Background for _Vineland_?

[alice wellintown]

>> i'm a Protestant as distinct from a Catholic because - among other
>> reasons - I was brought up to believe that it's wrong for anybody to
>> claim they're infallible - violates Murphy's Law or something...

Popes are not and do not claim infallibility. They sin like the rest
of us.  And, even the dogma that claims infallibilty of the church and
papal supremecy is not about making of the Pope a sinless human or a
God like Jesus or greater than Jesus, that is, in Protestant terms,
Satan.

In any event, infallibility is not a dogma any modern person should
have serious objection to on moral or ethical grounds. On political
grounds, yes.

The history of Anti-Catholicism in America is worth reading. I'm still
not sure if Shakespeare was a catholic or catholic sympathizer of some
sort; surely another reason to take interest in these great traditions
is that it is difficult, if not impossible,  to appreaciate a great
deal of western art if one is ignorant of their beauty and complexity.

I don't believe in Beatles
I don't believe in Jesus.
But I'm not an atheist.
While I understand why Hawkins is an atheist, I'm not smart enough to
be an atheist and so I'll take that agnostic faith, not because I fear
Hamlet's dreams or Stephen Daedalus's Nightmares, but because I like
uncertanty.

I do believe most of what I read in Freud and Marx and elsewhere about
Religion, but I also know that the major religious traditions continue
to govern the way most people on Earth live and to dismiss this as so
much superstitious ignorance is stupid. Perhaps we are, as we are
technological creatures, spiritual or cultural ones. Interesting word,
Cult. The major religions are a lot more felxible than a lot of other
systems of life or they would not have lasted so long. In fact, while,
as Graves, I think, taught us, we can all so easily see the other
religion as a beam in the eye of the believer or as a "myth" in the
sense of superstitious old legends and folk stories, we often fail to
see the spectre of myth in our own eye.

Somew of the smartest people I know are religious. And, while, it
seems Hawkins was an atheist, he still felt compelled to exaplin his
faith. So did Betram Russell who is another of my heroes.

As Kermit the Frog says, it's not easy being green, but as Popeye
says, I am what I am. Or was that God to Moses?