| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"words of truth" |
| Date: |
12 Nov 2005 10:50:40 PM |
| Object: |
How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
http://www.crisismagazine.com/feature1.htm
None So Blind: How Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion
By Thomas E. Woods Jr.
It's the same argument we've heard so many times before, except now
with increasing frequency and intensity: The world's troubles are
caused by religion. If only people would at last abandon these silly
superstitions and get with the times.
Late this summer Zenit, the international Catholic news agency,
reported on an increasing tendency in the Western press-particularly
in the wake of the July bombings in London-to criticize not simply
"Islamic fundamentalism" but also religion in general as sources of
discord and violence. Thus in the pages of Scotland's Sunday Herald
Muriel Gray declared that "the cause of all this misery, mayhem,
violence, terror and ignorance is of course religion itself," which
she went on to dismiss as "Dark Ages nonsense." "For the
government of a secular country such as ours to treat religion as if it
had real merit instead of regarding it as a ridiculous anachronism,
which education, wisdom and experience can hopefully overcome in time,
is one of the most depressing developments of the 21st century," she
continued.
This is no isolated voice. "It is time now to get serious about
religion-all religion-and draw a firm line between the real world
and the world of dreams," wrote Polly Toynbee in the London Guardian.
Along the same lines, Matthew Parris suggested in the London Spectator
magazine that "what unites an 'extremist' mullah with a Catholic
priest or evangelical Protestant minister is actually much more
significant and interesting than what divides him from them."
Statements like these, added Zenit, were becoming increasingly common
even before the London bombings. Thus earlier this year Sam Harris
argued in the Times of London that "incompatible religious
doctrines" had led to terrible divisions in the world and that these
divisions in turn had become "a continuous source of bloodshed." He
went on: "If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in
the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a
matter of our having dispensed with the dogma of faith."
More recently, retired Royal Military College professor Bob Ferguson
argued on Canada's state-owned CBC radio for government control of
religion. "Given the inertia of the Catholic Church," he observed,
"perhaps we could encourage reform by changing the environment in
which all religions operate.... Couldn't we insist that human rights,
employment and consumer legislation apply to them as it does other
organizations? Then it would be illegal to require a particular marital
status as a condition of employment or to exclude women from the
priesthood."
A "key item" in the "code of moral practice for religions" that
Ferguson proposes "would have to be a ban on claims of exclusivity.
It should be unethical for any RRP [registered religious practitioner]
to claim that theirs was the one true religion and believers in
anything else or nothing were doomed to fire and brimstone." The
Vatican would be displeased, said Ferguson, but "they would come to
accept [the terms of the code] in time as a fact of life in Canada."
"Can't religious leaders agree to adjust doctrine so all religions
can operate within the code?" he wondered.
These days, more and more Protestants seem all too happy to wave
incense before the shrine of almighty Bob. The past several years have
witnessed the growth within Protestantism of the "emergent" or
"emerging church" movement, which emphasizes "religious
experience" and downplays both the need for and the desirability of
religious doctrine. (In other words, it is in almost every detail the
very thing condemned in Pope St. Pius X's 1907 encyclical Pascendi.)
"There's a sort of comfort," one woman recently noted to a PBS
interviewer, "in knowing that...I don't have to have the answers,
and that there aren't necessarily answers." According to Doug
Pagitt, pastor of Solomon's Porch Church, "It's more important
for us to feel like we're representing a beautiful expression of our
life with God than it is to be right about everything."
Catholics cannot afford to be complacent in light of these Protestant
difficulties; recent polling data showed 88 percent of Catholics
agreeing with the statement that, "If people are generally good, or
do enough good things for others during their lives, they will earn a
place in heaven"-in effect, the very Pelagian heresy that St.
Augustine went to such lengths to refute.
This kind of milquetoast Christianity-in addition to being, quite
frankly, a betrayal of Christ-will not satisfy the secularists'
anti-religious fatwa any more than constitutional priests' initial
concessions to the revolutionary regime spared them from an eventual
death sentence during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror. To
them, encouraging religious moderation is no solution, since it still
amounts to preserving a way of thinking that they consider hopelessly
out of step with modernity. "In so far as religious moderates attempt
to hold on to what is still serviceable in orthodox religion," Harris
wrote in the Times, "they close the door to more sophisticated
approaches to human happiness."
What is needed instead is a renewed emphasis on the enormous
contributions that the Catholic Church has made to civilized life.
Whether Islam is in fact a "religion of peace" or-of its very
nature-is committed to expansionism and violence is a matter for
people more expert in Islamic theology than I to decide. The point here
is that we cannot permit the intelligentsia to go unanswered when they
extrapolate from the fact of Islamic terrorism the conclusion that all
religion is a blight on human existence whose alleged drawbacks
dramatically outweigh its virtues (if indeed any are conceded to exist
at all).
For example, for all the many virtues of the civilizations of classical
antiquity, which the Church herself admired, conspicuously absent was
anything like the Christian view of the sanctity of human life. It is
true that the ancient Greeks placed much emphasis on the nobility of
man, contrasting his rational nature, moral conscience, and
self-directedness with the instinct-driven action of the beasts. But it
is also true that even a figure as otherwise admirable as Plato could
observe that a poor man too sick or feeble to work should be left to
die. In ancient Rome, Seneca noted blandly that deformed children were
routinely killed, a practice codified in Roman law as early as the
fifth century b.c. It was Catholic belief and practice that at last put
an end to infanticide.
The Roman gladiatorial contests, the closest thing the ancient world
had to modern reality television, were a terrible offense against the
dignity of human life inasmuch as they made the destruction of that
life a matter of entertainment. It was thanks to Catholic pressure that
they were at last abolished.
Catholic charity, which was itself based on the very conception of
human life that inspired the Church to labor so diligently against
these ancient abuses, likewise brought something new and good into the
world. I argue at much greater length in How the Catholic Church Built
Western Civilization (Regnery, 2005) that ancient Greece and Rome did
not exhibit charitable activity of the sort that the Church introduced.
Certainly, Greeks and Romans from time to time displayed great
liberality toward their fellow men, but all too often the poor were
treated with either contempt or a pity that bordered on contempt.
Particularly in ancient Rome, this liberality-which was often
indiscriminate and aimed at the poor and non-poor alike-was
undertaken in order to call attention to oneself and to put recipients
in one's debt. The idea of helping and sympathizing with your fellow
man and rendering him aid without thought of self-interest or
reciprocity would come to dominate Western thought thanks to the
Catholic Church. Apart from its observance among the Jews, it was
simply not to be found in the ancient world.
The point here is not to catalog all the achievements that the Catholic
Church has to show for herself-though such a list, in addition to
what we have covered already, would have to include very substantial
contributions to the development of Western science, the university,
international law, economic thought, just-war theory, art and
architecture, the idea of natural rights, and a great deal more
besides. The point, simply, is that she has in fact done much good,
indeed far more than most secularists (and even most Catholics)
realize, and that it is far from certain that these good things would
have developed in the Western world in the Church's absence. And if
secularists are going to cite religious warfare and intolerance against
us, we might reply by noting the unprecedented destructiveness of the
wars and revolutions of the 20th century, undertaken by and large by
self-professed atheistic or religiously indifferent regimes, and by
adding that the single year of the Reign of Terror, which was carried
out by anticlerical deists and atheists, claimed far more lives than
did the entire history of the Inquisition.
So impressive was the system of Catholic morality that even the
Enlightenment, which was so often a conscious and willful rebellion
against Catholicism, typically sought to retain the Church's moral
code-which, the philosophes' mistresses notwithstanding, it
professed to admire-while dispensing with its ritual and dogma. But
Catholic morality, beautiful and sublime as it is, is also rigorous and
challenging, and indeed contrary to the baser aspects of our nature.
Catholic faith and dogma, therefore, far from dispensable adjuncts, are
its most reliable safeguard. Early last century, Philadelphia's
Archbishop Patrick Ryan made this very point in the course of
criticizing the idea that morality could be effectively taught in
isolation from the Christian doctrines that gave it force:
One of the most fatal and demoralizing superstitions of this country is
this attempted separation of morality from doctrinal teaching.
Doctrines are as the granite foundation to the whole edifice of
Christian ethics, and with them that edifice must stand or crumble into
ruins. What underlies the value of holy childhood but the doctrine that
the child has an immortal soul? Abolish this, look at the child only in
the light of its utility to the state, and soon infanticide will
commence again, and deformed children will be put to death, when men
shall have lost the tendencies which Christianity has produced and
fostered. In the name of our Christian civilization, I, a Bishop of the
Christian Church, lift up my voice to warn you that the popular modern
system of teaching morality without the doctrines that motivate it,
whether that system be called Christian ethics or moral instruction or
unsectarian teaching, is sapping the very foundation of Christianity
and Christian civilization.
The French philosopher Simone Weil, a non-Catholic, reinforced
Archbishop Ryan's view when she said it was impossible to shed
Western civilization's Christian inheritance without becoming
degraded. A passing glance at the present state of Western Europe,
which is distinguishing itself in such areas of human endeavor as
euthanasia, welfare statism, and nihilistic "art," shows us what
that degradation looks like.
Since the Enlightenment, Catholics have frequently if erroneously been
described as irrational for their belief in Christ and the Church. But
what are we to think of the rational faculties of someone who,
surveying the condition of the West today, concludes that its problem
is too much religion?
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| User: "Paul Duca" |
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| Title: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
13 Nov 2005 12:14:46 AM |
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Of course, it all depends on one's willingness to accept a very low
standard of value.
Paul
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| User: "Cobra Cuddlers for Jesus" |
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| Title: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
13 Nov 2005 04:32:33 PM |
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"words of truth" <wordsoftruth@hoshmail.com> suddenly spluttered:
Late this summer Zenit, the international Catholic news agency,
reported on an increasing tendency in the Western press-particularly
in the wake of the July bombings in London-to criticize not simply
"Islamic fundamentalism" but also religion in general as sources of
discord and violence.
Why shouldn't they? The bombers were following Christ's teachings, not
Mohammed's anyway, and they did what they did precisely because they
believed in God and the afterlife. When people stop believing in those
absurdities, such atrocities will become impossible.
------------------------------------------------
Conflict over the exact will/purpose/nature of God cannot ever be
resolved, since there are no facts to go on.
D Silverman FLAHN, SMLAHN
AA #2208
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| User: "Martin" |
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| Title: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
13 Nov 2005 09:00:52 PM |
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"Cobra Cuddlers for Jesus" <yournamehere@martyrdom.org> wrote in message
news:9hqen1poia61qe8d05bl948jjjjk7g97dn@4ax.com...
"words of truth" <wordsoftruth@hoshmail.com> suddenly spluttered:
Late this summer Zenit, the international Catholic news agency,
reported on an increasing tendency in the Western press-particularly
in the wake of the July bombings in London-to criticize not simply
"Islamic fundamentalism" but also religion in general as sources of
discord and violence.
Why shouldn't they? The bombers were following Christ's teachings, not
Mohammed's anyway, and they did what they did precisely because they
believed in God and the afterlife. When people stop believing in those
absurdities, such atrocities will become impossible.
Hmmm... Unsure about the 'Christ's teachings' bit - they were all Muslims (or
professed to be Muslims). The fact is, what they did was against the teachings
of both Mohammed and Jesus, according to virtually all their followers blessed
with any intelligence, and all who have any sense.
Personally, I suspect that being absolutely certain there was no such thing as
an afterlife, or posthumous judgement, would encourage someone to be a suicide
bomber more than anything else - nothing to fear, nothing to gain, if you're fed
up or had enough, why not?
It isn't like that of course. It could be said that a belief in reincarnation
might encourage such behaviour too, but with that comes awkward questions about
'what sort of reincarnation', and that is a big disincentive.
The fact is, these gullible, deeply dissatisfied, bitter people do it because
they are misled and misguided by rogue so-called 'clerics'. They are truly
evil... and such atrocities will only stop when they are removed, or destroyed.
The only other method is to cut off their source of victims, followers and
'apprentices' by making their lives worthwhile and giving them hope. Both are
very difficult - perhaps a combination attack on both fronts would be best?
Suicide attacks are nothing new - the Mongols used 'suicide squadrons', young
men eager to die for prestige and glory, and there have been others throughout
history. Usually young men.... the widows of such are a relatively new
phenomena.
Martin
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| User: "Anaconda wrestlers for Jesus" |
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| Title: Re: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
14 Nov 2005 12:47:38 AM |
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"Martin" <martin.reboul@spamfuktiscali.co.uk> suddenly spluttered:
Hmmm... Unsure about the 'Christ's teachings' bit - they were all Muslims (or
professed to be Muslims). The fact is, what they did was against the teachings
of both Mohammed and Jesus, according to virtually all their followers blessed
with any intelligence, and all who have any sense.
->Matthew 16:25
->For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will
->lose his life for my sake shall find it.
It's called martyrdom.
------------------------------------------------
Conflict over the exact will/purpose/nature of God cannot ever be
resolved, since there are no facts to go on.
D Silverman FLAHN, SMLAHN
AA #2208
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| User: "Martin" |
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| Title: Re: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
14 Nov 2005 01:29:47 AM |
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"Anaconda wrestlers for Jesus" <yournamehere@martyrdom.org> wrote in message
news:fcnfn11403i0nr6tr7ig14tvdfsktp72nc@4ax.com...
"Martin" <martin.reboul@spamfuktiscali.co.uk> suddenly spluttered:
Hmmm... Unsure about the 'Christ's teachings' bit - they were all Muslims (or
professed to be Muslims). The fact is, what they did was against the
teachings
of both Mohammed and Jesus, according to virtually all their followers
blessed
with any intelligence, and all who have any sense.
->Matthew 16:25
->For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will
->lose his life for my sake shall find it.
It's called martyrdom.
You believe Matthew? Jesus!
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| User: "Ike" |
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| Title: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
13 Nov 2005 02:09:17 AM |
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"words of truth" <wordsoftruth@hoshmail.com> wrote in message
news:1131835840.062070.28170@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
http://www.crisismagazine.com/feature1.htm
None So Blind: How Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion
By Thomas E. Woods Jr.
It's the same argument we've heard so many times before, except now
with increasing frequency and intensity: The world's troubles are
caused by religion. If only people would at last abandon these silly
superstitions and get with the times.
You said it; I didn't.
snip>
"For the
government of a secular country such as ours to treat religion as if it
had real merit instead of regarding it as a ridiculous anachronism,
which education, wisdom and experience can hopefully overcome in time,
is one of the most depressing developments of the 21st century," she
continued.
How could that develop in the 21st Century when it had already developed in
past eons? The rich scum who loot the countryside are laughing all the way
to the bank about the ignorant peasants fear of God which lets them get away
with murder.
Matthew Parris suggested in the London Spectator
magazine that "what unites an 'extremist' mullah with a Catholic
priest or evangelical Protestant minister is actually much more
significant and interesting than what divides him from them."
Like Pat Robertson threatening the town of Dover for doing what he disagreed
with.
"If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in
the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a
matter of our having dispensed with the dogma of faith."
Too late. The war is on already. The zealots are waiting to kill him first
chance.
Snip tedious boring crap>
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| User: "Lars Eighner" |
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| Title: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
12 Nov 2005 11:08:27 PM |
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In our last episode,
<1131835840.062070.28170@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
the lovely and talented words of truth
broadcast on alt.atheism:
http://www.crisismagazine.com/feature1.htm
None So Blind: How Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion
The argument is religion makes (some) people behave better.
So do drugs.
It isn't evidence that any religion is true.
--
Rev. Lars Eighner, UCL http://www.larseighner.com/
The Mint Jelly of GodŽ -- The World's Best Atheist -- Unholier Than Thou
First Church of Electro-Baptism ***Atheist #1965*** One Short Circuit to Jesus
"I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler" --Frank Buchman, U.S. evangelist
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| User: "Bulba!" |
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| Title: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
12 Nov 2005 11:46:23 PM |
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On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:08:27 -0600, Lars Eighner
<usenet@larseighner.com> wrote:
In our last episode,
<1131835840.062070.28170@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
the lovely and talented words of truth
broadcast on alt.atheism:
http://www.crisismagazine.com/feature1.htm
None So Blind: How Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion
The argument is religion makes (some) people behave better.
So do drugs.
It isn't evidence that any religion is true.
Well you can't have one (i.e. that religion is true),
because if it could be proven, religion would be based
on science, not faith.
--
Hitler: 60% nationalism, 40% socialism.
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| User: "Malcolm" |
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| Title: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
13 Nov 2005 04:55:46 PM |
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"Bulba!" <bulba@bulba.com> wrote
The argument is religion makes (some) people behave better.
So do drugs.
It isn't evidence that any religion is true.
Well you can't have one (i.e. that religion is true),
because if it could be proven, religion would be based
on science, not faith.
Evidence isn't proof.
For instance if it is known that Bloggs sold a large quantity of drugs to
the murder victim shortly before the crime, and that he withdrew a ten
thousand pounds in cash about two hours after the victim died, any policeman
with any sense would put interviewing Bloggs top of his list of priorities.
But this doesn't mean that Bloggs necessarily had anything to do with it.
Similarly we know that atheism offers no easy solution to the problem of how
to organise human society. If it did, that would be a knock-out blow to any
claim by religions to have special insight into morals. The failure of
atheist societies is evidence that religion may be true, but no more.
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| User: "Bill" |
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| Title: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
13 Nov 2005 07:53:04 PM |
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"Malcolm" <regniztar@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:dl7r6h$1j0$1@nwrdmz03.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
"Bulba!" <bulba@bulba.com> wrote
The argument is religion makes (some) people behave better.
So do drugs.
It isn't evidence that any religion is true.
Well you can't have one (i.e. that religion is true),
because if it could be proven, religion would be based
on science, not faith.
Evidence isn't proof.
For instance if it is known that Bloggs sold a large quantity of drugs to
the murder victim shortly before the crime, and that he withdrew a ten
thousand pounds in cash about two hours after the victim died, any
policeman with any sense would put interviewing Bloggs top of his list of
priorities.
But this doesn't mean that Bloggs necessarily had anything to do with it.
Similarly we know that atheism offers no easy solution to the problem of
how to organise human society. If it did, that would be a knock-out blow
to any claim by religions to have special insight into morals. The failure
of atheist societies is evidence that religion may be true, but no more.
There has been no such thing in recent verifiable history that demonstrates
the failure of
an "Atheist Society" There have been no "Atheist Societies" in recent
history to support this
claim. All societies are made up of majorities that have religious beliefs
of one form or another.
Most wars are based on religious beliefs.
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| User: "Dan Clore" |
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| Title: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
13 Nov 2005 01:04:02 AM |
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Bulba! wrote:
On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:08:27 -0600, Lars Eighner
<usenet@larseighner.com> wrote:
In our last episode,
<1131835840.062070.28170@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
the lovely and talented words of truth
broadcast on alt.atheism:
http://www.crisismagazine.com/feature1.htm
None So Blind: How Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion
The argument is religion makes (some) people behave better.
So do drugs.
It isn't evidence that any religion is true.
Well you can't have one (i.e. that religion is true),
because if it could be proven, religion would be based
on science, not faith.
"We place no reliance
On virgin or pigeon;
Our method is science,
Our aim is religion."
-- Aleister Crowley
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1587154838/thedanclorenecro/
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
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| User: "Bulba!" |
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| Title: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
14 Nov 2005 12:14:17 AM |
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On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:04:02 -0800, Dan Clore
<clore@columbia-center.org> wrote:
It isn't evidence that any religion is true.
Well you can't have one (i.e. that religion is true),
because if it could be proven, religion would be based
on science, not faith.
"We place no reliance
On virgin or pigeon;
Our method is science,
Our aim is religion."
-- Aleister Crowley
Cheap hate as usual.
I could be an atheist and it would not change one whit
in my views.
--
Hitler: 60% nationalism, 40% socialism.
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| User: "Dan Clore" |
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| Title: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
15 Nov 2005 06:56:26 AM |
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Bulba! wrote:
On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:04:02 -0800, Dan Clore
<clore@columbia-center.org> wrote:
It isn't evidence that any religion is true.
Well you can't have one (i.e. that religion is true),
because if it could be proven, religion would be based
on science, not faith.
"We place no reliance
On virgin or pigeon;
Our method is science,
Our aim is religion."
-- Aleister Crowley
Cheap hate as usual.
???
I could be an atheist and it would not change one whit
in my views.
As Crowley said, "Thank God I'm an atheist!"
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1587154838/thedanclorenecro/
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
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| User: "satyr" |
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| Title: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
18 Nov 2005 01:15:53 AM |
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On 12 Nov 2005 14:50:40 -0800, "words of truth"
<wordsoftruth@hoshmail.com> wrote:
. Thus in the pages of Scotland's Sunday Herald
Muriel Gray declared that "the cause of all this misery, mayhem,
violence, terror and ignorance is of course religion itself," which
she went on to dismiss as "Dark Ages nonsense." "For the
government of a secular country such as ours to treat religion as if it
had real merit instead of regarding it as a ridiculous anachronism,
which education, wisdom and experience can hopefully overcome in time,
is one of the most depressing developments of the 21st century," she
continued.
How very politically incorrect of her.
--
satyr #1953
Chairman, EAC Church Taxation Subcommittee
Director, Gideon Bible Alternative Fuel Project
Supervisor, EAC Fossil Casting Lab
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| User: "Michael Gray" |
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| Title: Re: How Blind Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion |
13 Nov 2005 12:19:22 AM |
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On 12 Nov 2005 14:50:40 -0800, "words of truth"
<wordsoftruth@hoshmail.com> wrote:
http://www.crisismagazine.com/feature1.htm
None So Blind: How Secularists Ignore the Value of Religion
:
L. Ron Hubbard did not ignore it's value.
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