Let Reason, Reason, Reason Replace Holy, Holy, Holy

In honor of the passing of Horrible Hitch (we're talking Christopher Hitchens of nastiness fame here), I picked up his 2007 god is not GREAT.  Even after the  first page I marveled, as I did at my first reading, that anyone whom I despised so thoroughly was capable of making me want to cover his pasty, alcohol fumy, dormouse-like face with kisses.

In this treatise, he was so logical, so effortlessly reasonable, so totally in tune to every fiber of my thinking being, that I  regretted his untimely departure. 

I was particularly attracted to this sentence which encapsulates the whole of the secular doctrine I have adopted:  

"We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or  outrages reason."

Just so!

In this strange season of greed and goodness, loving homes and homelessness, holy rhapsodies and hypocrisies, it would be good for  us to consider if, instead of wallowing in sentimentality,  we shouldn't somehow help our neighbors to find their way out of darkness and into the light of reason.

Let reason, reason, reason replace holy, holy, holy....and then there will be light.

Thank you, Christopher Hitchens. I send you on your way with my thanks and my good will in whatever new adventures await you.

While there may be no virgin mothers or virgins in heaven waiting to be deflowered by noble assassins, no magical healers or whales or bread or lamp oil, no talking snakes, no god or gods of any kind, there is, in my mind, certainly evidence of life everlasting. And we are not required to kneel or worship or prostrate ourselves - nor go forth and spread religious bile on innocent others.

While I have always felt that it is a good thing not to do bad things, I believe it is, in the end, simply a matter of opening our hearts and minds and embracing the glorious mystery of life by allowing it to live within us for however long we are fortunate enough to be host to it.

I wish everyone health, happiness and whatever joy the season holds for you.

 -30-