Science has become as full of pride and prejudice as ever religion was.
··· Tags pointing to: religion ···
The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against traditional religion as the “opium of the masses”—cannot hear the music of the spheres.
What people don’t realise is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe.
Nothing is more pleasant, nothing more suitable to flatter our egos as a freedom without restrictions. “Freedom” is the word with which our enlightened century wants to replace religion. One condemns the whole past as a time of ignorance and prejudice, while knowing nothing of that past and very little of the present.
Jesus was precisely the “once and for all” sacrifice given to reveal the lie and absurdity of the very notion and necessity of “sacrificial” religion itself.
The intricacies of theology are not usually what concerns the artist. They’re concerned with the big, beautiful fundamentals, and there I have never had any problem. In fact, anybody who has a narrow sense of their religion, whether they’re Jew or Christian or Muslim or whatever, has only to look long and intelligently at the great work of another tradition and they will see what the religions have in common.
Most religious practice has to do with cultivating gratitude.
To Those of You Who Think Religion is a Self-Delusion
To those of you who think religion is a self-delusion based on wish-fulfillment, all I can remark is that this religion does not fulfill my wishes. My wishes, if we are being honest, would run to polygamy, self-righteousness, vengeance and violence: a Viking religion would suit me better, or maybe something along Aztec lines. The Hall of Valhalla, where you feast all night and battle all day, or the paradise of the Mohammedans, where you have seventy-two dark-eyed virgins to abuse, fulfills more wishes of base creatures like me than any place where they neither marry nor are given in marriage. This turn-the-other cheek jazz might be based on any number of psychological appeals or spiritual insights, but one thing it is not based on is wish-fulfillment.
An absurd and difficult religion! If it were not true, no one would bother with it.