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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!flinn
From: flinn@seismo.UUCP (E. A. Flinn)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: General comments
Message-ID: <530@seismo.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Jan-84 11:35:13 EST
Article-I.D.: seismo.530
Posted: Wed Jan 18 11:35:13 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Jan-84 04:44:46 EST
Organization: Center for Seismic Studies, Arlington, VA
Lines: 31


  I'd like to state a point of view which differs somewhat from those
of people who have been posting messages to this category.  It is
simply to get on with living one's life as decently and humanely as
possible, and to strive toward realization of whatever talents and
goals one has, without worrying about dogma and the Meaning of Life.
As a scientist, I don't see that there is a shred of evidence for the
divine origin of Christianity or any other organized religion, although
I respect other people's faith and opinions in this, as I expect them
to respect mine.  The god of the old testament is just appalling, and I
imagine that a good many christians today would be shocked by a good
deal of the old testament if they were forced to sit down and study
it.

  The philosophy that Jesus preached is simple and attractive, and it
seems to be universal in its appeal to the sense of decency that most
people have; more or less the same ideas have been expounded by other
teachers in other times.  Looking at the history of the Christian
church objectively, it seems to me that all the theology (the scapegoat
business and all that) was invented by Alexandrian neoplatonists and by
Paul.  Gibbon's Chapters 50 and 51 are devastating on this.  It didn't
take long for the church to become Big Business, offering careers to
ambitous people and constructing its own justification for existence as
it went along.  As Shaw and others have pointed out, if Jesus had been
reincarnated a few hundred years ago, he would have been immediately
burned as a heretic, and he certainly would be ignored and reviled
today as an impossibly romantic idealist.  Jesus never claimed that
there was life after death, and for my own part I would have to side
with Laplace, who at the close of a long but nonreligious life, in which 
he had been kind and generous to other people, said to the priest who came 
uninvited to save his soul, 'dieu me pardonnera - c'est son metier.'