RE: virus: A Catholic's Personal Tale

Virginia (ForVirg@ix.netcom.com)
Mon, 14 Jun 1999 12:48:39 -0700

Amen! (with tongue planted firmly in cheek). I've long called myself a "recovering Catholic". I'm certain that's what drives my interest in memetics. I am 38 now. Quit believing in what the Catholic schools were teaching me in 5th grade when I asked "why" and heard "because we say so" one too many times. I am continually amazed at the meme-complexes that *still* cause me to feel fear or guilt for a moment every now and then. I'm wildly pleased right now that I've managed to never have an experience like the one described. In one of my "experiments" with LSD, my sister and I found we had to take down all the religious imagery decorating my parents' house lest we begin to see any of that come to life. I wonder what my parents thought when they came home the next morning to find "Mary" and "Jesus" facing the walls!

I feel I saw an up front in-my-face picture of what religous training had created in my earliest neural connections while my conciousness developed. I know that we all have something in common: archetypes that have evolved into our mythologies. So I can only think that the world would be much better off without religion. Emotional health would change drasticly all over the globe if we teach our children values without the mythologies and superstition.