Religulous

Religulous

In the part of Europe where I lived (Italy, UK, Spain, France), religion was used to be (and still is) something quite private. Nobody would come and ask you what is your religion or if you go to Church or not...They would look at you in a curious way only if you go out showing the symbols of your religion, but they usually still would not ask questions.
If someone tells you “god bless you” in Italy, you either have a priest in front of you or a crazy person, in which case you would touch wood, iron or something else (ask Italian men and they'll tell you) to avoid bad luck.
Over here in the USA, once they ask you where you are from, they want to know (with direct or indirect questions) what is your religion! They absolutely feel the need to put a label on every person they meet, which is so unpleasant. And they say “ god bless you” even when you are just polite to keep the door open for someone...

In Countries where you study Latin, Literature and Philosophy the majority of people know very well that religions are just a fantasy, all of them, and one is not better than the other. Some of these people might have their own spirituality and decide to believe just part of what they are told: they do not accept what is just written or said somewhere, they have plenty of questions and doubts.
I am of course not saying that we should deny anything: everybody should be free to believe what they want to believe, Zeus, God and even Pinco Pallino if they feel like it, but this “freedom should end where other people freedom starts” and nobody should feel superior to another or try to make others believe in what they believe. Spirituality should be something we have inside and there should be no need at all to show it with any external symbols. How good we are or simply what we are is determined purely by our actions.

Everyone should read Lucrezio, Leopardi, Schopenhauer and open their mind to what other important people before them experienced and felt in their life...people, not gods!
We have been living in this Earth for so many centuries and if we exclude technology, we are still the same kind of people we were centuries ago. Religions and politics (sometimes they become the same thing) still try hard to keep the population ignorant in order to control them, instead of helping them.
We keep putting walls in front of us and we call them religions and races.
We did not learn to respect other people opinions and we still did not learn to listen and open our mind to new ideas: only very few people do it unfortunately!
We still do not understand that actions are better than prayers: sometimes we can help and we just don't want to do it. A human being can be powerful with his mind, his heart and his money!
This is the reality!

I like what the famous Oncologist Umberto Veronesi said about religion: - La religione, per definizione, è integralista, mentre la scienza vive nel dubbio , nella ricerca della verità-, literally -Religion for definition is fundamentalist, while science has doubts and is always searching the truth-.
To what he said I would just add that Science together with Art are the truth, they are our truth, they are what we see, what we know, what we can do!

Is there a life after death? Who knows, maybe there is...but nobody knows it for sure or has been able to demonstrate it.
We do have this life right now though and we better make it worth it: we should study and learn and achieve great things while we are here and while we can!