From: tcbruno@athena.mit.edu (Tom Bruno)
Subject: Re: Do Atheists Have Their Own "Faith"?
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1992 16:59:54 GMT

In article <RLK.92Apr17101430@underprize.think.com>, rlk@underprize.think.com (Robert Krawitz) writes:
|> In article <1992Apr17.043102.17997@utdallas.edu> kmldorf@utdallas.edu (George Kimeldorf) writes:
|> 
|>    >What are your reasons for believing the way you do?  I assume that you have
|>    >specific reasons for believing that God does not exist, could you please post
|>    >them.  
|> 
|>    No.  I can't.  If I lived in rural Haiti, where the population
|>    believes in Voodoo, it would be difficult for me to state specific
|>    reasons for believing that Voodoo does not exist.  Each reason I
|>    give would be answered by a "Yes, but."  Similarly, I don't know
|>    how to respond to your request.  If I could give a one- or two-
|>    line answer, I would.   Ten years ago, when I believed in God, I
|>    don't think anyone could have posted anything which would have
|>    helped me.   Sorry.
|> 
|> Perhaps a better way to put it (speaking for myself) is that I don't
|> have any good reasons FOR believing in a god.  Given that I see no
|> reason to make such an assumption, why should I make it?  So I have no
|> specific reasons for believing that a god doesn't exist (although there
|> are specific reasons for believing, say, that the god of the
|> Judeo-Christian-Islamic bible doesn't exist, given that said bible makes
|> specific claims about said god).
|> 
|> It was remarked to me recently that radioisotope dating doesn't
|> necessarily prove anything, because the world could have been created
|> with everything "in place".  Of course I have no way of refuting it, but
|> why should I believe something that relies on that kind of ad hoc
|> assumption?
|> --
|> ames >>>>>>>>>  |	Robert Krawitz <rlk@think.com>	245 First St.
|> bloom-beacon >  |think!rlk				Cambridge, MA  02142
|> harvard >>>>>>  .	Thinking Machines Corp.		(617)234-2116
|> 
|> Member of the League for Programming Freedom -- write league@prep.ai.mit.edu

Perhaps one of the main reasons I feel the way that I do has been my
studies as an archaeologist.  I'm an ancient culture freak- I like to immerse
myself in any people that has ever lived and left their mark to tell about it.
When you do this kind of thing, two basic results can ensue- one, you become
so 'weirded out' by alien cultures that your original beliefs and superstitions
are reinforced;  or two, you begin to perceive your own culture as one as alien
as the others that you study- in other words, you acquire a distancing from that
which was once your belief structure, seeing it as you see other belief 
structures in history.

At this point in my life, I see no more validity in the Judaeo-Christian god
than I see in the Aztec god Huitzlipochtli, or Quetzalcoatl, or the Sumerian
Inanna and Anu, or the Egyptian Osiris- or Mithras, Jupiter, Venus... you get
the point, I think.  It's all human convention.  The fact that the Judaeo-
Christian mythology lives today does not somehow make it any more than simple
mythology.  Humans thought it up, like they have all religions.  And somehow,
I have a hard time believing that human beings can definitively know the Truth,
whatever ever that may be.

Perhaps the only truth is that there's no Truth.

But that's a truth in itself, isn't it?   ;)

Good day, all...

tom bruno
department of archaeology
mit
Xref: sparky alt.atheism:8075 alt.satanism:1283