richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

186 T H K G O D D F L. USION
of hair. The state of being in love has many physiological
accompaniments, such as sighing like a furnace. 84
I made the comparison between falling in love and religion in
1993, when I noted that the symptoms of an individual infected by
religion 'may be startlingly reminiscent of those more ordinarily
associated with sexual love. This is an extremely potent force in the
brain, and it is not surprising that some viruses have evolved to
exploit it' ('viruses' here is a metaphor for religions: my article was
called 'Viruses of the mind'). St Teresa of Avila's famously orgasmic
vision is too notorious to need quoting again. More seriously, and on
a less crudely sensual plane, the philosopher Anthony Kenny provides
moving testimony to the pure delight that awaits those who manage
to believe in the mystery of the transubstantiation. After describing
his ordination as a Roman Catholic priest, empowered by laying on
of hands to celebrate mass, he goes on that he vividly recalls
the exaltation of the first months during which I had the
power to say Mass. Normally a slow and sluggish riser, I
would leap early out of bed, fully awake and full of excitement
at the thought of the momentous act I was privileged
to perform . . .
It was touching the body of Christ, the closeness of the
priest to Jesus, which most enthralled me. I would gaze on
the Host after the words of consecration, soft-eyed like a
lover looking into the eyes of his beloved . . . Those early
days as a priest remain in my memory as days of fulfilment
and tremulous happiness; something precious, and
yet too fragile to last, like a romantic love-affair brought
up short by the reality of an ill-assorted marriage.
The equivalent of the moth's light-compass reaction is the
apparently irrational but useful habit of falling in love with one,
and only one, member of the opposite sex. The misfiring byproduct
- equivalent to flying into the candle flame - is falling in
love with Yahweh (or with the Virgin Mary, or with a wafer, or
with Allah) and performing irrational acts motivated by such love.
The biologist Lewis Wolpert, in Six Impossible Things Before