Why Must I Have
An Incentive?
Steve Branks
From: "Steve Branks" (New Zealand)
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Subject: Positive_Atheism_Letters_Section
Date: Tuesday, October 17, 2000 3:02 PM
Dear Cliff,
I've been scanning the feed back on this site, and many others that host similar discussions on religion and belief, and must admit that I have not yet, in the hundreds of letters perused, encountered one cogent argument for a belief in God or any other supernatural entity. All one essentially encounters in the correspondence of believers is the constant refrain that belief in some god is an incentive to live a good life. My response to that is, why must I have an incentive? Why can't living a decent life be it's own incentive? Why, in order to lead a decent life, must I surrender to the most abject and immature superstitions, which appear to me to be nothing more than expression of man's sense of mortality and his existential loneliness, and the fear and confusion that these engender.
Give me the "feeble light" of man's reason any day rather than the juvenile rantings of those who cannot forsake their need for a Santa Claus.
Keep up your splendid defence of 'positive atheism'.
Highest Regards,
Steve Branks.
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