And less than I bargained for, too. Overall, women’s lib has helped women, but it has its moments.

Envy is the wrong word for what feel when I see religious people comforted through their religion. Envy implies ill will because of another’s advantage. I wish to have their comfort, but know that because of my reservations I cannot. Among my misgivings is the fear of hope such as an ostrich has when its head is in the sand. (Actually, I don’t think ostriches do that.)
People want to believe — to hold a position on something. It does not have to make sense. Discrepancies are expunged for them by faith. So religion provides substance for their faith, and in so doing, it gives its parishioners psychological advantage in the storms of life. Your argument for applying real solutions through research and philanthropic funding (instead of spending money on cathedrals and such) makes sense. But people have always looked to gods and probably always will. There’s advantage for them; we might as well acknowledge it.

I read it again that way and it makes a lot of sense, even the Yoda voice. I raised it to 9.

Then who flung it, and how is that revenge?

Yes, lobotomized people feel neither grief nor comfort, I am told. So, why not have your frontal lobe severed when in grief? I don't think the procedure is done anymore. And if it were, that ends all emotion. This seems like way too simple a question, and too simple an answer. You must be asking something else. Or do you belong to the First Church of Lobotomy?

Besides the reasons wilco gives, religion is important for its magnificent churches where I can go on a hot summer day and sit for awhile contemplating its long history, the craftsmen who planned and carved, and the peasants who thought it important enough to give their money for its construction.

I will assume you have read more than five today. Thanks.

And for those of us who have not the strength for those declarations, there is always TS Eliot’s “I should have been a pair of ragged claws, scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” But there is time, up to a point, for change, “And time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions.”

I am always questioning. Faith, logic, and death are subjects that don’t rest well when put together in my head. Most people in the world settle on some religion to help them through the dilemmas and conflicts these three present, and they hold to the ideals of their upbringing or to others they have found along the way. They build elaborate doctrinal structures and elaborate cathedrals, which seem to anchor them to what they hope is true. Religion is important because it provides comfort in their times of need and grief. I often wish I could be so comforted.

I’m appalled that my raven, with his physical adversity, and his noble rising above the common crowd of ravens, did not inspire the same admiration we bestow on certain Olympic athletes who, in spite of injury, disease and economic poverty rise to glory.

My mind suddenly went from sharp to dull when he turned on me and pushed its sharpness against the wall, pressing closer, intensifying my plight, and bringing the stench of fear, flooding me until I felt empty with his pitiless demise.

Or at least that's what I feel.

I'm surprised nobody complained about the line, "of wet sods beside a cold house in ’04" Now there's a line that cries out for mudslinging.

Please tell me what the considerable theme is, because I'm at a loss.