(July 9, 2010 at 5:59 pm)sunflash Wrote: Hi,
In The God Delusion, Dawklns says (though I can't remember it word-for-word) that a someone who believes in hell can never be fully "deconverted."
Is he saying that people who believe in hell will always believe in it or at least worry that it might exist?
That's the gist of it, yes. After years of constant indoctrination and affirmation in a young and impressionable mind, it's a fear that'd be very hard to dispel. Much religious practice, I suspect, is motivated by a sort of subconscious Pascal's Wager consideration in the mind of the believer. Even I, as an atheist raised in a pretty secular household, sometimes worry what would happen if it turned out there was a hell. According to Dante, I'd be in the sixth circle, as a 'heretic'. Unless, that is, atheism counts as a betrayal of God, in which case it's the lowest circle of hell, where I'll be chewed up by one of Lucifer's three mouths, while having my body constantly torn apart and mangled. My one consolation would be that fortune tellers were in the eighth circle.
'We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.' H.L. Mencken
'False religion' is the ultimate tautology.
'It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.' Mark Twain
'I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.' Abraham Lincoln
'False religion' is the ultimate tautology.
'It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.' Mark Twain
'I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.' Abraham Lincoln
