Here's a good example of why I have a hard time taking religion seriously.

[mota bhai 2,675]

I'm browsing Facebook and one of the pages I follow is that of an Indian newspaper called "The Hindu". Despite its name, it is not a religious paper. It's news from a newspaper that has been around since colonial days. Usually well written and usually with a left lean. So I came across an item on my Facebook feed with a link to a excerpt from an interview they did with a religious figure back in 1897. The religious figure is Swami Vivekananda, who most of you have surely never heard of, but a name I have been hearing since I was young enough to remember things. My grandparents had a portraits of this guy in their living room, the exact same image in the link (below).

I read it, expecting to not necessarily agree with him, but to at the very least read something I haven't read before, encounter a thought I hadn't thought before. At the very least, I was expecting to read something interesting.

Instead, I read something that means nothing. Empty words that mean absolutely nothing.

How very disappointing. How very religious.

The Hindu: What is the true meaning of the statement that the Vedas are beginning-less and eternal? Does it refer to the Vedic utterances or the statements contained in the Vedas? If it refers to the truth involved in such statements, are not the sciences such as Logic , Chemistry, Geometry etc. are equally beginning-less and eternal, for they contain an everlasting truth?

Swami Vivekananda: There was a time when the Vedas themselves were considered eternal in the sense in which the divine truths contained therein were changeless and permanent and only revealed to man.

At a subsequent time, it appeared that the utterance of the Vedic hymns with the knowledge of its meaning was important, and it was held that the hymns themselves must have had a divine origin. At a still later period the meaning of the hymns showed that many of them could not be of divine origin, because they inculcated upon mankind performance of various unholy acts such as torturing animals and we can also find many ridiculous stories in the Vedas.

The correct meaning of the statement “The Vedas are beginning-less and eternal” is that the law or truth revealed by them to man is permanent and changeless. Logic, Geometry, Chemistry, etc, reveal also a law or truth which is permanent and changeless and in that sense they are also beginning-less and eternal. But no truth or law is absent from the Vedas and I ask any one of you to point out to me any truth which is not treated of in them.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Madurai/what-the-swami-told-the-hindu-in-1897/article4904601.ece

[Protocol417 161]

I think perhaps the first mistake anyone makes is taking religious seriously.

If a god or gods exist(s), I doubt he/she/they/it puts even a quarter of the emphasis on scripture (of any faith) that we do ourselves.

Life is ridiculous. I doubt the divine would be any less so.

(PS: THANK GOD. A topic that isn't about the Zimmerman trial!)

[GandD 5,966]

(PS: THANK GOD. A topic that isn't about the Zimmerman trial!)

Wait for it.

[Protocol417 161]

Wait for it.

Good point. Should've kept quiet