Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: johnw@sag4.ssl.berkeley.edu (John Warren) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Christians abetting Satan? (Was: gulf crisis, spiritual help...) Message-ID: Date: 30 Sep 90 23:56:19 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 25 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article mayne@vsserv.scri.fsu.edu (William (Bill) Mayne) writes: > >Postscript: Once when I made this same argument in conversation I was >asked to define intellectual honesty, since I value it so much. >Here is an attempt: Thinking through the logical consequences of >your professed beliefs, and not shrinking from those consequences while >still claiming to hold the beliefs. Yes, I find the logical consequences >of Christianity both implausible and abhorent. Hence I forthrightly say >that I am not a Christian. If you really want to be intellectually honest, then you MUST ask yourself, and find out with as much historical certainty as you can, whether Jesus rose from the dead and appeared afterward to his friends or not, since that is what Christianity bases itself upon. If Jesus did rise, then it is quite irrelevant to say that the logical consequences are implausible and abhorrent. You might as well sit on a traintrack and declare that it would be an outrage that the oncoming train should run over you. Don't start with the mistaken notion that miracles, of course, can't happen. It is more intellectually honest to suppose that they might. -John Warren "Into the narrow lanes, I can't stumble or stay put." -Dylan