Hell

[Thorne]

You do, and I believe I do too, cast disparaging remarks about belief in the supernatural: All we have to go on is speculation and drug-induced visions. Not exactly credible evidence, for example. Perfectly true from our perspective and, frankly, unanswerable. But believers work on a fundamentally different set of precepts from those you and I follow, and science, to them, is deficient in its ability to recognise the divine. It is we who are to be pitied for our gullibility in trusting everything to science, reason and logic.

Yes, to some extent. But my comment about "speculation and drug induced visions" was not aimed at believers, as such, but at the preachers and church leaders who determine what a particular faith actually involves.

There has been scientific study, and some evidence, regarding the propensity for the human mind to accept the supernatural, as a survival mechanism. (See here about this, too.) So believing in the supernatural is apparently the way we are wired. But when we have evidence which counters the supernatural, such as the mechanisms of weather, or the actions of volcanoes, holding to these superstitions would seem to me to be surrendering your reason in favor of fantasy.

After all, we no longer believe that Vulcan works at his mighty forge beneath Mt. Etna, do we? We no longer feel the need to place coins on the eyes of the dead to pay the ferryman on their journey, do we? So why must we hold so tenaciously to the myths of Yahweh, or Allah, or any other gods?

[thir]

After all, we no longer believe that Vulcan works at his mighty forge beneath Mt. Etna, do we? We no longer feel the need to place coins on the eyes of the dead to pay the ferryman on their journey, do we? So why must we hold so tenaciously to the myths of Yahweh, or Allah, or any other gods?

It is only the dogmatic religions that make so much trouble, in that they can create fundamentalists and command them.

As for the rest, I do not see the harm in that. Why should it upset you so much?

[Thorne]

It is only the dogmatic religions that make so much trouble, in that they can create fundamentalists and command them.

As for the rest, I do not see the harm in that. Why should it upset you so much?

I would suggest that you read some of these.

Then ask, "What's the harm!"