More Excerpts

Here are a couple more excerpts from the book, 'Shackles of the Supernatural' by William J. Fielding...

Dogma – the mainstay and bulwark of supernaturalism – in the very nature of itself is unchangeable. Revealed religion, having been handed down direct from God, is therefore not subject to question, to say nothing of improvement or modification. From the orthodox standpoint, the slightest hesitation in swallowing the whole story is heresy. And since the distant day of the first revelation, the world has run red with the blood of heretics.

Of course, the orthodox are entirely consistent in their stand that if revelation is the word of God it is therefore final, irrevocable, unquestionable. The trouble is that there is no virtue in consistency, per se. As a matter of fact, it is all to often a set of blinkers deliberately adjusted by the subject himself to prevent him from seeing any light, or anything but the object upon which he has focused his attention. Compare that attitude with that of the skeptic who insists upon looking into and examining all phases of a question – and re-examining them; accepting no conclusions as absolute final and irrevocable, leaving open for further light and understanding any problem worthy of the name. Here you have the difference between the theologian and the scientist, the difference between the closed mind and the open mind.

What are the results to the individual of the acceptance of the concepts of dogma? He has been taught that the tenets of his religion, say Christianity, are absolute Truths. If the revelations set forth in his Bible are absolute, infallible truths, and as a Christian, he believes them to be so, then it is perfectly logical for him to stop thinking on all questions relating to human conduct and motives which by direct statement and implication the Bible covers. The phrase “stop thinking” is perhaps not the proper one, because if a truly faithful adherent of his religion, he has never started to think on these important questions.

Religious concepts represent a development over a long period of time of the emotional response to fear-arousing stimuli and mysterious natural phenomena – the whole set-up based on fear of the unknown. This system finally became institutionalized, creating traditions as it went along, and used as a means of exploitation by the privileged caste (religious orders) which administered it for the aggrandizement of themselves and the prevailing ruling groups.