From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Tue Aug 14 2001 - 00:54:53 MDT
Adrian Tymes wrote:
>
> Samantha Atkins wrote:
> > Your own
> > egocentric angst against religion, your favorite hobby-horse,
> > cannot be fed with the fatuous hay you make claiming religiosity
> > is the culprit when ignorance is more than sufficient
> > explanation and much more simple to address.
>
> Unless one of religion's main traits *is* self-perpetuating
> ignorance of many things? "Take X on faith" discourages followers from
> seeing if X is, in fact, correct.
There is no holy book that says that cloning is to be banned.
There is none that claims outright that abortion is murder or
that evolution is bunk. There are none that forbid looking to
see what cloning is and is not about or noting the different
varieties of cloning that are being studied and proposed and
responding based on that knowledge.
There are so-called religious "leaders" who will try to tell
everyon that they must think and act like the leader believes is
correct. But relatively few sects support such group think and
even in those that do (e.g. Roman Catholic church) many of the
adherents do not believe their religion requires them to refuse
to think for themselves.
And again, the counter to ignorant claims and untruths in
service of a heinous position is to present the truth in order
to dispel the ignorance. It is not helpful to attack the person
or their philosophy or religion directly. It is especially
unhelpful to chalk up all that frustrates one's fondest wishes
to the those minions of yon evil group-think.
- samantha
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