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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Evidences for Religion (reposting)
Message-ID: <1245@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 18-Jul-85 21:05:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1245
Posted: Thu Jul 18 21:05:35 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Jul-85 08:24:29 EDT
References: <1228@pyuxd.UUCP> <2132@pucc-h>
Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week
Lines: 89

>>It is shoddy to build notions from what one wishes for rather than what
>>there is evidence for.  I would have thought that was clear.  At the root,
>>we do share the same assumptions, but religious believers regularly choose
>>to just arbitrarily make exceptions to make their beliefs fit, as with the
>>wishful thinking notions of the existence of god in and of itself. [ROSEN]

> I think that when Hutch referred to "shoddy thinking" he meant places where
> there might be an error in the actual process of thinking, rather than in
> the basic assumptions. [SARGENT]

One in the same.  Making assumption is indeed a part of thinking, is it not?

> And again, it is only because your basic assumptions
> rule out anything other than empirical evidence that you consider the evidence
> for the life and power of God to be wishful thinking.

Do you know WHY anything other than verifiable empirical evidence is ruled out?
Because if it's not verifiable, you have no way of knowing whether or not it
really is true.  That is why such things as "I know this to be true because
I feel it" are thrown out.  For example...

>  (As I wrote you
> privately, isn't your strong assertion that all religious belief is wishful
> thinking the surest proof that you yourself wish it to be true?  That's the
> only way you would have any excuse for that sweeping claim to know how
> believers think when you make so much noise about not being one -- that you
> know, or think you know, what would have to happen to enable you to come to
> a belief in God.)

For example, as I wrote *you* privately, when one person's subjective opinion
is not necessarily fact, as evidenced above.  I don't mean to be cruel, but
the net has seen plenty of evidence that your view of the universe is that
what *you* experience, through your filters of preconceptions, wishful
thinking, projection of your own inner qualities as you see them onto other
people (we both know about that now), IS reality.  When you (if you) feel
that someone doesn't like you because he/she didn't react the way you
might have liked to you, THAT PERSON DOESN'T LIKE YOU.  Period.  Because you
believe it.  It's because of things like that that subjectivity is thrown
out of the logical courtroom.

> Actually, the statement about speculation about ET's was by someone else
> (Wingate?).  My comment (not quoted by Rich in this article) was that the
> Bible was written by and for humans, so certainly the earth and humanity
> are the focal point of the *Bible*.

Then it is not the factual truth.  It is a slanted view of reality based on
the "needs" of humans (read "on the preconceptions and wants of the author).
Glad to hear you admit that.  Really.

>  And I must agree with Wingate that if
> earth is something special, it is so in a negative sense (that this is a
> planet that needs to be saved -- i.e., a planet full of people so badly
> wounded that they tend to blindly wound others [often innocent victims],

Read what I said about projection above, please.

>>"to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day
>> to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human
>> being can fight and never stop fighting."  - e. e. cummings

> In fact, cummings's statement fits well into Christianity.  Several times
> throughout the New Testament the image of a fight is used -- a fight against
> the forces of evil, which seek to kill the Godlike life given to you when
> you meet Christ, and make you into just another blindly acting chunk of meat
> (or at best, an animal).  Be careful that you do not (or have not) fall into
> this yourself -- e.g. with mechanical repetitions of the phrase "wishful
> thinking", which you seem to use as a charm or an anesthetic to keep yourself
> from the quite possibly terrifying perception that there is a God there who
> loves you so much He hates to see you as anything less than your best, and
> will do anything to help you, and convince you, to give up your past wounds
> (no matter how painful the healing) and live up to your fullest Godlike
> potential, to be the person that He hoped you'd be in the first place.

Gosh, I am terrified!  :-)  The repetitions may seem mechanical to you perhaps
they are in response to repeated mechanized instance of wishful thinking!
Again, your projection that your own (?) feelings are those of others.  I'm
not terrified because I'm not engaging in the brand of wishful thinking that
makes me believe that there's a god of the variety I want and need because
I want it and need it.  It amazes me how you take lines like Cummings' and
twist it to your own ends.  If anything, the quote is as anti-dogmatic-religion
as any sentence could be:  it speaks of how forces of societal pressure and
so-called morality try to impose a mold on you that may be contrary to your
own wants and needs, and how the fight to maintain one's individuality in the
face of those who would tell you how to behave (clergy, so-called authorities,
religionist impositionalists) is a difficult struggle.  As "anti" your
philosophy as you could imagine.
-- 
"iY AHORA, INFORMACION INTERESANTE ACERCA DE... LA LLAMA!"
	Rich Rosen    ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr