For your Quotz file...

[onager]

"I prefer living in a state of problems and contradictions to believing in religion...

There are two kinds of people who do not ask themselves questions - those who are without conscience, and those who are religious.

To me, religion is action. Sometimes, when driving on the autostrada at night, seeing the stars, I feel that there must be something infinitely grand that created this gigantic mechanism - but something that has no bodily existence. Not like what they teach you about religion in the schools.

Moreover, I do not believe that this power, if it exists, is necessarily benign. It may also be evil." - Enzo Ferrari, interview in The New Yorker magazine, 1965

Quote found in: Go Like Hell by A.J. Baime, a book about the battle between Ferrari and Ford to dominate Le Mans in the 1960's.

[vixengrl]

1. I like that--

I prefer living in a state of problems and contradictions to believing in religion

It reminds me of a quote from Aleister Crowley:

“I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.”

Part of the appeal of religion is it's unchanging nature--the Bible tells us that God doesn't change. But human society, our technology, our level of understanding of the universe and the people and things in it, changes all the time. An active faith might mean reconciling one's written or revealed creed against one's situation, but it always falls back on authority. We doubt, therefore....we think! Any situation has to be mapped out into what the ultimate best-case scenario has to be. The authority of the universe revealed in "nature red in tooth and claw" or the cold witness of the stars above, doesn't have to bear on our desire to do the right thing. Our universe doesn't even resemble a "just world". No wonder so many religions put "justice" in the afterlife--we don't see it here.

Except insofar as we humans try to negotiate a just path.

An earthquake kills a few thousand--reckless! But I chose not to drink and drive, or kill anyone today. Elsewhere, millions of people are also biting back mean language, holding back fists, failing to start wars. (Even if they are tempted.) And millions might be spared. A tragedy occurs in my hometown, and I give blood, but no miracles occur to save lives, only doctors and nurses and EMTs going about their business. What the ancients called "fate" is sometimes cruel--but humans don't have to be, and can even do good. They also do some really evil stuff--say the hurtful thing, let the fist fly, start a war. Faith doesn't figure into it, as much as doubt--real morality is a form of humility in a way. Certainty is a crusade. Doubt is a reckoning.