Thread: Atheist zealots a heavy cross to bear
View Single Post
Old 09-19-2010, 03:50 AM   #30
sweevo
Groupie
sweevo is kind to children and small, furry animalssweevo is kind to children and small, furry animalssweevo is kind to children and small, furry animalssweevo is kind to children and small, furry animalssweevo is kind to children and small, furry animalssweevo is kind to children and small, furry animalssweevo is kind to children and small, furry animalssweevo is kind to children and small, furry animalssweevo is kind to children and small, furry animalssweevo is kind to children and small, furry animalssweevo is kind to children and small, furry animals
 
sweevo's Avatar
 
Posts: 197
Karma: 6848
Join Date: Aug 2010
Device: Sony PRS-650, Kindle Touch
Quote:
Originally Posted by recluse View Post
I had a feeling faith was the wrong word to use.

Try this:
There is a cake tin. Some believe there is a cake in the tin. Others believe the tin is empty. Until the tin is opened and the contents, or lack thereof are revealed, all either side has is their belief.
I don't think anyone can open that tin yet.
And I believe there are people on both sides who don't want it opened.
This analogy is more appropriate:

In an article titled "Is There a God?" commissioned, but never published, by Illustrated magazine in 1952, Bertrand Russell wrote:

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
sweevo is offline