Soul-crushing temples
Usually, acknowledging the existence of an underlying coherence in the vast unpredictable universe brings me humility and gratitude. Being brought up in a Hindu family, the images, stories and prayers we heard as children bring me personal comfort. No fundamentalist rationalist/atheist or Hindu will claim me fully as one of their own. I'm fortunately in a place in life where I can say that I don't care. Religion to me is deeply personal. Ironically, I have seen that sharing the experience with a group though is more powerful than most human experiences can ever be. History, though is one long testament to how that experience has been subverted for political and commercial gains. With that out of the way, let me say that during my teens and twenties I so strongly believed that any connect with any deity is so personal that going to temples is meaningless. If God is everywhere, why does anyone need a single place of worship? However, in my in my mid twenties, when I went to a tem...