One of the things one must never question in the Caribbean is its religious beliefs. People who do that are scoffed at and considered too "bright" (intelligent) for their own good. They are accused of reading too much and worst of all, reading "the wrong things".
One intelligent child told me that once her mother caught her reading a book that questioned the importance and truth of religion and tossed the book away. The poor child had borrowed the book and was forced to find the means of replacing it. Of course the mother did not care as she was saving the child's soul from eternal domination and that, in the Caribbean, is primarily what matters.
People say that the very existence of life is a miracle, and so there must be a god. My perspective is that given how the human mind functions, the miracle would have been had humans not invented a deity or deities of some sort.
I was once drawn in a conversation in which a group of men and women debated the matter of using swear words, and whether or not humans are sent to hell for using them. They drew me into the argument and I asked two questions I thought pivotal to the perspective of whether or not people who swear should roast forever in the fires of hell. I asked whether god knew everything, to which their response was , "well, if God is omniscient, surely he knows all things". I asked them if god knew swear words. Their most intellectually generated response was that god knows bad words but does not use them.
I walked away from the conversation leaving them snugly pleased with their answer.
No comments:
Post a Comment