J'accuse not the 'existence' of all matters as might be labelled metaphysical (!) - as if my 'opinion' on a matter of the very definition of Scale itself! mattered in the slightest..

I accept Certainty as a near-enough tarball for the root of the misbehavior of the practitioners of rote-inculcation. I believe that process is indeed common to most-all of the 'Organized Religions'. (I don't think Buddhism, to name just one conundrum - is 'organized' nor perhaps a 'religion' either. Another thread - and too lengthy a digression)

I will also second your (our) vanity, Of which, I, as an evangelical agnostic, am also guilty. I know that I'm right in knowing that those who think they know are deluded. :-\ufffd

That is, I too believe that I have experienced sufficient of the depths of my ignorance of er 'Reality' - to be by now almost too-Certain of the truth within the esoteric bit of doggerel,

Those who know don't say.
Those who say don't know.

(Can't quite use the agnostic label; fuzzy as it is, it still connotes "being asea" and all illegible. Not my locale.)

{sigh}

I'll have to stick with the assertion that - whatever we call those methods of Organized Religious Corporations - their habits have nothing much to do with the idea of religion itself, for they regularly (one might fairly say, inexorably) catalyze every next war.



Pace pace O mio Dio