Delusions

Belief systems and religions are a strange issue in our existance. They can either make you or break you. What you believe is the truth form your reality which becomes so part of you that it can drive you insane, makes you sick or liberates you. Everyone wants to know what the truth is and we are all on a search. However, how deluded we often are along the way.

Below are 3 videos that show exactly what I am trying to say. They are not intended to offend anybody's sentiments and beliefs but with these short videos I like to be able to get blog readers to be aware of the mechanism of beliefs and treat it as such - just beliefs. And if need be, there should be the courage to dump these beliefs however long we have been attached to them. Otherwise we are only deluding ourselves by feeling that we need to be loyal to some tradition or other by sticking to our beliefs.

And now check out the next one from Professor Richard Dawkins, author of the book The God Delusion. Here he is answering someone in the audience who was enquiring about the validity of his belief in God. He needed only a short answer for that. But again, will he be able to listen....

First Maltese Saint

Dun Gorg Preca is now declared as the first Maltese saint in history and on June 3rd will be officially canonised in Rome.

I don't consider myself religious these days. More interested in being spiritual without the intervention of institutional setups with their rites and rituals. I grew out of that, thank you.

However, I admire any human being who proved himself to be a leader in what he believed in and through courage and determination was a pioneer in his field.

Dun Gorg Preca managed to capture people's imagination at a time (around the first decades of last century) when times were hard and people were simpler in their thinking. They were receptive and unquestionable. Would Dun Gorg have the same earnest following if today he preached in the streets as he used to? I doubt it. Times have changed and his greatness is in the fact that he was around with his mesmerising preaching at the right time. Today his teaching still goes on though his strategies for passing on these teachings have evolved with the use of technology to spread the word.

Dun Gorg Preca was a man who through a time when people were hungry for direction and guidance he managed to set up a religious society of lay people. His little group of men and women grew up to be the Society of Christian Doctrine (known locally as M.U.S.E.U.M.), and today it consists of about 110 Centres and 1100 members. They teach about 20,000 boys and girls in the Maltese islands, in Australia, Peru, the Sudan, United Kingdom, Kenya and Albania. The Society was set up in 1907.

Personally, I do feel uneasy on the issuing of saints as nobody can really know another person, his motivations behind his actions. Talking in general, of course, could there be pride, ambition or any other factor behind a person's actions? In history we come across stories of saints that were declared as such through some questionable conspiracy amongst those concerned with the canonisation and these declared saints were far from saintly.

Of course, those who are fervent religious will decline any such things happen in the Vatican and stunned with such allegations. And that is the problem - saintmaking is like preaching to the converted.

Valid only to those who already share the belief.

In that light I am happy for those who believe that having a saint of their own blood matters.

Two Great Personalities

I ended last year with a blog entry on mindsets. The way we think is a preoccupation of mine as we are our thoughts. And this situation should be of some concern to us all. This is because we live according to what we believe in and this can either enslave us in our day to day life or else liberate us. It takes time, experience and awareness not to mention some daring open mindedness of this phenomenon.

Today I came across two bits of interesting news that illustrate what I am saying.

One is the death of Carlo Ponti, the great film director and mostly known as Sophia Loren's husband. He was 94. When he was refused a divorce from his first wife to marry Sophia he is documented as saying: "The problem in Italy is, that the Popeis the real owner of the country. Nobody in Italy believes in God. But they are all Catholics." Ponti and Sophia's marriage was recognised in Italy only after the Italian parliament voted to legalise divorce in 1970. This shows that we in Malta are still living in the 60s.

Another interesting bit of news is that the previously unseen final letter that Captain Robert Falcon Scott wrote to his wife as he battled back from the South Pole in March 1912 was made public yesterday. His descendants announced that they were giving it, along with earlier letters, to Cambridge University's Scott Polar Institute. But what I found interesting is a couple of entries in this letter. One consisted of some instructions to his wife on the raising of their son which said, "...try and make him believe in a God, it is comforting." So this boy is to be raised on believing in some illusion - just because it is comforting! I wonder whether I am missing some point here.

And the other entry further down the letter says this: "What lots and lots I could tell you of this journey. How much better it has been than lounging in comfort at home — what tales you would have for the boy but oh what a price to pay — to forfeit the sight of your dear dear face." Hey, where are one's priorities? Reading this I gather that he loved adventure more than his wife. Did he really care for his family or his passion was that much bigger? I am trying hard not to make judgements, but I do realise how complex man is.

Just food for thought. Fact is stranger than fiction.