Keith: > Yes, indeed. Those who are atheists are being just as dogmatic as those > Believers who say that non-Believers are damned. But we can't trust > language. It contains verbal paradoxes and depend on assumptions that > cannot be proved. Language and logic are useful crutches and help us to get > by from day to day, but are no more than that. >
But there is a universal human tendency to want to convert good and interesting thought to repressive dogma. If I were an existentialist, I'd say that this because, fundamentally, people cannot cope with the finitude and uncertainty of being. They have to make the uncertain certain and the transitory absolute. The provocative thinking of Christ was converted into the unquestionable dogma of the Catholic Church, just as Mohamed's was to Islamic fundamentalism and Marx's to repressive state capitalism (aka Soviet Communism). An interesting idea pales against the vastness of the universe; an absolute truth does not. Ed Weick
