Quote:
Originally posted by legion
And yet they are completely unable to see this about themselves.
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Yes, and the religious are so very open minded.
At a dinner party celebrating Chinese New Year, I sat beside a teacher who had spent some years in Indonesia doing charity work for a Christian based organization. During her time there she learned about many of the local religious beliefs, things like a religion that involved bat-like creatures (real people who became bats at night I think) that caused mischief in their most benign activities and death and suffering in extreme cases. This particular “tribe” were all believers in this phenomena and many had even seen these bats zooming around in quasi-spirit form. My date – a very devout catholic observed how it must have been very difficult for her (the teacher) to try to cut through that kind of “backward thinking” and the Baptist pastor sitting beside her chimed in with similar observations.
I thought, Ahem. Virgin birth – dead people back to life, etc. etc. Hm, Jews skeptically viewing Christians questioning jealous, wrathful Old Testament Jewish God, while they sneer at the modern, convenient Mormon interpretation of loving New Testament God, while they are laughing at and pitying the indigenous for their absurd ritualistic beliefs, all the while everyone asserting vision and imagination and spirituality. Imagination and spirituality that only apply as far as such was implanted in all of us by parents, preachers or teachers at an impressionable age.
(The Jesuits say "give them to us until 7, we'll have them as men")
Now that sounds like a real paradox. I suppose that there really is no paradox between science and faith except for that seen by the faithful.
I held my tongue until the drive home. We no longer “date”. The relationship was great otherwise. Yeah, religion/faith – that good force that might just actually be the greatest dividing influence on the planet. (Did I say "might"? No - that's way too easy, just open a newspaper and pick a story, any story involving war or hatred)
Yep, sounds like the real paradox.
We are all atheistic, really. It's just a matter of scale. Many have picked one God and have eliminated all the rest. Capital A atheists have just eliminated one, or slightly more Gods than the rest.
We all don’t believe in far, far more Gods than we actually do believe in.
Thanks Joe, wludaivd, island911, scottmandue, berretafan and for the indulgence JP.