Re:The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget
by bmelton on Wednesday May 02, 2012 @11:14AM
(#3919470)
Without hoping to encourage any sort of flamewar, I couldn't agree with that statement more.
I used to consider myself 'agnostic', because I did not know, nor did I care to know, whether there was a God in heaven, or even a heaven at all. In fact, I would have accused any man that told me they did know (whether atheist, christian or whatever) that they couldn't possibly. Even the bible reiterates that statement, with phrases like "no man can truly understand God", and all the rhetoric about faith being unprovable, that's the point of faith, that you can believe it without proof.
I've since grown (or shrunk, depending) into the viewpoint that religion is a detriment to mankind, and now identify more with humanists than anybody else. I don't think that a belief in a moral system is wrong, but I think the reliance on anything other than one's self to get something done is naive, and I think that the biggest harm belief in a god does is to limit one's own potential.
Ignoring any of the myriad of issues I have with organized religion on the whole, that is the problem I have with the very premise of religion.
That said, to answer the great-grandparent, I do not have a problem reading works by religious people, and I consider them just as valuable as works by anybody else, except where the work is primarily religious and/or preachy.
I used to consider myself 'agnostic', because I did not know, nor did I care to know, whether there was a God in heaven, or even a heaven at all. In fact, I would have accused any man that told me they did know (whether atheist, christian or whatever) that they couldn't possibly. Even the bible reiterates that statement, with phrases like "no man can truly understand God", and all the rhetoric about faith being unprovable, that's the point of faith, that you can believe it without proof.
I've since grown (or shrunk, depending) into the viewpoint that religion is a detriment to mankind, and now identify more with humanists than anybody else. I don't think that a belief in a moral system is wrong, but I think the reliance on anything other than one's self to get something done is naive, and I think that the biggest harm belief in a god does is to limit one's own potential.
Ignoring any of the myriad of issues I have with organized religion on the whole, that is the problem I have with the very premise of religion.
That said, to answer the great-grandparent, I do not have a problem reading works by religious people, and I consider them just as valuable as works by anybody else, except where the work is primarily religious and/or preachy.