Spiritual epiphany

This amazing bolt of insight hit me the other night that I felt like sharing.  I wasn't doing anything special.  It was late, I was done working for the night, so I was knitting on a hat and ignoring an old episode of "House" on my laptop.  I was a little spaced out (which is normal when I knit) and my mind wasn't even on spiritual matters, and then out of left field it struck me: 

Everyone in the world is equally wrong about god, the after life, and everything else that we try to explain in spiritual terms.  

It sounds dumb, but I actually find it reassuring.   To me this means that it's okay not to agree with how anyone has laid out religion or atheism because they are all wrong.  In fact I don't think that we are biologically capable of coming up with the right answer to any of life's big questions.  That doesn't mean we can't try, but it sure takes the stress out of coming up with the right answer.  Like most academics knowledge is of paramount importance to me, so it's weird to be comforted by the realization that in this life I'll never be capable of answering a question correctly.  

Religion and more thoughts from childhood

I was reading through some posts at Panthera studentessa and I was intrigued by this post about her childhood experiences with a Pentacostal step family.  The rules of the religion clearly made no sense to her and I was reminded of a girl from the neighborhood I knew when I was young.  

We were riding home together on the bus and I invited her to my birthday party.  She told me that she didn't go to parties.  When I asked why she said that she was a Jehovah's witness and then she told me a story about a man having his head served up at on a platter at the request of some crazy woman.  I can't remember if the dead guy was attending a party or if the crazy lady with the decapitation fetish was hosting a party, or exactly how the details came together.  But I do remember her conclusion: so we don't go to parties because our heads will end up on a platter.  

Having attended many birthday parties myself and never having been decapitated or otherwise disfigured I really thought this girl was crazy.  We were kids and birthday parties were awesome.  I'm sure the belief system that forces the Jehovah's witnesses to stay home when everyone else is out having a good time is more complex than she had made it out to be, but in her young mind it was quite straight forward: attending party+having good time=head on platter.  Now that was the finest bit of brain washing I'd ever heard.