Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: lieuwen@mycella.cs.wisc.edu (Dan Lieuwen) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Did Erasmus live in vain? Message-ID: Date: 27 Nov 90 09:07:16 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept Lines: 35 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu >> >>One of the great appeals of Unitarian Universalism is that science is >>compatible with our religion. We do not hold to that which flies in the >>face of empirical evidence, nor do we hold that all or any scientific >>theory is complete and total. A requirement to believe by faith is by its >>very statement opposed to the free use of the mind. To choose to believe >>without sufficient evidence is often necessary even in the most mundane of >>situtations, but a requirement to believe in unproven data explicitly >>denies the ability of a person to make choices based on reason for >>themselves. Unitarians Universalists choose to have faith in reason, in >>humanity's ability to make a better world paradigm than the self-defeating >>one based on a concept of original sin. We believe that education and >>reason and nonrational (not irrational) activities such as love and prayer >>can work together to create a better world on this earth, not in some >>postdeath realm, but for the living. We may be wrong, but we continue >>research and development for a better way. >> Faith in reason is vastly overrated. To choose to have faith in reason is neither more nor less rational than to choose to have faith in anything else in the absence of any evidence. The track record of reason is spotty at best--particularly in regards to "love". The Germans of Hitlers era were a well educated, technocratically rationalist society... I don't believe you will build a better world on earth with illusions about man's goodness. History is aptly described as "a litany of man's inhumanity to man"--the only odes to man's goodness come from dreamers. Thus belief in original sin is not "a self-defeating concept" but a necessary antidote to man's pride--and pride is what leads to inhumanity. Dan -- --Dan