Monday begins the procession to Thanksgiving day, Thursday of this week. Three and a half weeks hence we will celebrate Christmas day. it is impossible to avoid the insistence of (paid) purveyors of merriment, that this is the happiest time of the year. Thanksgiving and Christmas are both religious holidays, with a veneer of commercial glitz.

The Puritans landed at Plymouth in 1620. They intended forming a community of pure-hearted, moral living folk, a utopia of purified followers of the Lord. Additional colonists from Europe arrived and Salem was settled, a short distance from Plymouth. Into the future seventy years, February 1692, Salem Village, the witch trials commenced. Twenty women, children and a man were interrogated, and hanged for being in league with the devil.

Thanksgiving as we know it, has evolved from those Americans, and those founding events. It stands to reason why we prefer a post-modern abstract edition, to the raw recollection of “the way we were.”

The banner image is “The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe.

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Many years ago a collection of quotations about religion and unbelief came to me, which were filed away. Upon discovering collection, here are a few for your mental and emotional preparation for the holidays.

[E]very major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none flourished by tolerating its rivals  -Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, 1998

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish. – David Hume, Of Miracles, 1748

The biblical concepts of sin and salvation are an integral part of Christian doctrine. Christianity first creates a problem (sin) and the offers a ‘solution’ (salvation). This is not unlike the protection racket; you either buy ‘protection’ – or else! – Rev. Donald Morgan

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kind are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. if there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored.

In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect of there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. – Richard Dawkins, God’s Utility Function, Scientific American 1993