Your whole argument hinges on the claim that I (or someone else) believes in the scientific method while I consider it to be a tool (for lack of a better word).

No. My argument hinges on a statement that I called A, and on your acceptance that A is true. That's why I said, 'Statement A could be "the scientific method is the best method we know of so far"...or it could be something else entirely.' Suppose for a moment that A is the statement, "Slashdot is news for nerds. Stuff that matters." That would be something else entirely than belief in the scientific method. However, my argument still works with that statement because my argument didn't depend on belief in the scientific method at any point. My argument depended only upon there being a statement that you accepted as being true. At this point we can stop supposing that statement A is "Slashdot is news for nerds. Stuff that matters." I make precisely two claims about A. First, it's a statement, and second, you accept it as being true. Now, by the law of generalization (and assuming my argument is valid and my premisses are true) then at least one of my four conclusions must be true. If my argument is invalid then I invite you to show me where I've made my mistake.

1) You believe in something that's unprovable. 2) You believe circular reasoning is valid. 3) You believe at least one statement that is inexpressible because it's infinitely long. 4) You state things are true when you actually don't believe they are.

If my premisses aren't true, then I invite you to tell me why you keep making statements.

My question is simple: Why do you believe in your religion (be it hindusm or christianity) and not in the others?

That may be your question now, but it certainly wasn't what I responded to. What I responded to was your quotation of Stephen F. Roberts, which I repeat here.

Stephen F. Roberts: "...I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

My claim amounted to saying that Roberts' quotation was worthless insofar as rejecting the existence of any one particular god, analogously to it's worth in rejecting the number 2 as the only even prime.

I still haven't seen you provide anything to change my mind regarding that.

Let me summarise by saying that I am making two claims. Firstly, you (probably) believe in something without proof. And secondly, Mr. Robert's insight doesn't permit one to reject the existence any particular god.

~Loyal

No, I don't believe that.

Perhaps I've explained myself poorly. Let me try again. You've made the claim, "No, I don't believe that," which presumably means that you don't believe that the scientific method is a good way to learn about the universe. I have a little trouble reconciling that with the later claim you made that you accept that the scientific method is the best way we know so far, but I suppose it's possible that the scientific is both the best way we know so far and not a good way.

The reason I say that your claim amounts to a claim that the scientific method is not a good way to learn about the universe is because I said (verbatim,) "do you believe that the scientific method is a good way to learn about the universe?" to which you replied (also verbatim,) "No, I don't believe that." However, I don't want to get bogged down in those details too much, because I have these other details that I want to get bogged down in.

Let's suppose you have a belief, which I'll call A. I don't mean that in the sense of taking A on faith, but rather in the sense that you accept A as being true. Statement A could be "the scientific method is the best method we know of so far" or it could be "no, I don't believe that," or it could be "the method is simple," or it could be "there is no logical, reasonable or provable argument why your faith would be correct and others wrong," or it could be something else entirely. There are only two requirements on A; it is a statement and you accept it as being true. Given that you accept A, there are only two possibilities--either there is a reason for believing A, or there isn't. Let's consider the latter first. If there isn't a reason for believing A then you believe in something that's unprovable (which is something that you've claimed is untrue.) Now let's consider the former. Here, again there are only two possibilities. Either the reason for believing A is A, itself, or it's something else. If the reason for believing A is A itself, then you accept circular reasoning as being valid, and you cannot reject the bible's claim to be accurate--or rather you cannot reject it on the basis of circular reasoning being invalid. If you reject it then it must be on some other basis. If the reason for believing A is something else, then let's give it a name in order to make it easier to reason about. I'll call it A-1. This is where the infinite recursion comes in, because I ask what reason you have for accepting A-1? It must either be unsupportable, or in the A through A-k list, or it must be a new reason which I'll call A-2. The reason that always creating a new reason is a problem is that all finite reasons can be expressed with a finite number of characters, which would mean that you believe at least one thing that cannot be expressed. Now let's turn to the final possibility, that A doesn't exist. That would mean that you don't believe anything. The problem with that is that you've made a large number of statements, and you don't believe any of them. So, to summarize, the following are the only possibilities: 1) You believe in something that's unprovable. 2) You believe circular reasoning is valid. 3) You believe at least one statement that is inexpressible because it's infinitely long. 4) You state things are true when you actually don't believe they are.

Frankly, I believe 1), and I think Gödel does, too, which I believe you can find more about if you study one or the other of his incompleteness theorems.

You are comparing a method of work with religion which, to be honest, is above silly.

Wait 'til I get started.

For instance, I accept the concept of evolution as being the correct theory to explain how we as a species came to be, however, if tomorrow it turns out to be completely wrong and that there's a completely different mechanism at work, that will not alter my world view.

Did you write what you meant to write? I ask because it appears that you are saying that you would continue to believe that evolution is the correct theory even if you were given evidence that it's not.

Would you please explain something to me? Let's suppose I believe in Visnu, but I don't believe in the flying spaghetti monster because it was imagined by Bobby Henderson in 2005 to protest a decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to teach Intelligent Design. How would the creation of the flying spaghetti monster by Bobby Henderson be relevant to the non-existence of Visnu? I suppose that it's possible that Bobby Henderson created Visnu in 2005 to protest a decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to teach Intelligent Design, but barring that?

I can't even conceive the idea to put belief (let alone faith) in something that's unprovable.

I suspect that you actually do put belief in something that's unprovable, but that you simply don't realize that you are doing so. For example, do you believe that the scientific method is a good way to learn about the universe? If so, then what proof do you have that such might be the case?

Many people would answer that it can be proved using the scientific method,

but those same people scoff when shown a claim by the bible that the bible is reliable, and call it circular reasoning.

Ultimately, you're left with an infinite regress of reasons supporting reasons, which to my mind is more difficult to put faith in than the existence of god.

On the other hand, suppose you're skeptical about the scientific method.

Ask yourself whether skepticism is the correct way to approach knowledge of the universe.

Shouldn't one be skeptical of such a belief?

One must either accept and operate on the assumption that skepticism is the appropriate opinion to hold, or that it's not. One must accept one of those beliefs on faith, as it were.

Stephen F. Roberts: "...I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

Mr. Roberts' claim proves too much. Let me show you why using analogy with mathematics, as I'm particularly fond of mathematics. Let's suppose I believe that there exists precisely one even prime, and analogously that precisely one god exists. Let's suppose furthermore that Mr. Roberts believes that no even primes exist, and analogously that no god exists. I dismiss candidates 3, 17, and 61 because they aren't even. I dismiss candidates 10, 34, and 100002 because they aren't prime. I dismiss candidates h, e, and pi because they aren't integers. I dismiss candidates -3, 0, and 1 because they aren't greater than one. I now understand why I dismiss all the other possible even primes (other than 2). Mr. Roberts' would now claim that I understand why he dismisses 2. In fact, I don't. Number 2 is even; it's a prime; it's an integer; it's greater than one. Arguments that claim that something doesn't have a property have no bearing on other predicates. Specifically, if I claim that the flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist because it was imagined by Bobby Henderson in 2005 to protest a decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to teach Intelligent Design, then that has no bearing on the god that we supposed I believed in at the beginning of this paragraph, provided that we didn't suppose I believed in the flying spaghetti monster.

~Loyal