re faith and dogma in article apr edt neat cs toronto edu tgk cs toronto edu todd kelley writes in light of what happened in waco i need to get something of my chest sadly understandable faith and dogma are dangerous yes religion inherently encourages the implementation of faith and dogma and for that reason i scorn religion to be fair you should really qualify this as semitic western religions but you basically go ahead and do this later on anyway 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 again this should really be evaluated at a personal level for example there was only one jesus presumably and he probably didn t say all that many things and yet seemingly billions and billions of christian sects have arisen perhaps there is one that is totally dedicated to rationalism and believes in christ as in pantheism it would seem to go against the bible but it is amazing what people come up with under the guise of personal interpretation 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 this is a good point we have here the quintessential christian he sets up a system of values beliefs for himself which work very well and every event experience is understandable and deablable within the framework of this system however we also have an individual who has the inability at least not without some difficulty to change which is important because the problem with such a system is the same as with any system one cannot be open minded to the point of testing hypotheses against the basic premise of the system without destroying whatever faith is invested therein unless of course all the tests fail in other words the fairer way would be to test and evaluate moralities without the bias responsibility of losing retaining a system 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 interesting but again when it seems to basically boil down to individual nuances although not always i will admit and probably it is the mass oriented divisions which are the most appalling it becomes irrelevant unfortunately i admit it s a word game i m going by the dictionary definition of religion religion n concern over what exists beyond the visible world differentiated from philosophy in that it operates through faith or intuition rather than reason webster s now let s go beyond the word game i don t claim that religion causes genocide i think that if all humans were atheist there would still be genocide there will always be humans who don t think there will always be humans who don t ask themselves what is the real difference between themselves and people with different colored skin or a different language or different beliefs granted 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 in which case the people become the bullets and the religion as the gun merely offers them a way to more adequately do some harm with themselves if i may be so bold as to extend your similie sure religion has many good qualities it encourages benevolence and philanthropy ok so take out only the bad things like faith dogma and tradition put in the good things like careful reasoning and science the result is secular humanism wouldn t it be nice if everyone were a secular humanist to please the supernaturalists you might even leave god in there but the secular emphasis would cause the supernaturalists to start thinking and they too would realize that a belief in a god really doesn t put anyone further ahead in understanding the universe ok i m just poking fun at the supernaturalists also understandable 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 todd todd kelley tgk cs toronto edu department of computer science university of toronto best regards adam john cooper verily often have i laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because acooper macalstr edu they had no claws
