Wednesday, February 10, 2016

The Psychopathology of Faith

Watching Roy Masters for my sins I came across a comment he made about Steve Jobs Apple creator of the I Pad. The reason he died according to Masters is because re his invention he did not give acknowledgement of the achievement to God.He worked too hard he added.Is this the essence of religious faith I wondered.Apart from the sheer malice and contempt towards Jobs,the insult is instructive in illustrating the mindset of believers.

One wonders what achievements of the human race along the slow halting and tortuous path to civilization were ever arrived at through meditation ie sitting in a straight backed chair and being aware of the moment.The religious scientists who did achieve anything of note did so by keeping faith well out of their labours and only giving a craven and perfunctory name check to God at the end  a la Masters.

Religion stood at the gates of science and barred all from entering on pain of torture and death,it  gave us the barbarity of the dark ages and the enlightenment and the dawn of civilization only came with the defeat of the religious establishment and the unseating of its votaries by the sheer force of reason and its application in science.The technology that Masters cynically avails himself of whilst disrespectfully abusing   only came about through the defeat of the kind of medieval religiosity he lauds.

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