From: simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Simon Clippingdale)
Subject: Re: Reasoning about God
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Warwick University, England
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 20:43:51 GMT

In article <1992Dec9.222835.638@cs.cornell.edu> rodmoten@cs.cornell.edu (Roderick Moten) writes:
>
> Another note. Without faith it impossible to believe God. The devil has
> you truly bond because he has convinced you not to have faith.

OK, I'll bite, not that it's likely to have much effect on a brain so
obviously addled by the tertiary phase (by analogy with syphilis) of
religious infection.

As those with functioning neurons will be aware, your words above constitute
unfalsifiable and thus totally content-free dogma. You could substitute
anything you like in place of "God" and "The devil" and it would simply
constitute another coherent, consistent, paranoid conspiracy theory,
and with every bit as much evidence to support it, viz. none.

It really doesn't require Satanic possession (!) to convince people who
remain uninfected by religions such as yours that faith is neither an
effective method of arriving at truth, nor a somehow virtuous condition
in its own right. A glance at your post, for instance, makes quite clear
the awesome effect that faith can have on one's powers of reasoning and
deduction, and on one's ability to draw non-ludicrous conclusions from
evidence [e.g. person X doesn't have "faith": is X (i) rational and hence
unimpressed with the idea of faith, or (ii) possessed by hairy red demons?].

> A major distinction between the pagans of Roman and the intellictuals of
> today's society is that the Romans believed that a diety existed that was
> greater than themselves. They just had the wrong one.

One? I think not. But yes, they were superstitious too. Less so than your
good self, in that they did not have as much understanding of how nature
works and thus were pretty much in the dark when it came to explaining observed
phenomena, so in a sense their attribution of said phenomena to supernatural
agents was more understandable.

> However, today the devil is binding people to believe in no higher being
> so that it would be hard to reach them.

Superstitious drivel. A total lack of evidence is what leads people to doubt
the existence of both deities and devils.

> But God is working a new thing, and is raising up saints who are willing
> to risk all for Him and are ready to take back what Satan has stolen.

Oh boy. It gets better, too.

> I rebuke Satan in the name of Jesus and I bind that demon that has
> you so lost. My brother, the Lord is going to deliver you from pride and
> haughtness. God is calling you right now.
> Submit to God and resist the devil. All that Satan has been telling you
> is a lie. God loved you when you first heard about Him and never stopped.

Posts such as yours serve a valuable purpose. They illustrate what can
happen when people are infected by superstition and cease to base their
beliefs on observation and reason, and in some cases lose all contact with
reality. Everything becomes explained in terms of the superstition, and
layer upon layer of unfalsifiable gibberish are heaped up until a tortuous
mythology is built in the host brain. Normally this is called insanity,
but when the delusions include supernatural beings we call it religion.

Don't buy into this stuff, folks. Insist that any belief somebody tries
to impart to you be falsifiable, this being the only way of ascertaining
the veracity or otherwise of hypotheses. Yes, it's called the scientific
method and it really *can* keep people out of psychiatric institutions.

Don't leave home without it.

Cheers

Simon
-- 
Simon Clippingdale                simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk
Department of Computer Science    Tel (+44) 203 523296
University of Warwick             FAX (+44) 203 525714
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Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc