Inconceivable!

I think the part that’s left out is “since they all can’t be right, yet use the same standard of authority for truth, the most likely scenario is that none of them have a reasonable claim to truth”.

If only one religion is right, then the God of that religion is either evil or an asshole or not all knowing and all powerful.

If you think about it, and all knowing all powerful God that allows a gigantic portion of his beloved children to live in complete and total ignorance for their entire lives without even the chance of ever knowing the truth would be a terrible asshole at best, and that's only assuming that he doesn't throw everyone that doesn't get the truth he didn't give them into hell forever.

Of course that only covers the abrahamic religions. I feel like Zoroastrianism would probably still be okay because as little of it as I understand it seems to be more like the world is a stage where a chess game is being played and each piece moves as it will and the battling deities over watching the game can only make so many moves each to keep it fair.

Buddhism can't really complain about it other than that it sucks that we're all currently stuck in hell and having to live tens of thousands of lives until we're allowed to get out, seems like more people should make it out as time goes by.

Either way though, if there is one true religion it would be amazing if the god of that religion would occasionally pop onto the planet and remind everybody that they exist, maybe give us the bread and circuses show to catch us back up, maybe throw out a couple of worldwide hey I forgive everybody's and then pop back off just to remind us.

A thousand years without a reappearance of the God of all gods is a long time to keep the torch burning.

The logic seems sound to me.

If they all look at thin air, and claim there is different kinds of magical beings, and as evidence they say they imagined it, isn't it reasonable to conclude there actually is none of the magical beings they claim? Since they use the same vastly erroneous process to make similar extraordinary claims.

As Richard Dawkins say: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

That's why it says "most reasonable conclusion." If all of these religions have the same level of evidence of their existence, all have people who are certain that their religion is real and all others are false, and they all claim to be the "truth" then what's most reasonable?

Obviously it's possible that any given religion is correct about the world, but if you ask me which is more probable: that every human religion is wrong except the 1 that is correct, or that every human religion is wrong? I think I agree with the original quote

The reasonable conclusion comes from the vast range of possibilities of what is true, which is exponentially larger than the range of possibilities specifically expressed in the world's popular religions, even if we were to assume that every human being has their own understanding of what is true. The range of possibilities not conceived of by one of eight-billion human beings is vastly greater, so the chances of one person getting it right is akin to winning the lottery.

If we assume that any two people agree on religious truth, that number of religions becomes less, and the odds it is not one of those becomes even greater.

Note that there are about (not quite) 40,000 denominations of Christianity (and then all the non-denominational churches, some of which are megachurches that stay ND so they are not recognized as an NRM, which law enforcement presumes is a potentially-dangerous cult-or-sect) so we get very specific as to what religious truth is, and we fight wars or litigate over these specifics.

Considering the scope of the universe compared to the scope of life on earth (let alone human life), it's highly more likely the Milky Way galaxy (including the solar system and everything in it) is incidental to any divine purpose of the cosmos. The difference between the chances that we're special or important, and the chances mold under a specific Sequoia tree in central California is special or important is infinitesimal.

So even when we only consider theistic possibilities within the universe as we see and understand it, any popular religion that has a non-zero possibility of being true still doesn't have much more than that.

or they each see a different face of the same truth

Correct. By their very nature of certain religions being mutually exclusive, they can't all be correct, but they could all be wrong.

They aren't wrong because some are mutually exclusive. That's a non-sequitur. They are false or at least not true, because the evidence either falsifies the claims or doesn't prove them to be true.

I do think it's reasonable to say they are all wrong, but I agree with you, this logic provided in the image doesn't make sense.

It being impossible for all to be true, doesn't imply they are all false.

It's likely they are all false, if you subscribe to the philosophy of science, where without testable evidence, it's deemed unreasonable to assume something likely to be true.

The (in my opinion) correct opinion is that all religions are very likely false, because none have provided convincing evidence according to the scientific method.

And it's obviously the one with a god of THUNDER!!!

What, there are two?

It could be the case, but it’s more reasonable to think that they are all wrong rather than to think that 334 of them are wrong and 1 of them is right.

If you think his logic is bad here, wait till you read his position on the Iraq War.

The Christopher Hitchens style of atheism is very heavy on the pithy one-liners and very light on real philosophy, reason, or ethics. Neoconservatism in a nutshell.

Say I have 6 people all guessing a different result of a roll of a D6. It’s inconceivable that they are all right, and it’s absolutely not a “reasonable conclusion” that they are all wrong.

In this strawman, you are correct as you 1) already know there are only 6 possible answers to choose from; 2) you know at least 1 of the participants will get it right as you set the conditions to be "different results" and 3) the result is discrete and absolute.

None of the above conditions apply to religions in general... 1) we do not know how many possible right answer are there; 2) the options are endless and can overlap and 3) if one of them is right in someway, it would 100% be a matter of perspective and context

People are attacking this as if it’s a hard deductive proof and if is very clearly a statement of what is “most reasonable.”

I don't think that's an accurate comparison, it's more like a few hundred people guessing a different result of a practically infinite-sided die. For all we know, the origin of the universe can be anything, and it's maybe (who are we kidding, definitely) something even beyond our imaginations. For all we know, we're trapped in Charlie's Chocolate Factory. What are the odds that anyone who ever wrote a book about a diety/universal origins actually got it right? Hint: it's not 1/6 odds, or even 1/1,000,000,000, it's 1/∞. Technically not zero, but c'mon, it's practically zero.

We all do. He was not a humble man, but a sharp one.

Since it is inconceivable all scientific theories are correct, the most logical conclusion is they are all wrong.

ai is a thing though?

Without trying to defend him here ( not my goal ), that is a pretty weak analogy.

“Everything on TV” is not a zero sum game. For one thing to be true, it is not necessary for everything else to be false. There is little dependency between the content on one channel and another.

Looking at his own cultural religious tradition, the major religions say contradictory things and say that they are the truth. Islam and Judaism both reject that Christ is a God whereas it is pretty important to the Christians that he is. They cannot all be right. That is clearly what he is saying.

Although, taking a step back, many religions throughout history require faith in the Gods they profess but not necessarily a rejection of other Gods. That seems to be a more recent thing.

If it was not required to reject the Egyptian Gods to accept the Norse ones, then his reasoning falls apart and your analogy becomes valid.

Terrible comparison. Other than propaganda like right-wing "news," TV clearly delineates what is fiction and non-fiction. Religions all claim to be true and contradict one another.

Everything on TV is false. It's curated. It's edited. It's commercialized. There is not a single thing on TV that fully represents an experience as if it were not on TV.

How are buddhists an outlier?

Again, not a great equivalent to what he said.

If you mean creationism to mean Christian doctrine then you do not get the mass nullification effect. If you mean creationism to mean all creation myths then of course you do. However, as soon as you add evolution it changes things because there is evidence for evolution and it “is predictive” and therefore testable. That means that you are not relying only on the existence of incompatible alternatives for nullification. This breaks his premise.

It is not a particularly great statement. But all the alternatives here in the comments seem to miss what he was saying.

The “logic” of his statement is that there are many incompatible religious options presented. The incompatibilities mean that they cannot all be right. The number of options serves as the “evidence” for wrongness. Without independent evidence to support any given option, the weight of evidence against it ( the combined likelihood of the other options ) is greater than the evidence for it it ( single option ). You could make the argument for each alternative individually until all have been eliminated.

You cannot do this if evolution is an option. It has more evidentiary weight than the aggregate evidence of the alternatives. Evidence wise, it is logical to take evolution as valid and reject the others. Remove evolution and the remaining portfolio of creation myths is left with no clear winner ( and hence the likelihood that they are all losers becomes logical ).

The tennis one or the hydration one?

Except most religious people think the scientific method is another religion.

I would agree that it's not "inconceivable". I can conceive of it just fine. It's just a pretty absurd idea.

The old ones are copying each other from oral traditions. Notice the common ideas from cultures along the Silk Road. The further away from it, the more different they become.

Would you agree that it is unlikely thst any religion is presenting that single truth correctly?

Which is it then, is there only one or multiple gods? Was the earth conceived from dreams according to Australian Aboriginals, or did a deity created it by his/her own hands according to many other religions? Where is the single truth in this?

I came here for the hippy dippy “I think all religions are really about the same thing” line and was not disappointed.

Why are they all so flawed? What is it about essential human nature that we are not able to get right after so many tries? You’re saying that 300 wrongs indicate the proximity of a right. What if they’re all just wandering in the same huge valley of wrong?

Besides, these religions are not just philosophical perspectives that rhyme. They make hard claims which contradict one another.

Consistent with the notion that man was made in the image of God based on my experience with humanity.