Below the chalky white precipice, the sea is a kaleidoscope of blue, green and gold. With the wind singing in my ears and caressing my sun-kissed torso, I sit myself down and inevitably start thinking.
***
We had our own little beach party at Fig Tree Bay last night. It was, in my personal opinion, better than the one we had intended to go to but had gotten the date wrong.
Beneath the diamond-encrusted sky, we laid on sunbeds and counted the falling jewels. Over the soft chorus of waves, we held discourse on religion interrupted only by sips of chilled coffee.
I'm always very cautious on the topic of religion - even more so when with my friends (simply because one tends to be very opinionated when one is a student at Cambridge; whether it's a cause or effect is another matter altogether).
The problem is; people tend to take it personally - religious or not. And I guess it's not their fault because religion is a personal thing. But what really surprises me is how passionate atheists also tend to be on the subject matter: it's as if they are consumed by a fire not unlike that of religious fervour.
On my part, I agree that, like so many other things, religion has both its good and bad. No other factor has played so great a role in the division of mankind; the justified wars of God, the martyrs of saints and mujahideen, the suffering and oppression of those under the yoke of religious extremism.
And then there's the good that religion has brought to humanity: the art of Christiandom, the science of the Islamic empire, and the philosophy of Siddharta Gautama. Most architectural wonders of the historic world have been built to celebrate religion. There's so much I enjoy about religion: its symbolism and iconology, its rituals and traditions, the cathartic power of prayer and the brotherhood that unites all religions.
And just like so many other things, you have to accept the bad with the good. I personally think that we could all do without kleptocracy but I do see its merits. What I find terribly unhelpful is when people claim with absolute certainty that we'd be better off without religion. Absolute bollocks: there's no way to construct a control experiment with an almost exact replica of human civilization except for religion to test out the hypothesis. And people need to realize this before making such blaise statements.
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