pez@pyuxn.UUCP (Paul Zimmerman) (09/05/85)
Dave Clark repeatedly attempts to belittle my position for some reason that I cannot figure out. He tells me I have not presented evidence for the existence of the Damager-God. The evidence of a negative force, entropy, deliberately impeding the natural flow of events (and of our own endeavors), presents itself! Dave, I beat the Damager-God out of chances to harm me by preparing for His evil. Remember what I said about carrying an umbrella? Since God is basically a lazy toad, if I make it inconvenient for Him to harm me, He will go elsewhere and seek me out later. I have no delusions that this will work all the time. But I gain happiness through working to beat Him out, through doing things and enjoying things despite Him. The central issue: is it good, which seems attributable to a mechanistic natural flow, that is controlled by a willful entity, or evil, which strikes us at whim, destroying what we build, acting as if it has a will of its own? Scott Collins wrote about how he prefers Christianity because of selfish reasons: it gives him long term benefits to believe in God. This is yet another case of God's meagerly rewarding those who obey (or propagandize about doing so) to win the sheepish whorship of followers. To top it off, Scott says that he fears being poisoned by the bad fruit of common sense, fearing that he might stop believing if he made use of such sense. That says all there needs to be said about how the evil Damager-God introduces the true poison into people's minds for His own evil ends. Be well, -- Paul Zimmerman - AT&T Bell Laboratories pyuxn!pez