For those who don't know it, here's "the greatest Venn diagram ever": — ssu

I'd like a rabbitduck version of that. :)

... so of my favorites: — Mayor of Simpleton

Cool. The Doctor has it all. (Speaking of.. We're still puzzled about the latest episode hereabouts.)

And religious practice is, in some sense, being trained to think about it the right way. — Wayfarer

It is - being trained to think in some specific way. And, in absence of other training, it can engender narrow-mindedness, which emphasizes the gain from broadening one's horizons. The number of people (e.g. from the US and the Philippines) that outright deny biological evolution, in spite of the overwhelming evidence, is a testament to this sort of thing.

Right, sometimes they can be like a street-sign giving some directions, or maps giving some context. Other times they can be like refreshers, for something you haven't looked at for a while.

For something reasonably simple, like justified true belief (knowledge), I think they're worthwhile. Digging into the gory details (like the Gettier cases), of course remains separate.

The Cosmological Argument does not lead me to accept the existence of a deity, merely the plausibility of a First Cause. — darthbarracuda

This class of arguments (prime/unmoved mover, first cause, kalam, cosmological, ...) seems the most commonly used for justifying such belief out there. Don't have any numbers though. Maybe it's part of a curriculum or something.

1.) The Problem of Evil — darthbarracuda

In my experience, some simply dismiss these with some hand-waving, and leave it at that. :)
The "free will" defense is brought up for the problem of evil, and the "greater good" defense for the problem of suffering. I'll go as far as to call it predictable; perhaps such defenses are listed in a Catechism.

As for the "greater good", you could equally defend omni-malevolence, and life as we know it is just foot work towards the "greater bad". >:) Or you could defend omni-indifference, towards whatever, nothing in particular. Or... In that sense it's arbitrary, though, admittedly, it does show that the problem of suffering is not a purely deductive argument.

Let me just quote Arkady and Marchesky from elsewhere, regarding the "free will" defense:

... there are at least 2 major deficiencies in the free will defense, viz. that it is impotent to explain suffering caused by "natural evils" such as plagues, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc, and also that it presumes that there is no justified suspension of free will, or that the free actions of man must never be impeded in any way, even if only to stop the most abject horror from occurring. That is, a proponent of the free will defense is committed to believing that for God to intervene to stop the Holocaust (or even just to make it one iota less horrific) would be a greater evil than the Holocaust itself. This view is not only absurd from a rational standpoint, but is rather morally repugnant, in my estimation.

It's as if God has an entirely different standard and still gets to be called good. Even though we view it as a major failing that the world permitted the holocaust to occur.

In general, these defenses don't seem believable to me either. The larger array of problems makes the traditional God of theism implausible.

Regardless, happy holidays y'all.

Addendum

So, what about reasoning then? Useless posturing? No, of course not. It's not to abandon reasoning, or throw hands in the air in futility, rather the opposite. It's to recognize the difficulties involved in knowledge acquisition; something students of history (of science and philosophy in particular) should know all too well. Common sense, heuristics, careful inductive and abductive reasoning are indispensable for anyone wishing to learn, and that's the natural modus operandi of most healthy individuals in any case. (Outside of philosophy, solipsism is largely pathological, reported by doctors and asylums.)

Numerous philosophical branches have been charged with solipsism, including, but not limited to, Cartesian skepticism (obviously), (pure) phenomenology, subjective idealism (and some other idealisms), postmodernism (when applied in metaphysics). It crops up in numerous places, and is occasionally used argumentatively to deny just about anything, i.e. a rhetorical tactic.

But, in the requisite Wittgensteinian tradition, languages sure help. Regardless of whether or not there are private languages, public languages enable sharing of experiences.

I've been "diagnosed" with a tendency to stress out. Be it worrying about deforestation, or how well my better half's speech/presentation is going, or world war 3 (or running out of coffee at home). :) Nothing serious, though. But might explain getting gray hair.

And a wickedly annoying (and occasionally painful) case of sciatica. Did a lot of bicycling, running, and martial arts in the past. Apparently bicycling can, in part, cause this stuff, if you're prone to it already. My bicycle got stolen anyway, so no more of that per se.

That many people suddenly moving around is bound to invite problems.
At least it's not exclusively horror stories.
Here are some tired, thirsty, worn out refugees, having made it to Northern Europe, traveling through Denmark on foot, most bound for Sweden.
Some even have infants with them.

Link to some photos (TV2, Danish News Station)

The amount of people having been displaced swiftly by ISIS is staggering.
I saw some reports a while back that we're talking in the range of 200,000 children alone.
But, the Danish right wing is on the move much like other places, regardless of the friendly police officer in the photo below.

Hilarious :D

Reminds me a bit of the Monty Python hunting party, except it's for real. Crazy Brits.

- That's my take too, well one of them. (As long as decluttering comments doesn't become too large a task in itself.) :)

Here's RationalWiki's article:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Woo

Woo is a term used among skeptical writers to describe pseudoscientific explanations that have certain common characteristics.

The term comes from woo-woo, an epithet used in the 1990s by science and skeptical writers to ridicule people who believe or promote such things. This is in turn believed to have come from the onomatopoeia "woooooo!" as a reaction to dimmed lights or magic tricks. The term implies a lack of either intelligence or sincerity on the part of the person or concepts so described.

As a coincidence, the Chinese word "Wū" (巫) means a shaman, usually with magic powers. — RationalWiki

Invited Ying over as well.

Hmm.. At least the numbers have utf super/sub-script characters..
And some other characters.. Which..isn't quite the same..

superscript 0 ⁰
superscript 1 ¹
superscript 2 ²
superscript 3 ³
superscript 4 ⁴
superscript 5 ⁵
superscript 6 ⁶
superscript 7 ⁷
superscript 8 ⁸
superscript 9 ⁹

subscript 0 ₀
subscript 1 ₁
subscript 2 ₂
subscript 3 ₃
subscript 4 ₄
subscript 5 ₅
subscript 6 ₆
subscript 7 ₇
subscript 8 ₈
subscript 9 ₉

Dang Nov 3rd, that's in a good week from now.

- Hear!
Didn't Wittgenstein think philosophy is an activity? (Pardon if my memory failed me.)
There's a "living" aspect to philosophy, more than reading the books of old, but also chatting (socializing), and forming one's own outlooks.

- Love the New Years Eve Nietzsche. :)
Hypatia is nifty too.
Could go all weird like the attachment. I like the Hypatia better, though.

- I might have been long burnt out in your shoes. As good a time as any to move on. :) Thanks for all your good work/efforts.

Wonder if I can.. — jorndoe

Attaching a small snippet of html which has mathjax in it, did seem to work, albeit a slightly more cumbersome way to share formulae.
Clicking the attachment opens a separate window, your browser, depending on local configuration.

Wonder if I can..

Probably a somewhat rare feature of online forums.

"Testing 1 2 3 testing"

Important stuff! ;)
The Basel problem