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Goodbye Jesus

Gods: A Substitute For The Darkness Of The Mind


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I just read something that I must share with you. I'm reading Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which is a terrific book, and each chapter opens with a quote. Here is the one for Chapter VII:


If a faithful account was rendered of Man's ideas upon Dvinity, he would be obliged to acknowledge, that for the most part the word "gods" has been used to express the concealed, remote, unknown causes of the effects he witnessed; that he applies this term when the spring of the natural, the source of known causes, ceases to be visible: as soon as he loses the thread of these causes, or as soon as his mind can no longer follow the chain, he solves the difficulty, terminates his research, by ascribing it to his gods… When, therefore, he ascribes to his gods the production of some phenomenon… does he, in fact, do anything more than substitute for the darkness of his own mind, a sound to which he has been accustomed to listen with reverential awe?

Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Baron von Holback, Systeme de la Nature, London, 1770

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A little farther on, Sagan writes of the Ionians who discovered that the universe was not the product of capricious gods but one of considerable order. He writes:

 

"The promotion of superstition was not considered a political necessity."

 

An interesting comment, quite relevant today. How many of our politicians promote false ideas for "political necessity"?

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I think Dawkins is wasting his time with militant atheism. It seems his only aim is to irritate xians, and I'm okay with that, but it seems ultimately like a waste of time, since it's mostly an exercise in futility. Any xian I've talked to who has yet to consider conversion to reality finds Dawkins too hostile for consideration. I myself find him amusing, but only since I converted.

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