“You cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it…
In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests [strong hearts for honor and truth] and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
“Jesus tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Bob, why are you resisting me?’ I said, ‘I’m not resisting You!’ He said, ‘You gonna follow Me?’ I said, ‘I’ve never thought about that before!’ He said, ‘When you’re not following Me. you’re resisiting Me.”
― Bob Dylan
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
God – a construct of the human mind – not an entity.
“Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by growth, but by
washing away from it all that is not gold.”
~ Leo Tolstoy
I now see that most men are too slave-minded and too stupid to live in society without a pervasive religion.
A completely rational system for society is entirely possible, but it requires levels of cognition beyond those of 98% of humans, and thus is literally Utopian. My libertarian anarchist nirvana is sadly impossible.
In light of that, mankind must be organized under some sort of magical thinking, and Christianity (when not perverted as is normallyl the case) seems as good as any other. It provides a structure for some men ruling over and enslaving others while at least attempting to hold the rulers to some sort of higher moral power.
Christianity, however, still founders when rulers fear no judgement in the next life.