re faith and dogma in r mr eov aurora engr latech edu ray engr latech edu bill ray wrote faith and dogma are inevitable christians merely understand and admit to the fact give me your proof that no god exists or that he does whichever position you take you are forced to do it on faith it does no good to say you take no position for to show no interest in the existence of god is to assume he does not exist consider special relativity it hasn t be proved nor has it been disproved no one has a proof one way or the other but many people are interested in it i ve satisfied myself that nothing could indicate absolutely the existence of god one way or the other the two possibilities are supernaturalism and naturalism of course no set of circumstances can be inconsistent with supernaturalism but similarly no set of circumstances can be inconsistent with naturalism in naturalism any phenomenon that could be described as god is considered part of the natural world to be studied as any other natural phenomenon gravity for instance for example if a loud godlike voice vociferously announced i am god i exist and i will prove it by reversing the force of gravity and if then gravity did indeed reverse a naturalist probably a scientist would say boy we sure didn t understand gravity as well as we thought we did and that loud voice is something new perhaps we didn t understand thunder as well as we thought we did either i contend that proper implementation of the christian faith requires reasoning but that reasoning cannot be used to throw out things you don t like or find uncomfortable hedonistic sexual behavior is condemned in the bible and no act of true reason will make it any less condemned hatred murder gossip all these are condemned is there god ordained murder in the bible you bet and if god ever orders me to kill you i will but i will first use the gideon like behavior of verifying that god actually ordered the hit and will probably discuss it in an abram like fashion i m sure glad you don t know where i live since you don t seem to realize it is impossible for you to distinguish between voices in your head and god s voice i can hear you now this is how jim jones and david koresh justify their behavior delusional religious cults bear the same relationship to christianity that rape bears to consentual sex form but no substance when the southern baptist church or the methodist church begin to do this then you have reason to blame mainstream religion for the behaviors of these people or should i associate every negative behavior i witness in any non christian with you you seem to have missed my point even if jim jones and david koresh were not religious people my point remains that faith and dogma are dangerous and religion encourages them jim jones and david koresh also encouraged them my point does not rely on jim jones and david koresh being religious todd
