Posted on 03/02/2013 3:30:22 AM PST by grey_whiskers
Consider looking at the sky. One can often see a layer of clouds, where the sky is completely clear below a certain height, but the clouds seem to mushroom expansively, all emanating from the same height, as though resting on a great unseen glass shelf in the sky. In other, rarer, circumstances, one may happen to see a column of smoke rising, and abruptly halt and spread out horizontally, as though it has hit an invisible ceiling.
The same thing happens in the mind: one travels along the paths of knowledge, absorbing information and learning all one can about a subject, until either one's capacity is full, or (more frighteningly) one reaches the limits of what one can, or is willing ("...it's late, i'm tired, and there's so much left to do, " as Blaufeld observed James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever) to absorb -- whether intrinsically, or whether it is "as far as one has had the stomach to travel". At this point, the mind retreats from rigorous examination, skepticism, back-checking, and resorts either to approximations, stereotypes, or belief.
I often think that one of the reasons so many scientists and other intellectuals reject faith altogether is that they are fearful of this phenomenon in themselves, and therefore despise and reject it in others: and having had no comparison within their own lives, they falsely attribute all piety and devotion to a mere throwing up of the hands and intellectual surrender: which is to them of all evils to commit, the one they fear most. (Being closely aligned as it is with the prospect of being dominated, and compelled to do obeisance without assent: which is how they also characterize the prospect of Worship.)
“We all have a Guardian Angel”
Mine is named Tammy.
One of the most horrifying conversations I ever had with an atheist was when he told me that “tragedy and death add beauty and richness to life”. Which I find to be utterly insane...
His ‘logic’, if you can call it that, was that you appreciate life more when it is short and hopeless...which is insane. Why not schedule everyone for execution and maximize the happiness?
You will rarely ever find an atheist who loves humanity enough to work day and night towards the goal of somehow trying to replace the lack of hope. If they can’t believe that God exists then they should be desperately working to replace that absence of salvation with some other technological or social miracle! At the very least it would show a great appreciation for the idea of human dignity and victory over barriers!
But the majority of atheists are misanthropic psychos...
NO cheers, unfortunately.
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