Christianity it not about the Trinity. Ignore the dogma. It is a distraction from its real ideas.
No true Scotsman.
If you drop the established properties of <insert religion here> and claim that it's real ideals are <insert list here>, who's to say that isn't just your idea about what the "real ideas" are?
Certainly, I could sort of agree that christianity should be all about love and tolerance and generally being nice to other people, but the salvation dogma and the stuff about the immortal soul are quite essential to Christianity, especially regarding the concept of how to make sure your soul is saved from eternal nothingness (not sure if want).
Also, those "true ideals" are nothing exclusive to Christianity. The Golden Rule, as an example, is just one formulation of Kant's categorical imperative, and thus there's nothing specific to Christianity in it, and nothing to say that it is a divine moral rule. It just happens to make sense.
And the possibility that empirical analysis might have inherit limits as a font of truth is continuing to sail right over your head. If something can't be reduced to a purely empirical phenomenon, it must not exist. This is the dogma of people who think that science can explain all: it can only make judgements on sensory phenomenon, so it is just assumed that only sensory (and thus physical) phenomenon are real, and everything else is bull****. Acknowledge that anything could lie outside that realm and your position falls apart.
False dichotomy.
Thinking that all non-observable things are "bull****" is something no scientist should ever do. Our observational capabilities increase all the time, making us able to measure things that we previously could not do.
In the time of Greek natural philosophers, the hypothesis of "atoms" (as made by Democritus) as small particles that everything is made of was just as much unobservable than other theories about the world (such as the four elements, or the Greek pantheon of gods causing things to happen). Today, we can measure and observe individual atoms and see how they behave. We can observe individual particles that make up the atoms, and we can collide them with large energies to see what happens when they decompose at high energy conditions.
This, among other things, is how we're trying to figure out how gravity (as an example) works.
If your dichotomy were true, no one would be seriously trying to ever observe anything new or to improve our means of observing things. If we can't observe something, we make stuff that can observe it, but until we have observed it, we consider a hypothesis just that - a hypothesis. A supporting observation is usually required to make it a theory. Notably enough, a
lot of things especially in particle physics have been predicted long before they could be observed, and they were not considered "bull****" despite the inability to observe them at the time.
So, please don't claim that science-oriented people think that if something can't be observed, it's automatically bull****.
It's bull**** if it can't be objectively observed
by its definition; these types of claims typically also tend to be non-falsifiable.
As an interesting aside, religious experiences have been researched widely through means of neurology, and we have a fairly good idea about what's causing them. We can even reproduce religious experiences by stimulating certain sections of the brain with magnetic fields or with oxygen deprivation in some individuals. The human brain has certain things in its layout that are the same in every member of H. sapiens sapiensis, thus it shouldn't be a surprise that people's experiences in similar conditions are, in fact, similar.
Thus the claims of extrasensory perception about supernatural are, in fact, rather suspect and most likely fully internal phenomenon produced as a natural function of human brain. Some experience it more often and more stronger than others, which is suspected to be related to genetics to some extent and possibly also a function of upbringing when the brain develops. The upbringing definitely affects the perception of the religious experience - people tend to experience what their cultural ideas make them expect.
All in all it seems pretty obvious to me that if religious behaviour suddenly emerged right now, it would probably be diagnosed as a small neurological disorder, and religions would either be deemed mass delusion caused by similar neurological disorder, or exploitation of the people who happen to have this affliction. Instead of being considered neutral or beneficial - or, in the case of certain areas of the world, the
norm - it might be considered harmful or at the very least something that a person should be aware of.
On the other hand, same could be said about falling in love. Makes the brain go quite nuts.
Now that I think of it, it's pretty obvious that there has been strong selective pressure to preserve the "falling-in-love" behaviour in the human nervous system, just as there has probably been selective pressure to maintain the "religious-experience" behaviour; the former purely through biological basis (people in love tend to form babbys) and the latter through sociological behaviour, I would say. The religious people have probably selectively chosen mates that also tended to be religious.
It might actually be extremely interesting to do some genetic research on what causes religiousness, how long ago the behaviour emerged, when it became more common, and also why different areas have vast differences in reported religiousness (for example, comparing Europe with the US population). If there were no meaningful differences in the genetics regarding religious behavior, then it might be that cultural exposure has a big effect on behaviour - or people are just faking being religious because it's the social norm...
