"DELENDA RELIGIO"

"Delenda Carthago",  "Carthage must be destroyed" : Cato the Elder's mantra, repeated at the end of each of his discourses, whatever the subject, bore fruit years later when at the end of the Third Punic War in 146 B.C. the North African city was in fact destoyed.  If I have chosen to end each of the Reflections from now on with "Delenda religio", it is with full knowledge that anti-religionists should not hold their breath.  Religion may never be destroyed.  Theologians like Anselm and philosophers like Pascal believed  that we were born with an innate idea of God, or what some today would call a preprogrammed, "hard-wired", inclination to believe in God.  Even though the bit about hard-wiring is more than debatable (pp. 87 and 206), most people will continue to practise some form of religion in an attempt  to make sense, if not of life, at least of death.  But the destruction and disappearance of religion remains a consummation decidedly, if not devoutly, to be wished.  So

           DELENDA   RELIGIO