I was flowing steadily and swiftly on the walk to day, and cruised (despite the at time oppressive heat) into the town of Maritein – where I paused to rest in the cooler confines of the local church … Jean Marc has arrived here as well, and we share a calm-yet-ultimately-meaningless conversation about politics; with him being an staunch advocate of American politics in general and Bernie Sanders specifically, and me trying in vain to point out that whatever democracy once lived in the U.S. has long since been crushed by the current corporate oligarchy and that Bernie Sanders – despite his sweet words – has clearly become nothing but a soured shill to the same abjectly unjust establishment. Almost needless to say, no real communication came to pass that afternoon between us, and I gently resolved to avoid any further wastage of time on the matter in the future …

“Pope John Paul II once noted that ‘By the authority of his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals.’ Of course it goes without saying that this begs the question of whether the texts at issue really were authored or inspired by God in the first place, and on what grounds one might know this if it were indeed true. It is well worth noting that ‘Faith’ is not in fact a rejection of reason, but is rather simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasoning. ‘Faith’ is the pseudo-justification that some people trot out when they want to make bold claims without the necessary evidence. But of course the faithful never apply these same lax standards of evidence to the claims made by the other fellow’s holy scriptures. In truth, when it comes to religions other than his or her own, religious people are as rational as everyone else. Only their own religion, whatever it may be, seems to merit some special dispensation from the proper standards of moral decency and objective support.” ~ inspired by Alan Sokal

Filed under: Peace Pilgrimage #02: Walking HOME (2019) by Scaughdt