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FUNDAMENT

                                             June 17, 2008

Some are inclined to argue:

Abandoning the traditional
faith is dangerous, it            This has to be
leaves your mind open to          one of the least
superstitions and mysticism.      emotionally
                                  satisfying           But I have some
  The faithless are               justifications       sympathy for it.
  the natural prey                for religion...
  for new cults,                                       It's exceedingly
  whether sacred or                                    difficult to predict
  nominally secular.    Actually:                      the social effect
                        "new cult" is                  of a new philosophy.
                        probably
                        redundant.                     "Everything done
                        I would take                   for the first time,
                        it as the                      unleases a demon"
                        definition of
                        cult: "new                         UNLEASHING_DEMONS
                        religion".





            "People readily swallow the untested claims
            of this, that, or the other.  It's drowning
            all your old rationalism and scepticism,
            it's coming in like the sea; and the name
            of it is superstition. ...

            "It's the first effect of not believing in
            God that you lose your common sense ..."
                                                          CALUMNY
                     The "Father Brown" character,
                     in "The Oracle of the Dog",
                     by G.K. Chesterton.
                     Nash's Magazine December 1923





     A trouble with this
     line of argument: Can
     you presume that the
     traditional faith is
     entirely without it's
     own traps?

     Examples of new ideologies
     gone astray are not
     difficult to find, but
     then it's also not hard to                       DANGEROUS_IDEAS
     find examples of evil
     justified in terms of
     older faiths.

     There's the phenomena of
     "fundamentalist revivals":
     challenges to established
     faiths sold to their
     adherents with claims that
     that they're a return to
     the roots-- if that old
     time relgion is good, then
     isn't an even older one
     better?



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