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The Forum > Article Comments > A materialist creed: uniting theist and atheist > Comments

A materialist creed: uniting theist and atheist : Comments

By Peter Sellick, published 31/10/2014

The great strength of the bible is that it incorporated contradictory ideas. Thus robust affirmations that God is on the side of the righteous exist alongside despairing expressions of the absence of God.

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Dear Peter Sellick,

.

You wrote :

« God remains a reality before which we must give way … »

This is an illustration of that well known (fallacious) argument that illusions are real (genuine) illusions and therefore part of reality and so should not be distinguished from reality.

It is an “argument from ignorance” (in which ignorance stands for “lack of evidence to the contrary”). Remember Russell’s teapot :

« Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. 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 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 »

The issues you raise in your articles are often quite interesting but, unfortunately, your frequent recourse to such intellectually poor dialectic as “God remains a reality …” is puerile and, regrettably, disrespectful of your readers.

You alone know if it is pure provocation, frustration at not being able to prove that your beliefs correspond to reality, a genuine incapacity on your part to discern between faith and reality, or - and I hesitate to evoke the possibility – megalomania, bordering on intellectual dishonesty.

You're right: “One would hope for more from the educated!”

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Posted by Banjo Paterson, Saturday, 1 November 2014 12:11:07 AM
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"The great strength of the bible is that it incorporated contradictory ideas."

This is called 'turning a bug into a feature', Peter. What could be more inclusive and all-embracing, after all, than 700 pages of randomly-chosen and arbitrary drivel? But why stop there? Can you not persuade your fellows to abandon the Bible in favour of Joyce's Finnegans Wake, which is even longer and less coherent?

The content is gradually leaching from your articles over time, as your attempts to defend the belief for which you get paid in the face of your obvious intelligence become more and more cursory.
Posted by Jon J, Saturday, 1 November 2014 5:00:41 AM
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