When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.
--Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
When a man advertizes--in all seriousness--that he can turn baguettes and batards into rabbit meat just by chanting some magic words, yet thereafter produces no change in the breads but insists they're now in fact medium rare rabbit steaks, he's dismissed as a lunatic.
When a thousand Vatican geezers seriously believe they can turn baked dough into a dead man's muscle tissue by mumbling their own magic words, that's christened religion. As if that weren't enough, a billion gullibles worldwide join and reinforce the delusion and queue up to have their weekly ration of human meat!*
Do you think they'll snap out of it if governments of the world start booking and prosecuting them for practising cannibalism?
---
* It's actually worse, since Jesus is said to be fully human and fully divine. Therefore, not only are they engaging in cannibalism but also in theophagy.
I think their god needs a pinch more salt.
1 comment:
In the old, Latin Mass, at the point of consecration (of the bread and wine), the priest would lean over the alter and entone the phrase: "Hoc est enim corpus meum" ("This is my body and blood.")
It's where we get the term "Hocus-Pocus.
Post a Comment