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terryclothThe shortest, easiest route for a half-hour walk from my apartment goes right past a church. Actually, two churches, but the one right next to the drug store doesn't have a cheesy and annoying sign out front, so I don't find myself all squirmy with distaste walking past it.
Is it fair to feel that way? I can't hate everyone who's involved with religion... the need to believe in something outside the world we can see and sense, to escape your troubles and put your trust in a higher power -- the need for fantasy, that is -- is something deeply ingrained in the human psyche. Or at least something I can identify with.
I just worry that people who go to church are taking it all too seriously. I'm probably being as bad as the anti-D+D psychos you read about in the paper (in the 80s)(who probably never really existed in significant numbers) when I do that, though. I'm sure most churchgoers keep a firm grip on the barrier between reality and fantasy. I'm not sure it's healthy to expose kids to that sort of thing, but really that's up to the parents. Censorship isn't something to throw around lightly.
Of course, I don't go around persecuting them -- I just feel all icky. So it's more like I'm as bad as the people who express disgust whenever someone quotes pokemon or harry potter. }:P
That's all sort of beside the point, though -- the point is, that when I walk that route, I start thinking about religion. One book that bothered me had Jesus sitting around interviewing the people *after* they died and asking them if they wanted to face judgment or let him be judged in their stead. Explaining that if they accepted him, they'd go to heaven, but the judge was totally unfair and that if they went by the book they'd be condemned to hell.
In the book, everyone rejected him and got tossed into hell, and that seemed kind of weak. I mean, sure, on the one hand, I'd like to *know* whether I lived a good enough life or not, and I'm not sure I'd really want to be up in heaven forced to worship the kind of sadistic god who'd send most of humanity to hell. A god like that doesn't deserve worship. He deserves to be assassinated.
On the other hand, if offered the choice between being forced to worship someone I hated in a land of eternal bliss, or being tossed into a pit of fire, my only question would be "Who do I kill?"
After all, the highest principle, the one that makes holding principles in the first place a good idea, even in principle, is that principles are always secondary to practicalities. In the Rassimel sense.
Is it fair to feel that way? I can't hate everyone who's involved with religion... the need to believe in something outside the world we can see and sense, to escape your troubles and put your trust in a higher power -- the need for fantasy, that is -- is something deeply ingrained in the human psyche. Or at least something I can identify with.
I just worry that people who go to church are taking it all too seriously. I'm probably being as bad as the anti-D+D psychos you read about in the paper (in the 80s)(who probably never really existed in significant numbers) when I do that, though. I'm sure most churchgoers keep a firm grip on the barrier between reality and fantasy. I'm not sure it's healthy to expose kids to that sort of thing, but really that's up to the parents. Censorship isn't something to throw around lightly.
Of course, I don't go around persecuting them -- I just feel all icky. So it's more like I'm as bad as the people who express disgust whenever someone quotes pokemon or harry potter. }:P
That's all sort of beside the point, though -- the point is, that when I walk that route, I start thinking about religion. One book that bothered me had Jesus sitting around interviewing the people *after* they died and asking them if they wanted to face judgment or let him be judged in their stead. Explaining that if they accepted him, they'd go to heaven, but the judge was totally unfair and that if they went by the book they'd be condemned to hell.
In the book, everyone rejected him and got tossed into hell, and that seemed kind of weak. I mean, sure, on the one hand, I'd like to *know* whether I lived a good enough life or not, and I'm not sure I'd really want to be up in heaven forced to worship the kind of sadistic god who'd send most of humanity to hell. A god like that doesn't deserve worship. He deserves to be assassinated.
On the other hand, if offered the choice between being forced to worship someone I hated in a land of eternal bliss, or being tossed into a pit of fire, my only question would be "Who do I kill?"
After all, the highest principle, the one that makes holding principles in the first place a good idea, even in principle, is that principles are always secondary to practicalities. In the Rassimel sense.
