Greetings, folks. I came looking for a place where my views are less likely to get me into trouble. Sad to say that, really, but having been a member of a motorcycle forum which has had a great discussion area but wherein, every time I say anything critical about organized religion, I find myself looked at with scorn, I decided to look for a greener pasture.
That is unfortunate, really, because the best sort of discourse I can imagine is to talk to others with differing perspectives, agreeing that, while we may not agree, we can still shake hands and walk away friends.
It is a sad day when, because someone, having been asked why religion gets a different treatment from liberalism, and having responded with the assertion that the former is about the closing of the mind (logically, this must be so), whereas the latter is about the opening thereof, is told that he is a mean spirited and cruel person.
Since so many people fear to step past the circle of political correctness, sheep graze and shepherds tend, and ignorance is the predominant state of being, treasured for its insulating wool and the way it occludes the problem of eyes and real light.
I was raised Catholic and turned away from it after my first communion, tasting as I did the hypocrisy of consuming metaphoric flesh of a god who hated the gods who demanded sacrifices. It was too much then, and it is more so now. I am a big fan of the Classics. I teach Latin, and love the Greco-Roman traditions (though I haven't sacrificed a bullock to Zeus or Apollo in recent memory) for what I see as a far greater open-mindedness, and the one which by its beginning, led us to understand the value of gods as utterly extraneous to ourselves. I am a passionate reader, a lifter of weights (the real sort), and a bit too keen for things with wheels, though I do keep a bit of a guilty conscience for this.
Cheers to you all.
C
That is unfortunate, really, because the best sort of discourse I can imagine is to talk to others with differing perspectives, agreeing that, while we may not agree, we can still shake hands and walk away friends.
It is a sad day when, because someone, having been asked why religion gets a different treatment from liberalism, and having responded with the assertion that the former is about the closing of the mind (logically, this must be so), whereas the latter is about the opening thereof, is told that he is a mean spirited and cruel person.
Since so many people fear to step past the circle of political correctness, sheep graze and shepherds tend, and ignorance is the predominant state of being, treasured for its insulating wool and the way it occludes the problem of eyes and real light.
I was raised Catholic and turned away from it after my first communion, tasting as I did the hypocrisy of consuming metaphoric flesh of a god who hated the gods who demanded sacrifices. It was too much then, and it is more so now. I am a big fan of the Classics. I teach Latin, and love the Greco-Roman traditions (though I haven't sacrificed a bullock to Zeus or Apollo in recent memory) for what I see as a far greater open-mindedness, and the one which by its beginning, led us to understand the value of gods as utterly extraneous to ourselves. I am a passionate reader, a lifter of weights (the real sort), and a bit too keen for things with wheels, though I do keep a bit of a guilty conscience for this.
Cheers to you all.
C
Trying to update my sig ...