I can relate to what he said.
Being born and raised in a Christian bourgeois family - with all the hypocrisy that it underlies - that is a repartee I often got whenever I was trying to get to the bottom of a ‘reasoning’ of theirs.
Which led me to decide:
- at the age of 13: that being an altar boy was ridicule - I stopped
- at the age of 14: being a Scout (the marine-blue kind, with chaplain’s guidance) was a waste of my time and competences - so I stopped
- ditto at 14: I started to say « Sunday morning are for sleep ins, not church office »
- at the age of 15 : I started to confront the adults surrounding me with all the inconsistencies within their beliefs, until one day my own mother told me I should debate the matter with a theologian from the Christian University nearby.
That is when I let go of conversations about religion with people who pretended to have faith.
Asinus asinus fricat, used to say the Romans. But I was not asinine enough to follow the donkey paths.
4 comments:
And you're all the better for it, my dear. I can't with the magical thinking anymore. Life is exactly what it is... what you make it. Nothing more. No contingency plans. No saving up the good deeds. No holier than thou superiority. Deal with it. Get over it. Move on. Do something tangible... right? I don't want my money going to some crappy social club selling salvation and an afterlife. What utter nonsense. Kizzes.
Your remarks are nicely said and well taken here. When discussing religion, it's best to have respect for sincerely held belief, even if it's different to one's own. And I abhor hypocrisy as much as anyone.
love his wisdom!
I must say I disagree with Anonymous. One may acknowledge "sincerely held belief", but not necessarily respect it. It seems the last resort of the religious beleaguered by logic and science is to cry out for respect for their shabby sacred cows and shibboleths, a respect, I might add, never afforded to those who thought otherwise when religion held the power of life or death over them, and usually ordered their deaths.
People are free to believe what they wish, but no-one, in a free society, is bound to respect, i.e. question or even mock, their beliefs.
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