From: TURTLE              
To: DRAGONFLY           
Subject: Relig & Logic 2
Date & Time: 05/21/91 01:12:23
Message Number 16956

I'll be blunt: I'm beginning to get somewhat tired of this discussion.
Yes, you're right: if you believe in God it can have an effect on your
behavior. That is not what I was talking about. The point I was trying
to make is this: You cannot prove or disprove the existance of God.
There are no observable phenomena which go on in the real world which
must be attributable to God. There are no physical, direct consequences
which are a result of the existance or lack thereof of God. Belief in Go
is an act of faith which is quantifiably different from belief in a
mathmatical axiom. If you wish to continue to believe that faith in
God is tatamount to belief that a hammer will fall when dropped or that
one plus one is two, that's fine, but I will point out that if it were
truly that simple there would not be such a widespread lack of consensus
on the issue. So, just to flog this dead horse one more time, I will
say again: There is a quantifiable difference between a logical dis-
cussion and a religious one. The former will always, ALWAYS contain some
leap of faith somewhere that is different in kind from any similar so-
called leap of faith in a non-religious discussion.
 
As to your second point: Religions generally include ethics as part of
their code, but ethics do not derive exclusively from and
do not depend on religion. Ethics can exist without religion. Therefore,
religion is not the source of ethics. Point dismissed.