A personal religion is the final human fantasy, the most pathetic demonstration, in a spatially limitless universe, of human aloneness.
I am an atheist but in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? I read the King James Bible, as all English writers should. And when I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them, like President Clinton giving evidence to Kenneth Starr about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, just to make sure I'm not technically lying - 'All things bright and beautiful, the hmmm hmmm made them all.'
Religion provides believers with two contradictory things. It gives them answers. And it celebrates mystery. It reminds them that they are a vanishingly small part of a vast cosmos. And it shows them how they are intimately connected to every part of it.
Science and literature do this for me. They give me answers. And they ask me questions I will never be able to answer.
This is the nearest I come to what other people might call a religious experience.
First, when I'm trying to get my head round string theory or the evolution of the human eye. Second, when I open a book and find myself sliding effortlessly into the mind of someone who lived on the far side of the world and died long before I was born.
English Author Mark Haddon in The Observer, Sunday 11 April 2004
Claudia M. Mazzucco's Blog
Posted on July 1, 2011 at 3:25pm
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“It is not something that happens because people miss-interpret the text; it is because they believe in them. That is the problem.” ~ Christopher Hitchens ~ Somehow stories contain the very soul of a people; when, for instance, American pastor Carol M. Noren meditated on the crossing of the Read Sea, saying that “God commands Moses to stretch out his hand over the sea,” and Moses obeys without hesitation, she infers the conclusion that, “Our Lord desires…
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Posted on May 21, 2011 at 1:03pm
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My dear friends,
Perhaps you will feel the urgent need to "excommunicate" me out of this web-site; expulsion is in order you may think. But you are my dearest friend, have been with me always, for why I ought to be able to post my reflections in this Blog.
Finally my brain is strong enough to sustain the idea of God. It was the love of knowledge which inspires in me this temerity, which dazzles me today as my language advances (the transition from Spanish to English),…
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Posted on October 15, 2010 at 10:00am
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A Second Fulfillment of the Same Prophesy is an Unbiblical impossibility…
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Posted on March 16, 2009 at 10:08am
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"Religion asks those who see the world as workers to see it anew as artists. Noticing what is wonderful and allowing it to seep into our consciousness is the beginning of cultivating a sense of wonder. To understand the artist, one must take notice of the work of art.” – David J. Wolpe in Teaching your Children about God, page 13. (1)
Since the memoir of William Lobdell, a former “Times” religion reporter, was released in the last days of February, he has received…
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Posted on February 27, 2009 at 12:55pm
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The Stupidest Things Ever Said by religious people – The Top Six So Far
Number 6: The Intercessor
“If there lives a man by the name of Muhammad in a house or a tent, then there are angels always present, unless they are driven away by a black dog or a band of musicians and dancers.”
A Morocco saying derived from a Muslim tradition that holds that God will call out on the Day of Judgment: “Everyone who bears the name of Muhammad shall rise and… Continue
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