Sunday meditation.

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roseoflima

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4 thoughts on “Sunday meditation.”

  3. This is an example of why I find religion disgusting and evil. I have seen and experienced suffering and affliction and there is nothing ennobling about them — nothing. What is good is that which alleviates afflictions and removes them from humanity — vaccines, anesthetics, antibiotics, the whole panoply of modern technology.

    “You know how the oyster produces its pearl? By a mortally dangerous disease which involves taking some unassimilable foreign body, like a grain of sand, and wrapping it in a slimy ball. The process all but kills it. To hell with the pearl, give me the healthy oyster. Virtues are not an offshoot of poverty, my dear fellow. If your people were happy and prosperous they could develop the virtues of happiness and prosperity.” Brecht, Galileo

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    • I’ve criticized the so called Prosperity Gospel many times on this blog, as well as the positive thinking movement, which has been taken way, WAY too far and is often used as an excuse to judge and shun others just because they have problems. Not everything that happens is of our own doing, and that is the problem we have in America that has caused us to have probably the lowest level of empathy in the developed world.

      It pains me to say that organized religion is often used as a vehicle to abuse and oppress others, and should never be part of any political system. One corrupts the other. Religion is fine, but it’s a personal choice and should be left that way.

      But having been through a horrendous experience myself, an extremely painful childhood and marriage, I can say that I have used those experiences for self improvement and they have given me wisdom and insight I don’t think I wouldrotherwise possess. So adversity can have its place if one is willing to see the “pearl” hidden within. If you just want to throw the pearl away with the piece of sand that made the oyster sick, or the entire sick oyster, then that’s your choice, I suppose. You don’t know what you might have missed.

      I do think adversity and pain can make a person better, and more empathetic to others, and religion has nothing to do with it. You can be an empathic atheist who uses their own pain to comfort and help others, or a terrible, selfish believer (and I know many of those, unfortunately). Religion has nothing to do with it.

      Anyway, it was just a quote that I liked, but it seems to have triggered anger in you for some reason.

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