Do you admit that no decently intelligent human being can be without a picture/idea/concept/philosophy of existence?
Do you admit that, unlike purple galaxies, any entity defineable as God is certainly a part of such a picture? (Purple galaxies may or may not exist without great alteration to the picture of existence as such; the existence and qualities of God, on the other hand, are surely inevitably and immediately relevant to it.)
Do you admit that the motivating principle behind all honest religious practice is the idea the religion has of existence?
Do you admit that, therefore, the motivating core, the thing without which religion could not exist, is not the ritual, the practice, but the philosophy of existence?
Do you admit that monistic materialism (to give it its philosophical name) is a perfectly valid philosophy of existence, that can be taken as credible, defended in argument, and even used as a base for action?
Finally, do you understand what I mean when I say that the job of defamation carried out by early Christians against competing religions when they called them "village practices" ("paganism") is the same in kind as that carried out by atheists when they claim to oppose "atheism" to "religon"?
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A few questions
Date: 2008-04-14 03:45 pm (UTC)Do you admit that, unlike purple galaxies, any entity defineable as God is certainly a part of such a picture? (Purple galaxies may or may not exist without great alteration to the picture of existence as such; the existence and qualities of God, on the other hand, are surely inevitably and immediately relevant to it.)
Do you admit that the motivating principle behind all honest religious practice is the idea the religion has of existence?
Do you admit that, therefore, the motivating core, the thing without which religion could not exist, is not the ritual, the practice, but the philosophy of existence?
Do you admit that monistic materialism (to give it its philosophical name) is a perfectly valid philosophy of existence, that can be taken as credible, defended in argument, and even used as a base for action?
Finally, do you understand what I mean when I say that the job of defamation carried out by early Christians against competing religions when they called them "village practices" ("paganism") is the same in kind as that carried out by atheists when they claim to oppose "atheism" to "religon"?