Sunday, August 30, 2009

Why I am a free thinker

How us free thinkers look at religion.  I am transcribing here a letter from Richard Dawkins, a famous free thinker and humanist:

Dear Friend:

If you live in America, the chances are good that your next door neighbours believe the following:  the Inventor of the laws of physics and Programmer of the DNA code decided to enter the uterus of a Jewish virgin, got himself born, then deliberately had himself tortured and executed because he couldn t think of a better way to forgive the theft of an apple, committed at the instigation of a talking snake. As Creator of the majestically expanding universe, he not only understands relativistic gravity and quantum mechanics but actually designed them. Yet what he really cares about is sin, abortion, how often you go to church, and whether gay people should marry.Statiscally, the chances are that your neighbors believe all that - and they can vote.

In other parts of the world, there is a good chance that your neighbours believe you should be beheaded if you draw a cartoon of a desert warlord who copulated with a child and flew into the sky on a winged horse. In other places, there's a good chance that your neighbours think their wishes will be granted if they pray to a human figure with an elephant's trunk.
Even if your neighbours don' t hold any of those mutually contradictory beliefs, they probably take it for granted that we should unquestioningly.

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