Comments on: Fishing for Followers

By: JBP

JBP — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 15:49:27 +0000

Regina. Sorry about the anonymous post. I’m new at this media outlet.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 16:25:29 +0000

The so what is that proponents of reason are dealing with people who aren’t rational. They are fishing without bait. But I disagree with you about creating context from nothing. That is impossible. Our brains don’t work that way. 2500 years of philosophy argued against your position, and MRI’s prove it wrong. All context is created from stored memories of experience. Hence the use of story telling and metaphors in religion and politics. I didn’t say that there are people who don’t think logically, all humans use logic. But many people use highly flawed logic and are incapable of using logic (as defined by philosophy or science) as their SOLE guidng principle. By definition all religion is illogical but many people cannot live without it. There is one of my points. As for JW’s, I don’t have to follow them; they come to me almost every Sunday. How logical is it for someone who believes that there is a limited number of seats on the bus to go door to door selling more tickets when heaven is already overbooked? Thanks for reading and thinking carefully about what I wrote. I appreciate it.

By: Regina Black

Regina Black — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 17:11:24 +0000

Interesting argument. I agree that humans are irrational, but so what? That’s the state of a human being. What got me about your argument is the assertion that some people don’t have the capacity to think logically. You say that Jehovah’s Witnesses are illogical, but I don’t think you’ve ever taken your own advice and gone out on service with one. Their religion is logical to them.

Religion is just a context for understanding reality, and as humans, we create our contexts from nothing. As a country, we have many prejudices, and they’re not just against athiesm. I would say that our propensity for having prejudice and practising it is the issue, not those against whom we practice our prejudices.