This merely a demonstration, not a proof, that you can use religion to justify anything. The formal proof, however, should be obvious to any mathematician.
Note that this does not mean that you can use any religion to justify anything -- one should be able to construct a religion for which that is not the case. ("∃ religion R | (∀ p | R ⇒ p)" is true, as is the very different "∀ p | (∃ R | R ⇒ p)", but "∀ R | (∀ p | R ⇒ p)" is (I think) false. That is, ∃ R | (∃ p | R does not imply p).) But, of course, that would then spark heated argument over whether said religion were technically a religion.
I shall refrain from making any claims or guesses as to whether there is any known, existing religion about which one can say that it is not possible to justify anything/everything using it. I'll merely note that the religions that come quickly to mind can be shown to be useable to justify anything. Fortunately the path required to get from the axioms articles of faith to some conclusions is convoluted enough to raise red flags even for believers. Unfortunately smooth-talkers can sometimes obscure that feature, and some rather unfortunate conclusions can be reached via less tortured reasoning than that. I mean, there's a "common sense" test that applies where formal logic doesn't, but the "common sense" test ain't as reliable as one would hope. But if you want to try to use logic instead, well as soon as you hit the first instance of "p ∧ !p", it's game over.
Huh. Why isn't there a slashed double-right-arrow HTML entity for "does not imply"?
Nitpick
Note that this does not mean that you can use any religion to justify anything -- one should be able to construct a religion for which that is not the case. ("∃ religion R | (∀ p | R ⇒ p)" is true, as is the very different "∀ p | (∃ R | R ⇒ p)", but "∀ R | (∀ p | R ⇒ p)" is (I think) false. That is, ∃ R | (∃ p | R does not imply p).) But, of course, that would then spark heated argument over whether said religion were technically a religion.
I shall refrain from making any claims or guesses as to whether there is any known, existing religion about which one can say that it is not possible to justify anything/everything using it. I'll merely note that the religions that come quickly to mind can be shown to be useable to justify anything. Fortunately the path required to get from the
axiomsarticles of faith to some conclusions is convoluted enough to raise red flags even for believers. Unfortunately smooth-talkers can sometimes obscure that feature, and some rather unfortunate conclusions can be reached via less tortured reasoning than that. I mean, there's a "common sense" test that applies where formal logic doesn't, but the "common sense" test ain't as reliable as one would hope. But if you want to try to use logic instead, well as soon as you hit the first instance of "p ∧ !p", it's game over.Huh. Why isn't there a slashed double-right-arrow HTML entity for "does not imply"?