From: simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Simon Clippingdale)
Subject: Re: THE MIND OF THE BIBLE BELIEVER
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Warwick University, England
Distribution: world,public
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 19:07:06 GMT

In article <1993Jan5.224453.29435@ra.royalroads.ca> mlee@post.RoyalRoads.ca (Malcolm Lee) writes:
>
> God has no need for our money. God has no need of our strength. God wants
> our love and devotion.

Ideas of supposedly omnipotent and omniscient beings in states of want or
hope (*THINK* about it!) involve fascinating mental contortions, do they not.

> As Christians, we serve God by tithing and attending services, and giving
> of ourselves. But these things come as a result of being a Christian.
> 
> You do not become a Christian by attending services, or giving your time
> or your money. You become a Christian by the grace of God, not by the
> labour of your hands or the sweat of your brow.

Or as others of us see it, you become a Christian following the development
of infection by a parasitic memetic virus which uses your mental and vocal
idea-broadcasting facilities to propagate [possibly modified] copies of
itself to new host brains.

Incorporation of a meme which expresses the imperative of evangelism ("you
must spread the Word to your fellow man") is one of the great success stories
of memetic viral evolution, because it vastly increases the reproductive
fitness of a religious virus over its non-evangelical counterparts and
enables it to spread like wildfire when the conditions are right, as they
sadly seem to be in particularly the United States and parts of Asia right
now for evangelical Christianity.

> It is a gift of God that cannot be taken away.

Luckily for the future of our dismal little species, the infection most
certainly *can* be "taken away", as it was from me many years ago. A good
dose of logic and reason often seems to do the trick, provided the believing
brain is not already addled and damaged beyond repair and does not reject
the serum as a result. As an example of this latter and tragic condition,
to paraphrase the final impasse reached in any number of e-mail conversations
I have had (no points for guessing who is who):

        "We must eschew human reason and trust in the Word of God
         as set out in the Holy Bible!"

        "But how do you know that this *is* the Word of God other than
         by your own human reasoning? *You* must have made your own decision
         that the Bible *is* the Word of God at some point, mustn't you?"

        "We must eschew human reason and trust in the Word of God
         as set out in the Holy Bible!"

Don't let it get to this stage, or you'll need a major emotional trauma
to snap you out of it.

Analyse what you are saying and what it actually *means* in gory, intricate
detail when you spout the flowery language of religion. Is it really tenable
that, for example, an omnipotent and omniscient being can be in a state of
want or hope for anything? Does omnipotence include the power to make oneself
non-omnipotent? Is the very concept in fact utter nonsense? What are the
consequences for want and hope if the supposed being is outside of time
itself? And so on. Reject appeals to mystery and powerful, emotive language
as satisfactory explanations.

Reason isn't very nice, warm or cuddly by comparison, but it doesn't have
the same propensity to collapse on your head when the stress of holding
together a teetering tower of mutually dissonant concepts -- without
letting on to yourself that you're doing so -- finally becomes too much
for our [thankfully less than omnipotent] brains to bear.

Cheers

Simon
-- 
Out-of-context quotes from s.r.c #3:
    "There has been a good deal of discussion about how original sin is
     passed on.  Is it inherited from the parents or what?  As far as I
     know, no specific theory has ever gained wide acceptance."