(January 12, 2017 at 11:16 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Those who compare God to the tooth fairy are douchebags. I’m sorry but that is truly how I feel. Without even an ounce of shame they ridicule some of the best and brightest thinkers who take up a problem serious and came to serious conclusion. Kierkegaard, Hegel, Kant, Buber, Kripke, Plantinga, Newton, Leibnitz, Putman, and Godel are/were theists. That list doesn’t even include theologians, like David Bentley Hart, or physicists, like, Francis Collins or Max Planck. All brilliant.
Maybe you don’t realize this but it is possible to be an atheist without acting like an infantile little snark. It’s astonishing to me how such ass-wipes will disrespect the legacies of truly great men and women like Dr. King, Bonhoeffer, and Catherine Booth (founder of the Salvation Army) by pretending that their religious convictions did nothing to motivate and inspire them to change the world.
How can anyone seriously believe that the motivating force to build the very first hospitals is in any way comparable to believing in the tooth fairy or Santa Claus? Here in Chicago we have Mount Siani, Rush Presbyterian, Illinois Masonic, Loyola, Mercy, Saints Mary and Elizabeth, Saint Anthony...that’s just a start. They came to be because of religious convictions for which you have no respect.
You believe in an ancient book that says I'm a fool and deserve eternal punishment for daring to believe in something different than you, and I'm the douchebag?
And a believer's brilliance has nothing to do with it. Ben Carson is a neurosurgeon, so I guess I should respect the fact that he thinks the pyramids were used to store grain.
Oh, and while we're talking about the motivations that Christian beliefs have provided, let's not forget all the people throughout history that were tortured and murdered in the name of Jesus. At least no one got killed for not believing in the tooth fairy.
"Wah! It's so unfair that you compare my pet magical being to another magical being! You're such a douchebag!" Lol, triggered.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell