There is a difference between knowledge and belief. And when people just believe, but claim that what they believe in is knowledge - then the troubles begin.
The theory of Darwin - is a theory, it is being used because the overwhelming majority of scientists consider it to make more sense and cooperating better with the current scientific paradigms then any other theory dealing with the developement of life and species. Maybe one day it will be replaced, when our understanding of things and life widens, or we start to see more contradiction than pragmatic value in it. Maybe not. Different to religions' always un checked and alwqays unprovable claims, theories in science can be examined, tested, changed, corrected, supplemented, precised or replaced.
Religion needs the self-limitation and lacking education and dogmatism of people in order to be what it is, a religion. It needs the weakness of people in order to be powerful itself.
Scientific theories are not to be believed in. They are being used, as long as it makes pragmatic sense and is seen to match reason. Reason is religions's arch-enemy. Reason and logic unveil all the decpetion and superifical believing in relgion, and rips the mask off it'S face. In this opposition to education and reason, all religions are the same and are natural allies. Not just one special religion is an educated, reasonable man's enemy - but all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aldous Huxley
The more a man knows about individual objects, the more he knows about God. Translating Spinoza's language into ours, we can say: The more a man knows about himself in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing who in fact he is---or rather Who in Fact "He" Is.
St. John was right. In a blessedly speechless universe, the Word was not only with God; it was God. As a something to be believed in. God is a projected symbol, a reified name. God = "God."
Faith is something very different from belief. Belief is the systematic taking of unanalyzed words much too seriously. Paul's words, Mohammed's words, Marx's words, Hitler's words---people take them too seriously, and what happens? What happens is the senseless ambivalence of history---sadism versus duty, or (incomparably worse) sadism as duty; devotion counterbalanced by organized paranoia; sisters of charity selflessly tending the victims of their own church's inquisitors and crusaders. Faith, on the contrary, can never be taken too seriously. For Faith is the empirically justified confidence in our capacity to know who in fact we are, to forget the belief-intoxicated Manichee in Good Being. Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief.
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All words about religion, all religious teachings necessarily must be untrue and wrong, for the one reality
that just is, is so much bigger than terms and labels, but terms and labels are just a small, an arbitrary part of the uoltimate reality, and so a reality in which the words we use actually have a meaning that we can understand by the rules of the language we use, necessarily must be a most uncomplete one. A thought god is our thought only, and dies when our brain activity comes to a standstill. the divinity of the university cannot be understood, embraced, described or adressed in names. "The name of God cannot be pronounced".
So why is there talking in the name of religions, and why is there religious argument, when the mere fact that it is being given is evidence that what it says is and must be untrue?
All religious books should be burned immediately. They are just a terrible confusion bringing out the worst in man again and again and again, causing intolerance, mental self-mutiliation and self-righteous elitism.
