I cannot persuade myself to subscribe to a religion. If anything is going to save our sorry strain, I would bet on art, not religion. But if I were somehow bullied into it by some supreme being, I suppose I would choose either Buddhism or Confucianism. I have no problem if other people enjoy this form of comfort–short of killing people because of it. That presents a little problem.
I find the word God to be useful and evocative. The poetic insurgent in me loves the ambiguity of it and tells me that it is better to believe something completely irrational than to believe in nothing at all or something unhelpful.
And as someone as smart as Karl Jaspers said, refusing to believe in something is just engaging in yet another belief.
Still, I draw the line at any God that looks like a human and not like a bear or a chickadee or a sea anemone or a scientist or a bad joke or a wayside weed or a windy day.
As that inveterate preacher Wordsworth said, “One impulse from a vernal wood / May teach you more of man, / Of moral evil and of good, / Than all the sages can.”
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