Re: virus: FAQ: question (c) - Believing

Tim Rhodes (proftim@speakeasy.org)
Wed, 16 Jun 1999 14:23:14 -0700

(c) What's wrong with believing in God?

TheHermit wrote:

>You have answered this from the perspective of a sufferer of
>Christianity. I think we can and should go further. I once said on this
>list "Once one has accepted something, anything, "through faith", you
>have surrendered your rationality. And I have observed that such an
>abdication of reason tends to infuse the subject's thinking no matter
>how carefully the subject believes that they have partitioned their
>thoughts." As such, I would argue that believing in anything is harmful.
>To quote myself again, "Once you have accepted something through faith
>[believing in God]], you lose the ability to examine that belief."
>Looking at human history, it seems that believing in gods is especialy
>harmful as they can be, and are frequently are, used to justify UTism...

It's interesting, your answer is very close to Richard's:

>The same thing that's wrong with believing in anything, if you
>haven't examined the pros and cons of believing in it. We stand
>for consciousness, especially with regard to what to believe and
>purposeful living.

Maybe this is the basis for a common ground on which to base our collective answer.

-Prof. Tim