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HulitC's avatar

I agree. The rich make most lives so difficult that the rest are worried that the newcomers will invade their space to their detriment. The evil we know is better than the evil we can’t see… Humans are a sad species. Maybe climate change will rid the earth of their scourge. Hinduism says (I’m not one, so not 100% sure I’m getting this right) says we are in Kali Yuga where we have to live through dark times before the cycle turns positive again & man can again live in harmony & love with his neighbor. Sadly we have 400,000+ years to go …

Not much better/worse than the evangelist’s rapture scenario…

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Graham Vincent's avatar

The religions of the world are not, in my conception, "recipe books". They express in comprehensible terms that which is in fact ineffable. Hence the phantasmagorical imagery that we encounter in texts such as Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, and so on. These images are all *grounds* for believing. But belief itself is not born of persuasion by others. It's born of the heart. When the time comes to test the proof of the pudding, neither the sceptic nor the believer will be in any position to say to the other, "I told you so."

In my time I played on stage Christopher Marlowe's anti-hero Faust. The last scene is the final hour before the Devil will come to claim Faust's soul. He regrets his path to destruction. He wails and asks for more time but he has only one hour. So he rails at all and sundry for not having prevented him from descending into depravity:

Curs'd be the parents that engendered me!

No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer

That hath depriv'd thee of the joys of heaven.

O, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,

Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell!

O soul, be changed into little water-drops,

And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found!

My God, my god, look not so fierce on me!

Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!

Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!

I'll burn my books!—Ah, Mephistophilis!

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