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[escepticos] Why I am Not a Christian (CAUTION!! -- MAY CONTAIN INFLAMMATORY STATEMENTS)
RV: Sagan: Why I am Not a Christian (CAUTION!! -- MAY CONTAIN INFLAMMATORY
STATEMENTS) Esto lo ha escrito un habitual de la lista Sagan, con éxito
de público y crítica. Lo reenvío por si interesa, eso sí, en el idioma del
Imperio. Obsérvese el aviso del principio, y es que el autor se cura en
salud porque incluso entre los integrantes de un lista dedicada a Sagan hay
cristianos medianamente enojables.
Saludos
Mario
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Planeta Escéptica http://www.geocities.com/planetaesceptica
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-----Mensaje original-----
De: Don Flood [mailto:don.e.flood en wcom.com]
Enviado el: Lunes, 11 de Diciembre de 2000 3:25
Para: Carl Sagan List
Asunto: Sagan: Why I am Not a Christian (CAUTION!! -- MAY CONTAIN
INFLAMMATORY STATEMENTS)
Everyone,
If you're not interested in this, please do not read further...
I have been on the Carl Sagan list now for a couple of years and would like
to
summarize some of things that I have learned from my fellow list members, as
well as from myself and many other sources.
Don
Why I am NOT a Christian -- A list of Reasons for Not Believing
1. Faith = Relativism. Inability to discriminate between the
limitless set
of competing belief systems, past, present, and future.
Equivalent to
allowing Division by Zero in Mathematics -- every belief system
becomes
true!
2. Religious belief in general, and theism in particular, are
non-testable
and non-falsifiable, two criteria necessary to any scientific
theory.
Both atheism and agnosticism are falsifiable.
3. No Disinterested Observers -- Once you accepted a proposition on
faith,
it is very difficult, if not impossible, to judge that
proposition later
on the basis of evidence.
4. Lack of Any Tangible, Direct Evidence. The evidence for
miracles or
divine intervention is less than the evidence for Cold Fusion.
5. Occam's Razor. It is easier to believe in a Universe that is
governed by
immutable, perhaps incomprehensible, physical laws than in a
Universe
governed by a Creator who likes to hide any direct evidence of
His
existence.
6. Anthropic Principle/Multiple Universes. Provide competing
explanations
to the cosmological argument. No direct evidence exists to
discriminate
among these competing explanations, but the Multiple Universe
hypotheses
holds the most promise.
7. Modern Science in general, and Modern Physics in particular, are
not based
upon common sense. The predictions of Quantum Mechanics and
General Relativity
differ from the predictions of classical physics. The former
are extremely
accurate, the latter are not. An exotic theory that is
mathematically well-
defined, that makes extremely accurate predictions, and that is
in exact
agreement with observations is preferable to any "common-sense"
explanation.
8. Faith requires a "commitment" that I am incapable of giving even
to the
most established and tested of scientific theories. Any
scientific theory
could, in principle, could be falsified.
9. "Believers" are hypocrites. It is clear from even a causal
glance at
Western history that science and rational thought have changed
the influence
of religious belief. People in the United States seem to
embrace religion
out of fear of death, sense of meaningless, need for purpose,
social reasons,
self-righteous behavior, way of coping with personal problems,
need for a
moral code, "like to dress-up on Sunday mornings to show-off the
family and
new Mini-Van", conditioning by family, Pascal's Wager --
believing out of
dislike for the alternative, etc, etc.
10. Just because something cannot be explained by Science does not
at all
prove (or imply) that such phenomena will not eventually be
explained at
some time in the future. For those phenomena that defy any
physical
explanation does not prove that a supernatural cause is at
work. Science
is not under any obligation to prove everything!
11. Atheism and Agnosticism are the highest forms of religious
experience,
because both philosophies are willing (and certainly would be
required)
to accept the existence of God or a particular religion if
clear and
unambiguous evidence presented itself supporting such a belief
system.
12. Religion is arrogant and presumptuous. It presumes to know
that which
is, at least at the current stage of human history, inherently
and
intrinsically unknowable.
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