Already in the sixteenth century B.C., with Sappho, Greeks consider old age as an incurable disease. Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, pictures the old with a completely negative portrait, attributing to him bad character and selfishness. In the Latin world, Terentius gives voice to Cremete in his comedy Phormio, pronouncing the famous phrase: “Senectus ipsa est morbus.” Old age itself is a disease.

I feel you start to become old when you have enough experience to see life as a recurrent struggle. Day after day the same question is posed.

Bart Ehrman explains, in his post -My Struggle With Why There Is Suffering-: “I left the Christian faith because of the problem I had with understanding why there could be so much suffering in the world if there was an all-powerful and truly-loving God in control of it. […] In this post I want to make it clear that – as I’ve said a number of times on the blog before —  I did not leave the Christian faith because of my scholarship on the Bible or on the history of early Christianity.” (1) How many times does Bart Erhman need to explain himself?

Diane Disney wrote in a 1972 biography about her father, “There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that my father, Walt Disney, wished to be frozen.” But isn’t the need to keep repeating the same conversation, over and over again some way to enforce a cold eternity?

I become vegetarian sometime twenty years ago. My friends say: “Better to have a dead man in the house than a vegetarian at the door.” (2)

And recurrently from them and from strangers, a question comes up: “Why did you become vegetarian?” 

One of my colleagues, wrote a fabulous book about salt, something like the white book of salt, narrating six months of his life eating without the condiment. I mean, you imposed on yourself such an idiotic training and want to know from me why I do not eat meat?

Some people just don’t have an endless supply of things to say. And those left are not even more interesting.

But once the question is posed: “Why did you become an atheist? Why did you become a vegetarian?” it cannot be ignored.

I have 10 reasons that Bart Erhman could use in order to be more varied:

• God looks like my ex-wife. And I’ve never had one!
• Of all the non-existent gods I have encountered, God is not one of them.
• How does God sacrifice himself if he can’t even wash my car?
• You call it suffering, I call it a walk on my body in high heels.
• God exists. Ah, and I never understand shit.
• Do you know what I find strange in God? He did not call his son: God Junior. 
• If God has only one begotten son and we are made in his image, who are we?
• I don’t know if God exists. Let’s leave the decision to the free market.
• Jesus was my hope once. But He died under mysterious circumstances.
• I don’t understand much. I have a basic Ph-D

The conclusion is that an honest man needs to explain not as much as he wants but as much as he musts. But above all, after so many years, he should try to remember -at least- who musts. (3)

(1) ** you do not have permission to see this link **

(2) From a proverb of medieval origin: the Republic of Pisa used to attack and plunder the town of Lucca, so it was better to have a dead man in the house than a Pisan warrior at the door. To this, the Pisans usually reply with “May God please you!”

(3) “Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du Je telle qu’elle nous est révélée dans l’expérience psychanalytique” (Lacan, 1966c)