24 December 2008

Evolved out of chicanery, fear, greed, imagination and poetry

"No man who ever lived knows any more about the hereafter ... than you and I; and all religion ... is simply evolved out of chicanery, fear, greed, imagination and poetry."

-- Edgar Allan Poe, from Rufus K Noyes, Views of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief

3 comments:

dmarks said...

Poe is in error to assume that just because he does not know something, that nobody else knows it.

Most people who condemn other religious like that end up praising their own faith. I wonder if Poe is like that.

Chuang Shyue Chou said...

I doubt if Poe is like that given what I have read of him. He is too keen in that.

I think Poe describes it well and is right in how he has described it.

dmarks said...

He is merely asserting his religious faith, that is all. He presumes too much to limit and define the knowledge of others, whom he does not know.