Andrew Bernstein

Nothing is given to man on earth - struggle is built into the nature of life, and conflict is possible - the hero is the man who lets no obstacle prevent him from pursuing the values he has chosen.

Here is the tragedy of theology in its distilled essence: The employment of high-powered human intellect, of genius, of profoundly rigorous logical deduction__tudying nothing. In the Middle Ages, the great minds capable of transforming the world did not study the world; and so, for most of a millennium, as human beings screamed in agony__ecaying from starvation, eaten by leprosy and plague, dying in droves in their twenties__he men of the mind, who could have provided their earthly salvation, abandoned them for otherworldly fantasies.

Theologians, and religionists in general, start with a fantasy premise and then proceed to apply rigorous formal logic to tease out its implications. Stark himself points out that __heology consists of formal reasoning about God._ This is admirably exact. Theologians, beginning with a wished-for creation of their own minds, analyze that creation__ characteristics by rigorous application of the principles of formal__hat is, deductive__ogic.