“I have had the predictable spate of letters from faith’s victims, protesting about my criticisms of it. Faith is such a successful brainwasher in its own favour, especially a brainwasher of children, that it is hard to break its hold. But what, after all, is faith? It is a state of mind that leads people to believe something—-it doesn’t matter what—-in the total absence of supporting evidence. If there were good supporting evidence then faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe it anyway. It is this that makes the often-parroted claim that ’evolution is a matter of faith’ so silly. People believe in evolution not because they arbitrarily want to believe it but because of overwhelming, publicly available evidence.”

“I said ’it doesn’t matter what’ the faithful believe, which suggests that people have faith in entirely daft, arbitrary things, like the electric monk in Douglas Adam’s delightful Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. He was purpose-built to do your believing for you, and very successful at it. On the day that we meet him he unshakingly believes, against all the evidence, that everything in the world is pink. I don’t want to argue that things in which a particular individual has faith are necessarily daft. They may of may not be. The point is that there is no way of deciding whether they are, and no way of preferring one article of faith over another, because evidence is explicitly eschewed. Indeed the fact that true faith doesn’t need evidence is held up as its greatest virtue; this was the point of my quoting the story of Doubting Thomas, the only really admirable member of the apostles.”

“Faith cannot move mountains (though generations of children are solemnly told the contrary and believe it). But it is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness. It leads people to believe in whatever it is so strongly that in extreme cases they are prepared to kill and die for it without the need for further justification. Keith Henson has coined the name ’memeoids’ for ’victims that have been taken over by a meme to the extent that their own survival becomes inconsequential … You see lots of these people on the evening news from such places as Belfast or Beirut.’ Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr’s death will send them straight to heaven. What a weapon! Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb.”

Source: the selfish gene by Richard Dawkins

You haven’t heard of Cultural Materialism, I’d say. Check out the writings of Marvin Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture ISBN 0-679-72468-0, and may I also recommend Edward O. Wilson’s On Human Nature?

But you’ve hit on the core point of belief in the phrase: What a weapon! It’s a truism of biology that the biggest competitor that any organism faces is other members of the same species. Religion is a social tool, often for war, and the will to believe is the foundation it is built on. I would go so far as to say that this single fact explains why religion is so widespread.

So it is not true to say that beliefs are random. Some have broader emotional appeal than others, and there are peristent themes to the more successful.

..and after we release them at Regent University, let pteranodons loose at the Air Force Academy.

It’s timely, and it’s the only way to effect meaningful change. Obviously the electoral system no longer works. It’s not like we have a lot of choice.

Oh: and feed Michael Crichton to the tyrannosaurs in Montana after global warming brings the Gulf all the way up to the headwaters of the Missouri again.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

I’d say you’re wrong. In order to fix a problem you have to understand the problem. If you want to get rid of that problem you have to “strike at the root”. If you don’t pull a weed up from its root what happens? It grows back. QED

We have a website to stop the Army from taking this land. Please help by signing the petition and getting the word out.

www.pinoncanyon.com

The longest set of dinosaur tracks in North America are actually located in the area the Army wants. Not to mention all the people that are threatened with losing their homes.

The Army wants to take 418,000 acres to expand the 230,000 acre training site they took from many of the SAME families back in the 1980’s. This expansion will swallow several small towns as well. It will be the largest use of eminent domain ever used. The previous record was, you guessed it, 230,000 acres when they first established the training site there in the 80’s.

This is HUGE constitutional issue. Not to mention that the Army is also expanding
Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah and Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona.

Just what is the Army up to here????