| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Enkidu" |
| Date: |
20 Dec 2005 03:19:52 PM |
| Object: |
Kai Nielsen, rational atheist. |
"There is no religious experience which guarantees that our experience is
an experience of God. This can be asserted without for a moment doubting
that some people have religious experiences. The psychological reality of
such experience is one thing, that these experiences are actually
experiences of God is another."
and
"In the United States religion is rampant and massively, though, of
course, not exclusively, Neanderthal. In a recent survey taken in the
United States, 88 percent of the population (if the sample taken was
accurate) maintained that they had never had any doubts about the
existence of God. Even if this survey is inaccurate and this is true of
only 40 percent of the population, it is still an intellectual and moral
disgrace - - a disgrace that should be a scandal in the United States."
and
"In cultures such as ours, religion is very often an alien form of life
to intellectuals. Living as we do in a post-enlightenment era, it is
difficult for us to take religion seriously. The very concept seems
fantastic to us ... that people in our age can believe that they have had
a personal encounter with God, that they could believe that they have
experienced conversion through a "mystical experience of God," so that
they are born again in the Holy Spirit, is something that attests to
human irrationality and a lack of sense of reality."
--
--
Enkidu AA#2165
http://www.musings.leaddogs.org/
EAC Chaplain and ordained minister,
ULC, Modesto, CA
PGP ID: 0xC4CE8CF0
"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice
of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of
increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to
all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."
-- Harry S. Truman, message to Congress, August 8, 1950
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