From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Sun Jun 01 2003 - 20:10:14 MDT
Olga:
<<
> ***Do you think this is what happend to Charles Colson and Eldridge Cleaver
> (imagine that, closet atheists!)? >>
I believe that Cleaver was an atheist, and Colson was already a nominal
Christian.
<<
> ***From what I've read, people who are nontheists (and I would add here,
> "nonsupernaturalists") tend to be better educated (with scientists and the
> scientifically-inclined making up a sizeable percentage of this group, but this
> is *by no means* the only group representing nontheists), and also tend to be
> better off financially (generally speaking) than religious people. On the
> world's stage, this would seem to be true, as well - the poorest countries are
> usually the most religious, and the most industrialized countires are usually
> the least religious>>
Talent at making money does not seem to be an axiom regarding religious
beliefs of the hostility to them. Lots of broke people seem to have decent
education-witness all the programmers out of work.
<<
> ***Well, without thinking of it too deeply when I wrote that, I was
> thinking about people who hurt other people - committing rape, robbery, murder and
> the like - but since then I've reconsidered. Not all who go to prison do so
> to cause harm to others. Even during my lifetime, I remember
> several acquaintances of mine going to prison for civil rights and because of
> their opposition to the Vietnam war. Martin Luther King went to prison. Thoreau. Thomas
> Paine.>>
You think robbers murders and rapists spend an inordinate time thinking about
God and praying, before a crime? Again, the better-citizen issue has yet to
be demonstrated either way. Let us agree that there are henious people who
believe in God and do horrific crimes, and there are people who hold that there is
no God, dieties, bad Ju-ju; and similarly commit evil acts. But let us also
agree with Socrates, that an unexamined life is not worth living. So the
dichotomy to which you seem to project on the religious, may be because you view
them as non self reflective?
> ***Somewhat of a toss up. But I'll go with Carl Sagan (who was a genuinely
> sweet man, and with whom I shared a brief correspondence before he died) as
> he popularized science "for the masses" as none had done before him. This
> was a great contribution, the effects of which we may yet see in years to come.
>
We all have our favorite people, but my point was that someone who does
believe, is a Nobel prize winner, and did contribute to technolgical progress-that
is, if you do like lasers. You seem to be painting the religious with a broad
brush, and that view does not seem to click with reality. Also, you seemed, in
an earlier post to be annoyed by the mentioning of a 13 year, in response to
a reporter's question. He's 13 years old, he has a lot of learning to do, as
do we all. Griping about his reference to the religious, seems to be
counterproductive. And darn picky
too.
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