speak no evil.)
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 17:03:26 +0100
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Reed:
>Agreed. The inquisition was an act of fear, not faith.
Faith was the basis of the argument for its existence. Reason couldn't have been.
>Hatred, fear, anger, rage, revenge, bloodlust...each cloaks itself
>in sheepskin.
>Reed
Reason allows its arguments to be examined and refuted (which is easy if
there
truly is nothing but fear and hatred behind the arguments).
Faith (as I understand it) does not. If I say "God (in whom I have faith)
commands me to stone my cheeky son to death", there isn't much to do. There
is no use in trying to persuade me using arguments of reason, like "isn't
that to take it a bit too far?". It
says so, right here! The bible is the word of God! It's not negotiable! The
only thing
left is trying to make me abandon my faith, but that's not easy given that
an article
of my faith is that doing so will condemn me to roast in hell forever.. To
hold articles
of faith open to criticism
(Deuteronomy 21:
18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the
voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have
chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out
unto the
elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn
and
rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so
shalt
thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. )
If I, on the other hand, try to use arguments of reason to defend the same
belief
(that my uppity son deserves to die), it will fall on its own
unreasonability.
Since reason is always subject to criticism (otherwise it wouldn't be an
argument
of reason but an article of faith) I will certainly abandon this belief.
Perhaps I
kill my son anyway, but at least I can't defend the action.
The inquisition gained its power from the fear of (faith in) God. They said
"we do the
work of God", not "what we do is reasonable and logical". They could
possibly have
said "what we do is reasonable and logical, given that God exists and truly
wants us
to do these things (which we claim despite the complete absence of proof
thereof,
because we have faith in it)". Not that I think they bothered.
-Andreas Engström
(Great Randomness)