From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 12:24 AM
To: Gary Amirault
Subject: RE: Truth

> how do you explain that it is not accepted by so many 
> otherwise reasonable people?
> 
> Gary: Pride and predestination.

Predestination is not an explanation, it's just a (dubious) 
assertion that such non-acceptance was the only possibility.  
Why was it the only possibility?

Pride only explains atheism to the extent that the childish 
need for parental protection explains theism. Indeed, pride 
explains atheism even less, because:
1) many otherwise reasonable people -- who are not so "proud" 
   as to be atheists -- believe in some god other than yours; and
2) many atheists are evidently not so "proud" as to believe in 
   humanity's supremacy, but instead desperately hope that benevolent 
   aliens will provide some kind of salvation.

Pride may play some role in why some atheists question theism, 
but it also serves as a convenient excuse for many theists not 
to ask those same questions.

> There is no hell, never has been:
> http://what-the-hell-is-hell.com

I agree that the biblical evidence for eternal punishment is 
weak at best, but I don't see how your web site deals with 
Mat 18:8 (as opposed to 18:9).

> As to the "truth," no sir, you are not prepared to meet Him.

As I indicated when I said Jesus had not competently executed 
any divine revelation, the fact is that Jesus was never prepared 
to meet ME (or any other human with basic knowledge of modern 
science and philosophy). An omnipotent omniscient deity could 
effortlessly have created an indisputable revelation, and the 
carpenter from Nazareth unfortunately wasn't up to the task.

> But knowledge,
> yes, indeed you have a LOT of that stuff that comes from eating 
> of the tree of the KNOWLEDGE of Good and evil.

It's interesting that you seem not the least bit embarrassed 
to cite this primitive and ludicrous Mesopotamian myth about 
paranoid insecure deities worrying that humans have "become 
as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put 
forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, 
and live for ever".

> So? If you had it all, where would you
> be? That's not the end of the game, the Tree of Life is.

The "Tree of Life" is simply a 3000-year-old myth created by 
people who had no answers to the nine most important questions about 
nature: http://humanknowledge.net/Thoughts.html#SciencesBigQuestions. 
It's sad that after humanity has so recently and dramatically 
discovered the outlines of those answers, there are still people 
who will go to their graves subscribing instead to millennia-old 
ignorance.
--
brian@holtz.org
http://humanknowledge.net