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Says it all!

Came across this the other day;

Ecclesesiastes. ch1.v18.

" For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowlege increaseth sorrow."

That kind of sums up the whole ethos of the church. Not much of a discussion but I'd be interested in any interpretations.

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Permalink Reply by booklover on October 22, 2011 at 9:20am

I'd say this kind of supports my theory that it would be easier to just be a blind-believer that their is a 'god' and an afterlife, etc. Life would be easier I think. But you can't un-learn or un-think something, and I'm never going to believe all the religious crap, so maybe that makes life harder in some ways. Not being part of the herd, knowing when you die you're dead and that's it. It sure is harder to find friends who don't believe all that crap.

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Permalink Reply by annet on October 22, 2011 at 10:48am

Agreed. It reads like a follow up to the apple in the garden. Getting smart gets rid of the false comfort of god. We don't have eternity to get this right, that's a lot of pressure. We know prayer isn't going to fix the mess we're in so we have to work harder which causes suffering.

If you read the whole thing it sounds like the Buddhist meaninglessness stuff.

Religious folks say atheists overthink the divine but that is an intellectual cop out.

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Permalink Reply by Jedi Wanderer on October 22, 2011 at 6:20pm

I think this is intuitively true. This is my reasoning: When one has limited experiences, one has limited emotional reactions to those experiences. I often think about this as the difference between smart people and less-smart people. Smarter people can feel things with greater depth than can less-smart people. So as one increases the depth of their experiences and thus the depth of their knowledge about the world, one has more powerful emotions as a consequence of those deeper, fuller experiences. Of course, the converse is also true, so that he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow, but he also increaseth joy. And the one-sided focus of the bible quote is just another example of both the theistic disdain of knowledge as well as their disdain of life.

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Permalink Reply by Will Faithless Sophia on October 22, 2011 at 7:25pm

It's true that with more knowledge there is more burden, and ignorance may be bliss, but it also might be the greatest evil. The worst combination occurs with just the wrong bit of knowledge and right bit of ignorance - so you have the means and the ignorance to commit the gravest atrocities without any remorse or hint of danger.