The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #152125   Message #3567846
Posted By: Steve Shaw
17-Oct-13 - 02:40 PM
Thread Name: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion p
Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion p
Head in the sand, eh, big boy? Well lessee. You see a gap somewhere in the explanation of things. You look for more evidence, you develop better techniques for getting at that evidence, you go up countless demoralising blind alleys, you experiment and you honestly report your findings to your peers, who will fearlessly tear you to pieces, automatically assuming that you're completely wrong, unless you can convincingly demonstrate otherwise. We call that "science". So here's an alternative approach: you see a gap somewhere in the explanation of things. You do no work nor partake in any further investigation: instead, you come up with the most unlikely of all possible explanations. The more your explanation departs from human knowledge as far as we've acquired it, the more it is thoroughly counter-intuitive, and the more it breaks all the laws of nature, the better. That's what we call "religion". The big difference between these two approaches is that one involves hard work and possible humiliation, whereas the other involves calling yourself a "theologian" whereby you can pontificate with little challenge as your present your "ideas" to the collective flock of nodding dogs who have been commanded to agree. My head might be in the sand but yours is firmly and irremovably wedged up your arse.