...odds of religion...

y, but in a fairly short time I had
also begun to notice other oddities. Why, if god was the
creator of all things, were we supposed to "praise" him so
incessantly for doing what came to him naturally? This
seemed servile, apart from anything else. If Jesus could
heal a blind person he happened to meet, then why not heal
blindness ? What was so wonderful about his casting out
devils, so that the devils would enter a herd of pigs instead?
That seemed sinister: more like black magic. With all this
continual prayer, why no result? Why did I have to keep
saying, in public, that I was a miserable sinner? Why was
the subject of sex considered so toxic? These faltering and
childish objections are, I have since discovered, extremely
commonplace, partly because no religion can meet them
with any satisfactory answer. But another, larger one also
presented itself. (I say "presented itself" rather than
"occurred to me" because these objections are, as well as
insuperable, inescapable.) The headmaster, who led the
daily services and prayers and held the Book, and was a bit
of a sadist and a closeted homosexual (and whom I have
long since forgiven because he ignited my interest in
history and lent me my first copy of P. G. Wodehouse),
was giving a no-nonsense talk to some of us one evening.
"You may not see the point of all this faith now," he said.
"But you will one day, when you start to lose loved ones."
Again, I experienced a stab of sheer indignation as well as