 
                         20051220.00

     The only proper relationship to god is not to talk about
him.  The most effective way not to talk about him is to deny
his existence.  I consider the atheist the (only) truly
religious person, because denying god's existence is the
ultimate fulfillment of the duty not to talk about god.

     If you want to get away from religion, you have no
alternative but to go to church.  Go to 8 a.m. Mass; get it
over with.  The join the CIA and find out what Christianity
is all about.  "For God and Country" is the legend on St
Peter's parochial school on Concord Avenue in Cambridge.

     If you want to get away from religion, you have no
alternative but to go to church.  If you don't and if you are
a serious person the issues with which religion purports to
deal, will permeate your thinking and your feeling.  In other
words, that a serious person may with reason, and perhaps
should, get away from organized, dogmatic, intrusive explicit
religion, from the formal creeds and prayers and ceremonies;
but the serious individual cannot get away from the emotional
and intellectual issues which conventional religious practice
reflects and purports to resolve.

     My disdain of honor, may be the ultimate in sour grape
rejection.  "Wenn es Goetter gaebe, wie hielte ich es aus,
kein Gott zu sein. Also gibt es keine Goetter."  As was
probably also the case at Wittenberg, at Harvard the really
really good were voted into Phi Beta Kappa in their junior
year. I was disappointed. I received that honor only in my
senior year. I expressed my resentment by refusing to accept
my Phi Beta Kappa key, with the explanation that I had no
clothes to wear it with. I guess I had been reading Thoreau.
(Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.)  I was
also disappointed when I didn't graduate summa cum laude.
The magna was too small for my ego. Maybe I have accommodated
myself to a series of professional disappointments by
spurning honors.


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Copyright 2005, Ernst Jochen Meyer
