re faith and dogma tgk cs toronto edu todd kelley writes in light of what happened in waco i need to get something of my chest faith and dogma are dangerous religion inherently encourages the implementation of faith and dogma and for that reason i scorn religion i don t necessarily disagree with your assertion but i disagree with your reasoning faith bad dogma bad religion faith dogma religion bad bad religion bad unfortunately you never state why faith and dogma are dangerous if you believe faith and dogma are dangerous because of what happened in waco you are missing the point the branch davidians made the mistake of confusing the message with the messenger they believed koresh was a prophet and therefore believed everything he said the problem wasn t the religion it was the followers they didn t die because of faith and dogma they died because of their zealotry or in the case of the children the zealotry of their parents i have expressed this notion in the past some christians debated with me whether christianity leaves any room for reasoning i claimed rationality is quelled out of christianity by faith and dogma so christians are totally irrational irrational with respect to their religion only what are you saying one s belief in a christian god does not make one totally irrational i think i know what you were getting at but i d rather hear you expand on the subject a philosopher cannot be a christian because a philosopher can change his mind whereas a christian cannot due to the nature of faith and dogma present in any religion again this statement is too general a christian is perfectly capable of being a philosopher and absolutely capable of changing his her mind faith in god is a belief and all beliefs may change would you assert that atheists would make poor philosophers because they are predisposed to not believe in a god which of course may show unfair bias when studying say religion i claimed that a christian philosopher is not a christian but is a person whose beliefs at the moment correspond with those of christianity consider that a person visiting or guarding a prison is not a prisoner unless you define a prisoner simply to be someone in a prison can we define a prisoner to be someone who at the moment is in a prison can we define a christian to be someone who at the moment has christian beliefs no because if a person is free to go he is not a prisoner similarly if a person is not constrained by faith and dogma he is not a christian so christianity is a prison eh ever heard of parole you have read far too much into this subject a christian is one who follows the religion based on the teachings of a man named jesus christ nowhere does this definition imply that one cannot change one s mind in prison however you can t just decide to leave one is voluntary the other is not the two are not compatible religion is like the gun that doesn t kill anybody religion encourages faith and dogma and although it doesn t directly condemn people it encourages the use of just because thinking it is just because thinking that kills people i prefer to think of religion as a water pistol filled with urine seriously though some but certainly not all religions do condemn groups of people the common target is the infidel a curious being who is alternately an atheist a non insert specific religious affiliation here a person of a different race or an egyptian please explain how just because thinking kills people and please state more in your answer than waco of course not all humans are capable of thought and we d still have genocide and maybe even some mass suicide but not as much i m willing to bet on that i ll see your conscientious peacenik and raise you a religious zealot with bad acne by the way i wasn t aware mass suicide was a problem waco and jonestown were isolated incidents mass suicides are far from common kevin marshall computer science department virginia tech marshall csugrad cs vt edu blacksburg virginia
