Let me start by saying that I was never bullied or coerced, physically or psychologically, into attending any regular religious gatherings or chanting any sort of creation story. My father and mother were lapsed Catholic and non-observant Jew, respectively, and the closest my sister and I got to being members of a religion was attending Unitarian Sunday School and the occasional service - usually at Christmas and Easter - and the topics that were addressed were typically those of social responsibility and activism - integration good, Vietnam War bad (this is shorthand, not flippancy).
But this all served as a good basis for my contemplation of religion as a cultural and historical phenomenon. I had no axe to grind. Seriously.
So now as yet one more person decides to proclaim the coming Doomsday - tomorrow, in fact - I return to some of my earlier thoughts about religion, and about fundamentalist Christianity in particular. Which have not changed a lot over the years, frankly, since these folks have been singing the same song for a LONG time now.
And once again, I wonder: what would make a human being want to believe that there was a Supreme Being, with absolute power over all Time and Space, who would be capable of torturing and murdering every single living thing on this planet aside from a tiny percentage who agreed to swear to their belief in a specific, narrow interpretation of a huge, cryptic, poorly transcribed and translated text?
Doesn't that seem, well, insane?
As I think I've mentioned before, assuming there IS a Supreme Being, I would prefer to believe she looks and sounds just like Dolly Parton, and when we meet, she will ask if I'd like something to eat.
But this all served as a good basis for my contemplation of religion as a cultural and historical phenomenon. I had no axe to grind. Seriously.
So now as yet one more person decides to proclaim the coming Doomsday - tomorrow, in fact - I return to some of my earlier thoughts about religion, and about fundamentalist Christianity in particular. Which have not changed a lot over the years, frankly, since these folks have been singing the same song for a LONG time now.
And once again, I wonder: what would make a human being want to believe that there was a Supreme Being, with absolute power over all Time and Space, who would be capable of torturing and murdering every single living thing on this planet aside from a tiny percentage who agreed to swear to their belief in a specific, narrow interpretation of a huge, cryptic, poorly transcribed and translated text?
Doesn't that seem, well, insane?
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