You got a hobby? Stamps? Quilts? Ferrets? Choirs? Giant pumpkins? Watching sports? Making pottery? NASCAR? Antiques? Boy Scouts?
Whatever your hobby, it is an important part of your life, relieves stress, lets you interact with a different group of friends, caters to your creativity. So important that it probably indicates something significant about your personality and character. But it is, however much you enjoy it, just a hobby. Not likely that you will say, if your house was on fire, "just a moment, got to finish this quilt before I can leave the house". Not likely your boss will give you time to make pottery at work, or your wife will recognize watching sport as an excuse for not doing repairs around the home. And not likely you will kill someone who has a bigger pumpkin than you.
Don't know if you saw it recently, but Ripley's recognized a world record for the most number of statues of a Hindu god made in one day. Yes, I will repeat that, a world record for the most number of statues of a Hindu god made in one day, The Indian woman concerned used to make the statues privately in her home but then a voice told her she should make them in public, she made dozens of them in one day, and hey presto, there she is in Ripley's. Talk about gods moving in mysterious ways. I think she is now trying for the world record of the number made in one year, or while blind folded, or with one hand tied behind her back - you know the sort of thing.
Just a harmless hobby, making statues of Ganesha, I suppose. Except it wasn't. She believed she had a religious obligation, an instruction issued from wherever it is that Hindu gods issue instructions, to make statues, more and more statues (a bit like the brooms in Fantasia).
Got me thinking, as I saw this poor woman obsessively making yet another clay statue, her hands and fingers never still, about how much time the human race has wasted in religious observance over the last 20,000 years or so. From the cave men making the carved stones and cave paintings of the Pleistocene, to the Stepford-wives-like congregations of the evangelical mega-churches singing in ecstasy for hours on end and robotically saying Amen to the preacher, time has been wasted in millions of man-years (and woman-years). Praying many times a day, shutting yourself away in monasteries and convents, wasting education time in religious schools everywhere, pretending to heal people, developing outrage about which sexual organs people are rubbing together, perverting the democratic process. All wasted time.
If people had only used the time they spent pleasing imaginary friends and put it instead towards productive pursuits we could have dealt with global warming and environmental destruction, got rid of war, eliminated poverty, cured major illnesses. And still had time left over for some non-destructive hobbies like stamp collecting, quilting, keeping ferrets ....
On The Watermelon Blog Virgil and I both say "Oh if only Jupiter would give me back my past years"
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I hope what I write leads to change to someone, somewhere. This particular post addressed the idea that the hobby of religion is privileged over other hobbies by society, and shouldn't be.