Religion and Language
Religions are like languages: all languages are of human origin; each language reflects and shapes the civilization that speaks it; all languages make meaning out of the raw facts of our existence; no language is true or false; there are things you can say in one language that you cannot say (or say as well) in another; the more languages you know, the more nuanced your understanding of life becomes; and as important as languages are, the final “language” of wisdom is silence.
Substitute the word religion for language, and you have the basic holy rascal understanding of religion.
We turn sounds into letters, letters into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into books, books into excuses for bashing one another’s heads in. No wonder silence is golden. RR