Afterword
When has one written or said enough? That is, said enough, leaving space for the reader, room enough for freedom of reflection, allowing a companion to the conversation to “make up” their own mind. It is always a judgment call.
One additional thought rattles around my mind. The crux of my reaction, my aversion to Christianity, not unlike an the unintentional touch to a very hot potbellied stove, comes down to the bedrock anti-rational insistence of Christianity. I mean the eyes-wide-open veneration of anti-reason, the insistence that God’s ways are inscrutable, that it is commendable to embrace ignorance, that credulity is indicative of Sainthood, an armor-like faith that protects from the consequence of not knowing. You know, the “taste” of the anti-science crowd.
A great deal of this contagion is running its course now in this country. This transmorgrification of what humans have learned by hard trial and error, that reason is the imperative of survival. Faith as blind belief, the illusion of divine rescue is tantamount to making the odds of our survival quite long.
Faith is not a divine cure for a fucked-up life. Nor is faith a life-preserver for a society rife with injustice baked in. Jesus, Buddha, nor Krishna is “the answer.”
Reason is all that we humans have. The development of Renaissance reason, allowed individuals to learn from what the Greeks and the Romans before us knew, and produce some great art. Later the methods of science made advances in medicine, and improvements in food production possible. I could go on. If you are reading this, you are the beneficiary of reason.
Religion or political programs that push back upon reason are dangerous.
The alternative on offer always amounts to violence.
Humans are especially vulnerable mammals. Life can be upended by an infinite number of unwelcome events.
We face these challenges either with a will to understand. Or we throw-in with some “leader” who has a hammer in hand.
