People who claim to
believe in god do not really do so.They just wish to believe in god. They somehow feel that their lives aremeaningless without god, so they choose to close their eyes to
evidence againstthe existence of god. The Christian view is well expressed by CardinalRatzinger: Religious liberty can not justify freedom for divergence. This freedomdoes not aim at any freedom relative truth, but concerns the free descicion fora
person to, according to his moral inclinations accept the truth. (Thetimes, June 27 1990, p9)
believed in a lot of crazy things. I thought my stuffed animalswere intelligent. I believed in Angels. I thought there were monstersunder my bed at night. I even believed in god after I heard some of the tales . Then I became older and realized that these thingsweren't true. When I look back I don't understand how I could believe in them,it must have been that I wanted to do so. (Except for the monsters,which had to do with fear of the dark) When many religious People are confronted with criticism of their religionthey convert to atheism or agnosticism. Examples of people who became criticalto the dogmas of Christianity are Charles Darwin (Darwin, 1958), Dan Barker (Barker, 19??),Ernest Renan plus many former Catholic modernists in the 19thcentury such as Alfred Loisy and Antonio Fogazzaro (Baigenth, Leigh, 1991). TheCatholic modernism evolved in the late 19th century and was banned in1907 by the Vatican(Baigenth, Leigh, 1991). These people are to me clear evidence that anenlightened person will after considering the facts, reject Christianity andother religions that contain deities. Note: This is not the Plead to authority fallacy. I'm talkingpeople here, who were trying to prove the existence of god and turned atheists.They did not want to do this, but had to after reading a lot of books and doinga lot of thinking on the subject. I have tried to define the only god that can be philosophically justifiedand show some examples why this god cannot exist. After reading this documentyou may object and say that god is beyond human understanding and can't bedefined in scientific terms. This is the view of agnosticism. If god is so mysterious, how can we know anything about him? Through theBible? How do we know that the Bible and not the Koran or the Vedas books, forexample, are the words of god? (Or the bible if you believe in any of the othertwo books). Considering the cruelties that have been made in the name of god,how do we know that not all religions are made by Satan? If there is no way to know this but to trust people who claim they have had divine experiences there is no way to tell true from falseprophets. One has to give up his free mind and follow the authority of adictator. Remember also that it is the person making a positive claim who hasto prove it. I wish to propose for the reader's favorable consideration adoctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. Thedoctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a propositionwhen there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. -- BertrandRussell We shall noanything unless there is reasonable causeto believe that it is true -- Ingemar Hedenius
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