virus: Religion & Logic

John A (jwa@inx.net)
Thu, 18 Apr 1996 20:09:23 -0500

Religion and logic both begin with ideas that are taken as true without
proof. I have heard many religious people, christians specificaly, use
this similarity against logic. These people say that logic makes
assumptions in the same way that faith does, therefore logic is not
better than religion. They seem to use this arguement to the favor of
religion, which is absurd. I have even seen some people on this mailing
list say this, only without the religious arguement. There is nothing
wrong with this statement; it is prefectly true.

Both religion and logic attempt to explain the world. Religion attempts
this from a substratum of ignorance, awe and bias. Primitive humans
attributed human qualities to nature, therefore god became
anthropomorphic. They knew nothing about nature, so they used their
imaginations.

This is where religion and logic differ. Logic uses facts discovered
through experimentation. Logic lays aside awe and bias and tooks through
an undistorted looking glass. Logic does not give an immediate, easy
answer to questions such "does god exist?" or "is there life after
death?". It does not because there are not enough facts to feasably
deduce this. As it stands now, logical arguements can be made for and
against the existence of god. The lesser arguements are begining to
become weak, however.

--
John Aten
jwa@inx.net


A stopped clock is exactly right every twelve hours