Subject: Re: Music, religion, etc.
From: Robbie (shok@netcom.com)
Date: Mon Jan 10 2000 - 17:42:32 EST
<< My point is that the holding of a priori beliefs is necessary to
Think At All, not a sign of an irrational thought construct -- and
therefore, religious faith isn't inherently irrational **on this
basis.** >>
I understand your point about priori beliefs being necessary to Think At
All; I'm not denying them. It is a priori belief that what I see is
really in front of me and that any of this is real and not just a dream
(or worse yet, that only the fat guy in the third row is real. . . err,
I screwed up that line. How does it go?).
But without certain priori beliefs, as you said, I cannot Think At All.
This renders them Necessary. Whereas, religious faith is not. It's a
baseless belief in the unknowable that I can very well live without.
It's baggage. And I have no reason to believe that it is the oil in the
gears of society, without which we would crumble into an amoral mess.
It seems much more reasonable that sympathy and compassion are
evolutionarily developed impulses which seem to appear to some degree in
other social animals that very definately have no religion.
It seems to me, for better or worse, that religion was manufactured by
man at a time when it was necessary to answer man's questions. And now
that these questions are being answered by more reliable sources,
religion is becoming increasingly obsolete.
Maybe one day I'll have a revelation. But until then. . .
<< I have Robert Solomon's Introduction to Philosophy. You may want to
check it out. >>
I will. Thank you.
<< No one I know believes in God because it is necessary to account for
the existence of the physical universe. This seems like a moot point to
me. >>
I hope that is so. But I've had numerous conversations like this before
and someone always seem to resort to arguing that the Universe is too
complex to exist if not for Intelligent Design. Ignoring, of course,
that the Intelligent Designer must be damn complex as well.
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