On Sun, 6 Jan, Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>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.
I would say rather that people cannot cope with the Infinity of Being,
and they have to make the indefinable defined, and the unlimited limited.
As a popular commentator interpreted the main theme of the Tibetan
Book of the Dead, which is to be read into the ear of the recently
deceased to remind them of the availability of immediate enlightenment
despite their reluctance (to paraphrase, but fairly closely:) Upon
confronting the Light, they throw themselves back on the Wheel of
rebirth, because the sufferings inherent in repeated incarnation
are brutal and miserable, but at least they aren't _that_ _intense_!
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.
Apropos of Keith's comment of the dogmatic nature of atheists, I have
found that some atheists want to extend their dogmatic views to
agnostics, to the extent that they refuse to parse "a-gnostic" as
"not-knowing", but rather insist that it must mean "can not be known",
that is, an agnostic must hold the opinion that the Whateveritis
can never be known. I sidestep this annoying response by describing
myself as "semi-gnostic", which is more accurate anyway. I regard
this category as a small constituency with a transient population,
but I'm the only one I'm aware of who explicitly claims membership.
-Pete Vincent
