re faith and dogma marshall csugrad cs vt edu kevin marshall r eba hsq csugrad cs vt edu wrote 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 faith and dogma are dangerous because they cause people to act on faith alone which by its nature is without justification that is what i mean by the word faith belief without justification or belief with arbitrary justification or with emotional irrational justification for example when someone says that god exists that they don t know why they believe god exists they can just feel it that s faith dogma is bad because it precludes positive change in belief based on new information or increased mental faculty 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 faith and dogma are irrational the faith and dogma part of any religion are responsible for the irrationality of the individuals i claim that faith and dogma are the quintessential part of any religion if that makes the much overused in this context buddism a philosophy rather than a religion i can live with that science is not a religion because there is no faith nor dogma 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 have you noticed that philosophers tend to be atheists if a philosopher is not an atheist s he tends to be called a theologian a christian tends to consider christianity sacred christianity is a special set of beliefs sanctioned by god himself and therefore to conceive of changing those beliefs is to question the existence of that being who makes no mistakes faith comes into play dogma comes into play the lord works in mysterious ways is an example of faith being used to reconcile evidence that the beliefs are flawed sure interpretations of what god said are changed to satisfy the needs of society but when god says something that s it it was said and that s that since god said it it is unflawed even if the interpretations are flawed science as would be practiced by atheists in contrast has a built in defence against faith and dogma a scientist holds sacred the idea that beliefs should change to suit whatever is the best information available at the time and and and a scientist understands that any current beliefs are deficient in some way the goal is to keep improving the beliefs the goal is to keep changing the beliefs to reflect the best information currently available that s the only rational thing to do that s good philosophy can you see the difference science views beliefs as being flawed and new information can be obtained to improve them how many scientists would claim to have complete and perfect understanding of everything none it would put them out of a job religion views its beliefs as being perfect and the interpretations of those beliefs must be changed as new information is acquired which conflicts with them please explain how just because thinking kills people and please state more in your answer than waco it s easier for someone to kill a person when s he doesn t require a good rational justification of the killing i don t consider he s jewish or he was born of jewish parents or this document says he s jewish to be good rational justification by the way i wasn t aware mass suicide was a problem waco and jonestown were isolated incidents mass suicides are far from common clinton and the fbi would love for you to convince them of this it would save the us taxpayer a lot of money if you could todd
