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- From: pierce@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce)
- Subject: Needs that will have to be expressed in some form?
- Message-ID: <1993Jan25.054531.22326@cs.ucla.edu>
- Sender: usenet@cs.ucla.edu (Mr Usenet)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: lanai.cs.ucla.edu
- Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
- Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 05:45:31 GMT
- Lines: 18
-
- According to pages 225-226 of Kai Nielsen, _Philosophy & atheism : in
- defense of atheism_, Buffalo, N.Y. : Prometheus Books, 1985:
-
- "What remains is what Bernard Williams alludes to at the end of a
- sensitive and sympathetic review of Mackie's _The Miracle of
- Theism_. Williams remarks 'as soon as one sees religion, as Mackie
- rightly does, as a purely human phenomenon, it becomes a matter of
- great importance what human phenomenon it is and which of these
- explanations [explanations like those of Feuerbach, Marx and
- Freud], if any, are true.' It is particularly crucial to ascertain,
- if we can, whether the content of religion (particularly 'its more
- unnerving and antihumanist content') is best understood 'as
- something alien to humanity and its needs' or whether it is best
- understood 'as expressing needs that will have to be expressed in
- some form when belief in God has disappeared.'"
-
- -- Kai Nielsen
-
-