This is a continuation from the previous blog. Please read this last.
In addition to the brain virus, Dawkins talks about a related symptom which a faith-sufferer may also experience. It has to do with the "mystery", per se, being a "good thing".
In the eyes of a religious-sufferer "...it is not a virtue to solve mysteries. Rather we should enjoy them, even revel in their insolubility."
This is where the shelf metaphor comes in to my life...and is something that I inherently understood when I realized that I was gay and a Mormon. Can you see why? It is because in that instant I set out to solve the mystery! This is where I get to introduce the 'word-of-the-day' to some of you. Inimical means "an enemy of" of "hostile toward".
"Any impulse to solve mysteries could be seriously inimical to the spread of a mind virus."
Did you get that?
If a man can convince you to stop trying to "solve mysteries" (which is what Joseph Smith did when he sold people on The First Vision, the Book of Mormon, and polygamy, among other things), the end result is that you soon have a "gang of viruses" running rampant in the minds of every adherent to that religion.
In closing, I encourage you to go out an borrow Humanist Anthology from the library or buy a used copy from Amazon and find out what a kind place the world would be once we eradicate the "mind viruses" that Richard Dawkins talks about.
In addition to the brain virus, Dawkins talks about a related symptom which a faith-sufferer may also experience. It has to do with the "mystery", per se, being a "good thing".
In the eyes of a religious-sufferer "...it is not a virtue to solve mysteries. Rather we should enjoy them, even revel in their insolubility."
This is where the shelf metaphor comes in to my life...and is something that I inherently understood when I realized that I was gay and a Mormon. Can you see why? It is because in that instant I set out to solve the mystery! This is where I get to introduce the 'word-of-the-day' to some of you. Inimical means "an enemy of" of "hostile toward".
"Any impulse to solve mysteries could be seriously inimical to the spread of a mind virus."
Did you get that?
If a man can convince you to stop trying to "solve mysteries" (which is what Joseph Smith did when he sold people on The First Vision, the Book of Mormon, and polygamy, among other things), the end result is that you soon have a "gang of viruses" running rampant in the minds of every adherent to that religion.
In closing, I encourage you to go out an borrow Humanist Anthology from the library or buy a used copy from Amazon and find out what a kind place the world would be once we eradicate the "mind viruses" that Richard Dawkins talks about.
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