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Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!utcsstat!laura
From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: To Tim Maroney
Message-ID: <776@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Jul-83 09:33:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.776
Posted: Mon Jul 11 09:33:40 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Jul-83 21:34:26 EDT
References: <1017@itm.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 87

Well, this is "to Tim Maroney" but I am going to field it anyway. I get
enough of the same sort of "open mind" drivel around here anyway.

The claim "one must have an open mind" is the first cry I hear from
everybody who doesnt have a strong case and is arguing with me. I take
it as a sign that I am "winning" the argument, as the other side has
not found anything more constructive to say.

There is a difference between an "open mind" and a "mind open at both
ends". Sadly, too many people forget this. The work on the premise that
they can say all manner of unreasonable things and then claim that I am
not being "open-minded" if I do not accept them. This is silly. If I were
truly closed-minded I wouldnt even be bothering to debate the whole point.

How open-minded are the people who scream at me for being "close-minded"?
They have immediately ended all possibility of further conversation and
understanding. They have forced me to argue about my own personal grounds
for the acceptance or non-acceptance of an idea, and they reserve the right
to call me "closed-minded" when what I am saying is that my criteria seems
different from theirs. If I call them closed-minded for not listening to me
then we can argue like children until the cows come home, but if I am already
open-minded then I have no place to go...

The purpose of "having an open-mind" is to not miss out on some good idea
that you might not recognise due to previous misconceptions. It is *not* to
stagger around begging people to dump garbage in it.

To get back to the ark:

As a schoolchild, this question fascinated me. I was attending a Catholic
school and every time the ark was discussed, I had the same 2 questions.

1. Why did God kill all the cats and dogs who had never harmed anybody?

and

2. Why drowning?

Is there any way to discover why? (If the answer is NO, then that is the
answer. There is no need to blast somebody for closed-mindedness, after all,
those who are looking for answers acknowledge the possibility of answers 
as opposed to those who staunchly claim there are none.)

When I was in grade 3 the teacher said that all the cats and dogs went to
heaven anyway and didnt mind being killed.

(I skipped grade 4.)

When I was in grade 5 the teacher said that God drowned all the creatures
because it was a clean, painless death. I cant quite believe this, since I 
have watched rats drown and once nearly drowned myself. It is NOT painless.
Arguments such as "Well, God killed them painlessly but then he washed them
all away" dont answer why the painless deaths were never mentioned in the
Christian Old Testament.  The teacher also said that cats and dogs have
no souls and dont go to heaven.

My grade 6 teacher said that you were not supposed to take it literally.

My grade 7 teacher told me that I would go to Hell if I kept asking such
questions.

My grade 8 teacher told me that I would go to Hell and that anyone who thought
about what I was saying in class was likely to go to Hell as well.

My grade 9 teacher said that the God of the Old Testament liked killing and
destruction, while the God of the New tesament was the Merciful One. When
pressed, he would never admit whether he thought that the New Testamnet God
was a different God than the Old Testament God, and had actually ousted the
former from Heaven, or whether God had matured over the ages, or whether the
Old Testament was a crop of lies. He did say that the Jews were "bad people"
because they believed the Old Testament rather than the New.

At this point I gave up. I had already become well known as the resident
heretic, even though on every religion exam I ever took in the whole school
I did better than every other student in the class; and despite having gone
to Church far more frequently than most of the teachers and nearly all of
the students.

If you already have all the answers, please understand why most of us do not.
If you cannot understand this, then I am going to call *YOU* close-minded
before you have a chance to level the same accusation at me.

I am still interested in answers, if there are any. (But be warned, once
I get an answer to this one I have lots of other questions left over.)

laura creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura