In a message dated 3/4/99 5:25:22 PM Central Standard Time, carlw@lisco.com writes:
<< So let us alter one of the sentences
quoted above. Only slightly. "Some may point to their good qualities and
attribute them to their madness." Do you see the humour inherent in this?
Would you normally listen to a madman? So why attend to him when he calls
his madness faith. Faith is a psychomemetic illness which has bedevilled
mankind since the first priest blindsided the first king. Maybe Mikhail
Bakunin (1814-1876) really did grasp the essence of becoming human when he
said, "The new world will be won only when the last king has been strangled
with the guts of the last priest."
TheHermit (fiddle-faddling in a minor key.) >>
I appreciate your position, as well as your beautiful minor-key fiddlefaddling.
I would hope that Reed would respond to your position as well as
mine. Taken as a complete cultural phenomenon, I think humanity would be
better off without faith. On that I think we are in agreement. Taking any
particular individual, or group of individuals, however, who manifest faith, I
do not immediately judge each and every occurance or manifestation of faith as
necessarily harmful. In addition, I think we should be wary of limiting our
"faith radar" to what we see as "religion", though religion is the most
obvious exploiter of faith. Not all people who claim to be "religious" have
faith. Not all people who claim to be "not religious" and even "atheist" are
without faith.
-Jake