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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (25995)	11/17/1998 7:30:00 PM
From: Ish	Respond to of 108807

Ok, to all. Depression and suicide. Religion? Better to be depressed or dead? Thought this might be a topic all can relate to.

To: E who wrote (25995)	11/17/1998 7:52:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

E, I hope this will amuse you, and horrify a few others. Excerpted from a letter written by H.L. Mencken to Will Durant: As for religion, I am quite devoid of it. Never in my adult life have I experienced anything that could plausibly be called a religious impulse. My father and grandfather were agnostics before me, and though I was sent to Sunday-school as a boy and exposed to the Christian theology I was never taught to believe it. My father thought that I should learn what it was, but it apparently never occurred to him that I would accept it. He was a good psychologist. What I got in Sunday-school - beside a wide acquaintance with Christian hymnology - was simply a firm conviction that the Christian faith was full of palpable absurdities, and the Christian God preposterous. Since that time I have read a great deal in theology - perhaps much more than the average clergyman - but I have never discovered any reason to change my mind. The act of worship, as carried on by Christians, seems to me to be debasing rather than ennobling. It involves groveling before a being who, if he really exists, deserves to be denounced instead of respected. I see little evidence in this world of the so-called goodness of God. On the contrary, it seems to me that, on the strength of his daily acts, he must be set down a most stupid, cruel, and villainous fellow. I can say this with a clear conscience, for he has treated me very well - in fact, with vast politeness. But I can't help thinking of his barbaric torture of most of the rest of humanity. I simply can't imagine revering the God of war and politics, theology and cancer. I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it. The belief in it issues from the puerile egos of inferior men. In its Christian form it is little more than a device for getting revenge on those who are having a better time on this earth. What the meaning of human life may be I don't know: I incline to suspect that it has none. All I know about it is that, to me at least, it is very amusing while it lasts. Even its troubles, indeed, can be amusing. Moreover, they tend to foster the human qualities that I admire most - courage and its analogues. The noblest man, I think, is that one who fights God and triumphs over him. I have had little of this to do. When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness. No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever. Steve