. So, even if science were able to one day come up with a formula for how to produce a great work of art, music or comedy then it would quickly get dull and formulaic just like teen-pop music.

I agree that secularism in Western Europe has increased since 1900, but the point of your linking to the article was to show that disbelief rivals the great faiths numerically – a point that you contend shows that hundreds of millions of people have concluded (I presume you are suggesting by reason and rationality) that religious faith is wrong. Obviously, if a billion or so people in China and almost as many in Eastern Europe were forcibly separated from their religious beliefs through totalitarian intimidation and oppression, then this can hardly be put forward as a freely taken choice to leave the church. To say that there are “millions and millions of people that have concluded that God doesn’t exist”, is (apart from being untrue) something of a fallacy ad populum.

I believe that there is room for both science and the miraculous. When God sent fire from heaven to burn up Elijah's offering, there could be a perfectly fine scientific answer for such a phenomena. It could be fireballs, or lightening. Both of which have been observe on clear cloudless days, and in particular, during dry spells. But the fact that the fire came when Elijah prayed -that was a miracle.