Anti-empiricist rant

[TithonusSyndrome]

Some Thomas Sowell adorer on another forum dragged up what appears to be a standard anti-empicism rant. I've tried to point out what flaws I'm farmiliar with, but the rest still dosen't sound right. The rant isn't addressed at me, just so's you know, but it still smells funny and I wanted to see if anyone else could better identify why it made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

Originally posted by: -Koba-
I have been waiting to utter forth my devastating (yes, if I may be so bold) criticism of empiricism. By empiricism is simply mean "the belief that all knowledge is empirical knowledge, and that rational methods of inquiry into the empirical are simply normative propositions that have no truth-value whatsoever."

Saying that normative propositions have no truth-value is misleading, because they may still be useful outside of ontology.

To illustrate the utter infeasability of your position, I will argue for several theses: 1) Empiricism, no matter how it is defined, is self refuting 2) Empiricism has relativistic implications and 3) Empiricism, if taken seriously, must allow for a dualistic view of nature.

Firstly, empiricists claim that a priori knowledge of empirical truths is impossible. Thus, what they label mathematics and logic (a priori fields) as are analytic statements; they are meaningless tautuologies, devoid of truth content. It is the same as saying "all unmarried men are bachelors." So if there is a priori knowledge (which math and logic seem to be) it is devoid of truth content. Now the other category of statements that the empiricists allow for are empirical statements: those that can be verified and falsified by experience. Usually this is in the form of a hypothesis in constant need of revision (lightning is the result of X, now I will go and test this) etc. Empiricists then relegate knowledge (and terms) such as "God" or "soul" or "ethics" to that of meaningless - because they are neither analytic, nor empirical, they are akin to phrases such as "grr" or "ldbbbb." These would be "normative" statements; those that describe either the desirability or undesirability of a certain state of affairs. Now we get to the statement "All knowledge is either analytic or empirical." What is the status of this statement? Surely it is not analytic, in that it does not set forth a mere tautology; is it empirical? If it is, I would simply say that your belief system is not axiomatic, but falsifiable, and I have no reason to ascribe to it. If it is not, then the philosophy is still self-refuting; the definition does not meet its own critereon.

Here, I guess I don't fully understand the folly of a falsifiable beleif system, or even why the statement "All knowledge is either analytic or empirical" wouldn't qualify as an analytical one.

Secondly, it must be made clear that Empiricism (by definition, denying all a priori empirical truth) has extremely relativistic (and even authoritarian) implications. Because if empiricism is true (lets ignore for a moment the self-referencial difficulties) then there can never be a sole objective truth about anything. All definitions and arguments can be falsified or "proved" (I will deal with these difficulties in a moment). However, even if the hypothesis is not "proved" by an experiment, there are literally a near-infinite amount of variables to control for. Take for example the hypothesis that when I sneeze, it causes people in africa to die. Now you should offhand reject this as silly and whimsical, in which case you're clearly not an empiricist. A true empiricist would have to test this proposition, because there is not such notion as "causation" that one can rely upon; indeed causation itself can be subject (somehow) to falsification. Even if we don't "see" the sneeze kill people in Africa, we could reformulate the hypothesis to say "People in Africa die from my sneezes only on the first of January" - if this proved unsatisfactory, we could merely add on "when it is raining." Repeat ad infinitum. Certainly this is relativistic, and surely is the tool of dictators: for how else to test the merits of "National socialism" or "Marxism" than to infact impliment such systems and the necessary dictatorships that they usher in? How else to test the "law" of supply and demand than to restrict food to a tribe for a week? To put it bluntly: it's philosophical suicide.

Which is why we have parsimony to reduce unpalateable hypothesis that demand constant ad hoc revision in order to separate them from those who don't.

Thirdly, we must deal with the common belief that empiricists tend also to be monists (that is, some one material underlies all of reality); in modern times, this tends to be a Moore or Quine inspired materialism. Now the problem with such a monism is that it is completely incompatible with the empirical method. For to hypothesize something is to is to adopt a methodological monism: all empirical knowledge must first come through our senses. However, if such a belief is in fact true, how are predictions even possible? Essentially, prediction pre-supposes time-invariant causal relationships (If I throw a ball at the wall, it will bounce back, if I throw glass, it will break) that cannot be justified within the empirciist frame of thinking. For if all empirical knowledge is taken through observation, how can one predict that which one has no knowledge of? You cannot "observe" this link between different observations (that material objects react in a certain manner) and it is thus impossible to predict anything at all; every experiment is simply an observation subjective to both the viewer and in time. If you cannot rationally (that is, before experience) establish causation, then you cannot justify any sort of "progress" within the field of science at all.

And this is also why the scientific community demands consensus among observers to ensure that these reactions aren't their own personal hallucinations.

I'm sure that a year ago or two I'd be a little more fluent on this, but for now I'm wondering what you might have to say.

[Darth Wong]

Here's a hint: translate his long-winded pompous bullshit into plain English. It looks much more ridiculous that way, and virtually refutes itself.

[Surlethe]

You know, if he were intelligent enough to want any a priori credibility, then he'd spell words like "infeasibility" and "self-referential" correctly. That said, if I were you, I'd be interested in knowing how he thinks that mathematics is entirely circular and devoid of truth, for example; I simply see a series of statements strung together to be accepted as truth by the reader.

[Darth Wong]

OK, let's look at what he's saying:

Originally posted by: -Koba-
I have been waiting to utter forth my devastating (yes, if I may be so bold) criticism of empiricism. By empiricism is simply mean "the belief that all knowledge is empirical knowledge, and that rational methods of inquiry into the empirical are simply normative propositions that have no truth-value whatsoever."

Where does he get this definition of empiricism? As practised by scientists (which is the only application of empirical thinking that is relevant to any conceivable science or politics discussion), empiricism only means that we require objective data to support theories.

Saying that normative propositions have no truth-value is misleading, because they may still be useful outside of ontology.

Science is not concerned with the binary on/off "truth value" that pseudo-philosophers love to parrot. It is concerned with accuracy and usefulness. Mathematics is a useful tool to scientists, but the question of whether it is "truth" is quite useless and irrelevant; a scientist is only concerned with the question of whether it is useful.

Firstly, empiricists claim that a priori knowledge of empirical truths is impossible. Thus, what they label mathematics and logic (a priori fields) as are analytic statements; they are meaningless tautuologies, devoid of truth content.

"Truth content"? Puh-lease. Let him define "truth content" before he wastes any more time with this nonsense. Mathematics is a self-consistent system of rules which is very useful to a scientist; the question of whether it is "truth" is just an exercise in rhetoric.

It is the same as saying "all unmarried men are bachelors." So if there is a priori knowledge (which math and logic seem to be) it is devoid of truth content.

I see now what he's doing; he is tying his entire argument to the idea that mathematics is "true". But this is nothing more than a game he plays with the definition of "truth", and science is utterly unconcerned with this game. He is trying to imply that according to empiricism, mathematics is false, because empiricism does not state that mathematics is true.

In short, his argument is that empiricism fails to recognize mathematics as "truth", therefore it must consider mathematics to be false (note that this is an obvious false dilemma fallacy).

Moreover, his argument relies on a massive distortion of what mathematics is: he believes that mathematics is "truth", where "truth" can be defined outside the framework of mathematics. He seems to find it offensive or objectionable that mathematics might be nothing more than a self-contained, self-consistent system of thought with no external claim on "truth". And yet, that is precisely what mathematics is: a system of thought which does not necessarily have to correspond to reality. The fact that we find it useful as scientists and engineers does not mean that mathematics is "truth"; a mathematical statement can only be said to be true or false insofar as one is working within the established rules of mathematics.

To put this another way, it's like the rules of a poker. It is false to say that a pair of eights will beat a royal flush, within the context of the rules of poker. It is true to say that a pair of kings will beat a pair of fives, within the context of the rules of poker. But if someone were to stand up before a group of real philosophers and say that the rules of poker have some kind of objective "truth content", he would be laughed out of the room.

[Surlethe]

Science is not concerned with the binary on/off "truth value" that pseudo-philosophers love to parrot. It is concerned with accuracy and usefulness. Mathematics is a useful tool to scientists, but the question of whether it is "truth" is quite useless and irrelevant; a scientist is only concerned with the question of whether it is useful.

Even if you play the "truth" game, you can still show that science is objectively useful, because science doesn't make any claims about whether or not it's the truth; rather, science claims that it's a probable approximation, and that claim of probable approximation is itself true or false.

To give an example, it's impossible for science to say "Humans evolved." The truth (in the niggling sense anal-retentive people like to play with) is unknowable: i.e., we can't say with 100% certainty that humans actually evolved. Science, however, can still play by the binary on/off truth game with the claim "It's quite likely humans evolved". This is science's ballpark now: that proposition is either true or false, but it's also one the answer to which science can discover.

The whole point, of course, is that even within his black and white way of looking at things, science is not dismissable, because he's simply ignoring the whole range of true/false propositions science does address. Anyone actually trained in logic would realize this, but given that moron-sophist doesn't seem to realize what mathematics is, I'm certain that he's no exposure to real logic at all.

And yet, that is precisely what mathematics is: a system of thought which does not necessarily have to correspond to reality. The fact that we find it useful as scientists and engineers does not mean that mathematics is "truth"; a mathematical statement can only be said to be true or false insofar as one is working within the established rules of mathematics.

Interesting tidbit that could be useful: mathematics was originally empirical, and many of the formalizations in mathematics are empirical at heart. For example, in one sense, the operation of addition on the integers is simply a formal assignment, but that assignment reflects at a basic level what we observe in everyday life. When we put an object and an object together, we see that there are now two objects; this is the motivation for a formal definition of addition that sends (1,1) to 2.

[Darth Wong]

Ah, but as my teacher used to say, that's not real mathematics. That's arithmetic

[Surlethe]

Ah, but as my teacher used to say, that's not real mathematics. That's arithmetic

You had a damned good teacher then, teaching group theory under the guise of "arithmetic".

[Kuroneko]

(Philosophical) empiricism's claim is that there are no such things as innate ideas, i.e., every idea is ultimately dependent on experience. It has almost nothing to do with the analytic/synthetic or a priori/a posteriori distinctions of epistemology. This person is really arguing against logical positivism, which is a particular version of empiricism that is such a minority view among empiricists as no be nearly non-existent.

--

Firstly, empiricists claim that a priori knowledge of empirical truths is impossible. Thus, what they label mathematics and logic (a priori fields) as are analytic statements; they are meaningless tautuologies, devoid of truth content.

Well, not quite, but essentially that is a perfectly valid way to interpret mathematics--if a certain structure is obtained (axioms), then such-and-such results (theorems) follow. These conditionals can be viewed as tautologies if one wishes (although, properly speaking, there is a distinction between tautologies and validities). I don't see this as detracting from mathematics in any way. In fact, it is a strength, since it means mathematics can study any sort of structure regardless of whether it corresponds to anything in the world. The issue of which structures actually correspond to something is not mathematical, but scientific; that is not to say that mathematicians cannot be motivated by such issues, as many are.

This is not some reductio ad absurdum as this person expects it to be. It's no different from saying that no mathematical statement is true "in itself" but only relative to some mathematical theory. Thus, instead of "1+1=2", one should properly say something like: "(Peano Arithmetic)├1+1=2", whereas one can have "(Group Z_2)├1+1=0". Most people (indeed, most mathematicians) overlook such pedantic issues except when it is truly necessary to consider them--e.g., when "1+1=2" is uttered, standard arithmetic is simply assumed unless explicitly stated otherwise.

So if there is a priori knowledge (which math and logic seem to be) ...

It's a priori only in the sense that once one is familiar with mathematics and logic, one can in principle draw deductions in those systems without the aid of experience. But all an empiricist would need to counter this sort of observation is that such familiarities with both mathematics and logic are only every acquired by experience in the first place, and hence the mathematical and logical ideas they possess are rooted in experience. They're not innate, which is what rationalism/anti-empiricism would require.

Empiricists then relegate knowledge (and terms) such as "God" or "soul" or "ethics" to that of meaningless - because they are neither analytic, nor empirical, they are akin to phrases such as "grr" or "ldbbbb."

Ah. This person substitutes "logical positivism" for "empiricism". Logical positivism is a particular brand of empiricism that has been fairly dead for some time. Empiricism doesn't need to make any claims with that strength.

Now we get to the statement "All knowledge is either analytic or empirical." What is the status of this statement? Surely it is not analytic, in that it does not set forth a mere tautology; is it empirical? If it is, I would simply say that your belief system is not axiomatic, but falsifiable, and I have no reason to ascribe to it. If it is not, then the philosophy is still self-refuting; the definition does not meet its own critereon.

Yes, yes. That is essentially the argument that slayed logical positivism. It has no relevance to empiricism in general. An empiricist would only ever need to claim that the concept of "synthetic proposition" is acquired by experience and that the concept of negation is also thus acquired (since logic is learned), and hence "analytic" is merely a merging of the two concepts "not" + "synthetic".

[Patrick Degan]

Here's a hint: translate his long-winded pompous bullshit into plain English. It looks much more ridiculous that way, and virtually refutes itself.

The translation I get from all that drivel is "I don't believe reality is testable, therefore anything is possible!"

[Spyder]

Like all post modernist babble it presents precisely zero new ideas or insights that are of any value whatsoever. Just a half assed pompous analysis of a concept of which the author has zero understanding.

My hatred of po-mo grows with every example, it's like anti-thinking.

[Kuroneko]

Where does he get this definition of empiricism? As practised by scientists (which is the only application of empirical thinking that is relevant to any conceivable science or politics discussion), empiricism only means that we require objective data to support theories.

In a nutshell, (philosophical) empiricism is the view that "ultimately, our concepts of things are come from our experiences." That may seem like a completely obvious claim, and it is to me, but it has some relevance to the issue this person mentions--many a theologian and philosopher under the influence of theology, e.g., Descartes, held that the knowledge of God is "innate" in humans, that God almost literally "stamps" it in their minds. Fundamentalists might not put it in those terms, but when they believe that atheists are lying about their non-belief, I believe that's the sort of thinking that motivates them. It's certainly not dead even in contemporary theology, and the frequent rhetoric that God is a universal human need is just too suspiciously similar.

[Surlethe]

In a nutshell, (philosophical) empiricism is the view that "ultimately, our concepts of things are come from our experiences." That may seem like a completely obvious claim, and it is to me, but it has some relevance to the issue this person mentions--many a theologian and philosopher under the influence of theology, e.g., Descartes, held that the knowledge of God is "innate" in humans, that God almost literally "stamps" it in their minds. Fundamentalists might not put it in those terms, but when they believe that atheists are lying about their non-belief, I believe that's the sort of thinking that motivates them. It's certainly not dead even in contemporary theology, and the frequent rhetoric that God is a universal human need is just too suspiciously similar.

I had understood modern evangelical theology, at least in practice, claims that God stamped universal need into human minds, but that knowledge of God is experiental. I've had success in arguing with evangelical literalists that the experience is subjective, but as far as I know, evangelicals and fundamentalists both believe that in order to completely surrender to God, one must experience God (and those who believe they have experienced it are quite convinced that it's real).

[Kuroneko]

I had understood modern evangelical theology, at least in practice, claims that God stamped universal need into human minds, but that knowledge of God is experiental. I've had success in arguing with evangelical literalists that the experience is subjective, ... .

Oh, I didn't mean that this is a uniform view, but that some theologians have maintained that the existence of God is something that all people believe and that some take it further by saying that people are incapable of true disbelief. Others have maintained that it is a matter of science. Examples of both types of theologians are Hodge and Aquinas, respectively, if I recall them correctly. It is also not contradictory to hold that particular experiences of the divine are subjective--the claim is really about the existence of God. There are still some fundamentalists that consider atheists as either simply lying about their beliefs or otherwise in denial about them (but I've no doubt that there are many of those that consider atheists fully truthful about their beliefs, if that is your objection). The latter sort of thinking I believe ultimately originated from the entire innate-knowledge (of existence) of God.

[Darth Wong]

I have been confronted by fundies who insisted that I was lying about being an atheist, and then quoted Scripture to me to "prove" that I secretly believe in God. This attitude is fairly common, at least among the hardcore fundies.

[Darth Servo]

I have been confronted by fundies who insisted that I was lying about being an atheist, and then quoted Scripture to me to "prove" that I secretly believe in God. This attitude is fairly common, at least among the hardcore fundies.

Not surprising given that their mindset is Bible = reality and it just doesn't occur to these people that other people do not accept that book as being worth anything, let alone worshipping it like they do.

[Rye]

In a nutshell, (philosophical) empiricism is the view that "ultimately, our concepts of things are come from our experiences." That may seem like a completely obvious claim, and it is to me, but it has some relevance to the issue this person mentions--many a theologian and philosopher under the influence of theology, e.g., Descartes, held that the knowledge of God is "innate" in humans, that God almost literally "stamps" it in their minds. Fundamentalists might not put it in those terms, but when they believe that atheists are lying about their non-belief, I believe that's the sort of thinking that motivates them. It's certainly not dead even in contemporary theology, and the frequent rhetoric that God is a universal human need is just too suspiciously similar.

Do you not find the assertions of special revelation to be out of line with empiricism? Those claims have knowledge existing seperate from direct experience, after all, they have knowledge as a stock of information that a nonphysical god places well, magically into someone's head. The other religious experiences are often asserted to be something they did experience, but they claim was the overruling of the senses with "spiritual awareness".

I find the warm fuzzies, if they were of something real and we were aware of them in some manner akin to the rest of our senses, it would count as a sensory input too, of course.

[PainRack]

Not surprising given that their mindset is Bible = reality and it just doesn't occur to these people that other people do not accept that book as being worth anything, let alone worshipping it like they do.

Just a question....... how on earth do people even remotely rationalise "Jesus is God, the Bible says so"?

They don't even leap from "some events in the Bible is historical, hence, everything the Bible is true." Its just straight, flat, Bible says Jesus is God, hence, he's God.......

Pointing out that the Koran says the same thing gets "its the devil speaking", pointing out that the "devil" may had gotten the Bible gets vitriol and curses thrown at you.

I can remotely understand the other rationalisations like the devil is trying to turn you away from God, so, he introduced other religions and so on....... But Bible= God? How can people not realise the circular nature of that argument?

[Patrick Degan]

Not surprising given that their mindset is Bible = reality and it just doesn't occur to these people that other people do not accept that book as being worth anything, let alone worshipping it like they do.

Just a question....... how on earth do people even remotely rationalise "Jesus is God, the Bible says so"?

They don't even leap from "some events in the Bible is historical, hence, everything the Bible is true." Its just straight, flat, Bible says Jesus is God, hence, he's God.......

Pointing out that the Koran says the same thing gets "its the devil speaking", pointing out that the "devil" may had gotten the Bible gets vitriol and curses thrown at you.

I can remotely understand the other rationalisations like the devil is trying to turn you away from God, so, he introduced other religions and so on....... But Bible= God? How can people not realise the circular nature of that argument?

They don't realise it because all their lives they've been taught not to realise it. Not only are they unschooled in logic, they're made to understand that logic is the enemy of Faith. And as far as the actual Appeal to Authority goes... If you're brought up in awe of or fear of (in a lot of cases, both) Daddy, and that everything Daddy says must be true simply because he is Daddy, it's not that much of a leap to regard the Invisible Cloud Being and his storybook on the same terms.

[Kuroneko]

Do you not find the assertions of special revelation to be out of line with empiricism?

No. But it is out of line with all forms of empiricism that I'm willing to take seriously, if that's what you're asking.

The other religious experiences are often asserted to be something they did experience, but they claim was the overruling of the senses with "spiritual awareness". I find the warm fuzzies, if they were of something real and we were aware of them in some manner akin to the rest of our senses, it would count as a sensory input too, of course.

Correct. However, if that were the case, there would be very little reason to believe that atheists are lying about their non-belief. Empiricism at its core is simply the denial of the existence of innate ideas or knowledge. Therefore, this requires more than simply a spiritual awareness that may fail to produce knowledge in some people or may even be completely absent in others, but a kind of universality of this pseudo-experience that makes knowledge of the divine universal. I say `pseudo' because in that case, it would be a sense only under a very loose meaning of the term, sort of like the ability to distinguish between logic and illogic is a "sense".

[Darth Wong]

In my experience, the idea that religion comes from "spiritual experience" is a minority viewpoint among hardline (by which I mean anti-science) religious folk. The majority seem to be of the opinion that there are certain "truths" which are self-evident, which is one of the reasons they honestly don't seem to understand how you can reject them.

[Metatwaddle]

In my experience, the idea that religion comes from "spiritual experience" is a minority viewpoint among hardline (by which I mean anti-science) religious folk. The majority seem to be of the opinion that there are certain "truths" which are self-evident, which is one of the reasons they honestly don't seem to understand how you can reject them.

I've found some - mostly Baptists - who are fond of saying one is saved by grace. As near as I can tell from their elaborations, they mean that nobody can be saved by their own decision; God bestows a sort of spiritual experience upon a few people, and they fall on their knees and accept Jesus as their savior and Lord, blah blah blah. But the part that gets me is that God decides who is saved or not. When you think about it, it's very Calvinist in nature.

[PainRack]

They don't realise it because all their lives they've been taught not to realise it. Not only are they unschooled in logic, they're made to understand that logic is the enemy of Faith. And as far as the actual Appeal to Authority goes... If you're brought up in awe of or fear of (in a lot of cases, both) Daddy, and that everything Daddy says must be true simply because he is Daddy, it's not that much of a leap to regard the Invisible Cloud Being and his storybook on the same terms.

If so, how do they get off saying other religious books are the works of the devil, whereas their is God grace?

Doesn't this strike any echo of a doubt at all? Back when I was a kid and believed in alien abductions, all it took to shake my belief was to note that alien abduction cases have been similarly used for ghost stories.

The people I know of aren't even hardcore fundies, but relatively liberal believers of christianity... and its not as if over here, they don't come into contact with other religions and philosophies........ Considering that some of these guys have families, whoose grandparents or uncles and cousins believed in Buddhism or Taoism, a cloistered lifestyle shouldn't be the answer.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

Theologians are all trash. There is none, no not one, that seeks after righteousness. I hate them all more every day. When Kuroneko mentioned that Kuhn distinguishes between subjectivity in process and subjectivity in conclusions, which a theologian I thought was at least being honest neglected to mention, there went my last shred of respect for any of them. Richard Dawkins said everyone who disbelieves evolution is either ignorant, stupid, wicked, or insane; every theologian who ever lived or ever will falls under one of those; at least I can forgive the ones whose ignorance was commensurate with the knowledge of their times.

As for innate knowledge of God, how can they claim it when so many of us have had the certainty of God pounded into our brains since birth? I will probably never be able to permanently shake the nagging doubt or the inclination to reach out to God simply as a function of my upbringing, however certain I may be of his nonexistence. And if we're not raised that way, we will probably encounter it in society while we're still young, or be actively recruited by missionaries of one sort or another trying to convince us not only that God exists as described in their particular teachings, but that upon introspection we will realize we've always felt his presence and our need for him. Of course they will have success with those who are too inexperienced to know better, or who are too emotionally weakened to resist. This mangles C.S. Lewis's claim that he felt God was pursuing him, and that the time he felt compelled to disproved his existence was evidence of his own internal knowledge of God and his own wickedness. Of course he was being pursued; by the larger culture! Is he so blind as to think it's an illogical thing to do to establish at least for onesself an intellectual basis for a belief for which society at large threatened eternal damnation, and in older societies, unpleasant legal sanctions as well?

Ironically enough, the greatest cure for my doubt is theologians themselves. How can they claim to follow the Bible when Paul says the Holy Spirit will lead them into all truth (some creationists say as much, that the Holy Spirit gives them insight that secular scientists lack). They should then not be permitted to make, in the defense of the faith at least, any mistake that they do not immediately catch and expound upon with incontrovertible reasoning. But they do make egregious errors all the time. Thus the Holy Spirit does not exist, and God unravels. Or if they don't possess the Holy Spirit, which some might counter, then who does? Only the ignorant rank and file believer. Then who determines what is the belief structure that is central to the claims of knowledge (and of indwelling of the Spirit) in the first place? If it could be demonstrated that all the ignorant rabble who had conversion experiences independently believed precisely the same things they might have a point; but it is decidedly not so in reality. But what can we do other than rant, innoculate our children against lies, and be a good example to our neighbors?
[/rant]

[TithonusSyndrome]

I never got the impression that this guy was religiously motivated. I immediately clicked with Spyder's assessment that this guy is some PoMobabbling doofus who does what he does just to sit about smugly and say "You're all equally invalid in your claims and I had the insight to set you all straight."

[Darth Servo]

If so, how do they get off saying other religious books are the works of the devil, whereas their is God grace?

Doesn't this strike any echo of a doubt at all? Back when I was a kid and believed in alien abductions, all it took to shake my belief was to note that alien abduction cases have been similarly used for ghost stories.

The people I know of aren't even hardcore fundies, but relatively liberal believers of christianity... and its not as if over here, they don't come into contact with other religions and philosophies........ Considering that some of these guys have families, whoose grandparents or uncles and cousins believed in Buddhism or Taoism, a cloistered lifestyle shouldn't be the answer.

PainRack, you're trying to apply logic to a topic that is by admission completely illogical. You're trying to use rational thought on people who dispise rational thought. Look familiar?

Ragardless of if their family has been in a particular religion for generations or recent converts, the same indoctrination is put into action. Simply repeat "we're right, everyone else is wrong" over and over and it takes hold.