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"How? Can a belief be put under a microscope? Can a tenet be physically examined?"

There are several checks on religious doctrines that can and should be done.

Religous doctrines usually derive from some religous authority. That authority should be examined.
- For example, the first five books of the Bible get their athority directly from Moses. Moses' authority comes from the fact that he was confirmed by a number of miracles before Israel and Egypt to be God's prophet. A case for proper authority can be made for practically all scripture in the Judeo Christian religion.
- For example #2, let's go to Islam. The Koran gets it's authority from Mohammed. Mohammed claimed to be a prophet, but he has no support for the claim. He has no miracles, nor does he have prior scripture giving him authority. The Koran contradicts prior scripture. And worse than that Moses laid down tests of a prophet. Mohammed fails those tests. To make matters even worse, the Koran tells Jews and Christians to examine their own scriptures to see if the Koran is true. Thus there becomes a clear internal contradiction within the Koran which openly proclaims itself to be free of internal contradiction. Thus upon examination, unique doctrines originating out of Islam may be rejected on the basis of no authority.
- Likewise, unique doctrines originating from Joseph Smith (Mormons) may be rejected by an examination of the authority
Although doctrines are based on properly authorized scripture, those scriptures must be properly understood. And if there is a way to misunderstand them, men will find it.
- For that reason, scripture tells us not to forsake assembling ourselves together and commends those that searched the scriptures to verify whether the things being taught were really so. Effectively this is the "peer review" process.
- That's why things like the council of trent were so important. Several conflicting doctrines about Jesus had arisen. What the councils did, were to examine scripture in depth, hear all of the arguments and decide whether the doctrines were scriptural or not.
Doctrines should be internally consistent. The Muslim doctrine of hating the Jew is not consistent with the Jewish and Christian scriptures which call one to love your enemy. Thus, again, you have a basis for rejecting Islam, which claims to accept both Jewish and Christian scriptures.
Any source that claims to be directly inspired by God, should not have errors of fact in them.
- Frequently, the Bible has been challenged as not being historically correct. Archeological digs have proven the Bible correct with many of the challenges for items dating from King David forward.
- Radiometric dating stands as a challenge to the Bible's account of how old the earth is.
  - Some have decided that the geneaologies in the Bible are not complete and that the ages should not be used to date the earth.
  - Some have decided that Genesis should not be taken literally.
  - Some have examined radiometric dating and think that between assumptions about starting ratios of elements, assumptions about contamination, assumptions about the consistency of radioactive decay in the past, that there is enough room for the radiometric dating to be wrong. (I take this approach).