(July 10, 2015 at 5:29 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:(July 10, 2015 at 3:40 pm)drfuzzy Wrote: ...I dream of a day when religion is classified as a mental illness.
The following passages from Swedenborg is relevant:
"...all intelligence and wisdom, are from the Lord; and that all shade, consequently all insanity and folly, are from that which is their own in man, spirit, and angel..." Arcana Coelesta 3341
"When man becomes a spirit this hostility is turned into hatred; and then he not only cannot endure to hear these truths and goods mentioned, he even burns with hatred against all who acknowledge and worship the Divine." Heaven and Hell 562
My comment on the above is that the insanity is all yours.
How nice that Swedenborg made some unsupported assertions in the 1750's.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
