From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Saturday, August 31, 2002 11:14 AM
To: Gary Amirault
Subject: RE: atheism is caused by pride?

> Brian, I'm really not trying to be insulting.

No, you're just saying derogatory things about me with no 
intention of substantiating them and in the face of overwhelming 
unrebutted evidence to the contrary.  But you're not trying to be insulting... :-)

> I haven't seen your level of
> pride in a long time.

Your claims about my pride remain thoroughly rebutted. And I 
in a long time haven't seen such an ironic contrast between 
someone's initial rhetoric (about facing truth) and his subsequent 
actions (in fleeing headlong from evidence against his alleged truths). 
Let's review some quotes from your first email to me:

"A collison with Truth is the best thing that can happen to one's faith."

You were presumably talking about your "Truth" and other people's 
faith, but now we've seen what happens when YOUR faith collides with 
what someone else can defend as being truth.

"Information that is consistent with our pre-existing beliefs is often
accepted at face value, whereas evidence that contradicts them is critically
scrutinized and discounted."

Discounted -- like saying it comes from someone you conveniently 
label as too "proud" to pay attention to?

"From the cowardice that shrinks from new truth; from the laziness that is
content with half-truths; from the arrogance that thinks it knows all
truth -- Oh, God of Truth, deliver us!"

You've done nothing but shrink from my proposed truths; is it from 
cowardice, laziness, or an arrogant belief that your Truth could 
not possibly be wrong?

"Prepare yourself for the Truth."

You evidently are unprepared to face what I would defend as truth.

> You'll probably need a
> real tragedy in your life to bring you to a place where you can 
> see what you really look like.

Guess again. See "Lessons From My Son's Short Life" at http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/brian_holtz/bio.shtml.

Will it be the case that you needed to read about my son Blake 
"to bring you to a place where you can see" what you were blind to 
before?  No, I'm sure that you will find a way to discount and forget
what Blake's life is trying to teach you. I just hope that it doesn't 
come back to you in the final moments of your existence, as you  
face what you had hoped would be the beginning of your eternal existence. 
No being deserves to have as his final thought such a terrible realization 
that his life was misguided.
--
brian@holtz.org
http://humanknowledge.net