"David H. Burns" <dhb### [at] cherokeetelnet> wrote:
>
> > In christianity for instance, everything bad is a conspiracy by Satan and his
> > demons.
> >
> While far to many christians do hold this view, it is not fundamental to
> christianity as
> I see it; and is dead wrong). It's always comforting to have someone,
> other than ourselves,
> to blame for our own follies and mistakes. But you might wish to argue
> that the belief and
> behavior of christians is what christianity is.

Of course the picture I painted is somewhat exaggerated to the respective
fundamentalists' perspective.

Further, I'd question the definition of a christian by his behavior, as behavior
may be founded on a much different basis than christian belief.

It's also a question what actually constitutes "christian" belief; if you're
trying to separate it from concepts such as God, Satan, heaven, angels, saints,
the Bible, or any some such, then you don't leave much that christians can
exclusively claim their own, and "ethical person" may turn out a more fitting
term.


> > In science, everything inexplicable is just a flaw in the accepted theories.
> > People refusing to accept those theories are obviously blinded by superstition.
> > If some experiment confirms their predictions, it's proof that the theories are
> > correct; if some experiment contradicts them, the system of theories just needs
> > some more refinement and consolidation.
> >
> > Duh...
>   Duh? This seems to be a pretty good description of the "scientific
> method", which
> I guess we could say is bothe the power and the weakness of science. :)

"Duh" because seen this way, I don't think there's much of a difference between
religion and "fundamentalist" science either.

If a scientist claims that *everything* is (or will eventually become)
explicable by science and anyone not acknowledging this is mislead by
superstition, then he's just as fundamentalist as a christian claiming that
*everything* is explained in the Bible and anyone not acknowledging this is
mislead by Satan, or a conspirationist claiming that *everything* is the work
of The Powers That Be and anyone not acknowledging this is mislead by the very
same.

So the only point of view that seems somewhat different in this respect is that
of the agnostic who claims he simply doesn't know - but even those may come in
a fundamentalist flavor, claiming that we *cannot* know and anyone not
acknowledging this is mislead by pride.

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