Spinner has an interview with the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Meritt, who is about to release a new album ‘Love at the Bottom of the Sea’, and the conversation went a little sideway while talking about his involvement with the Tibet House Benefit Concert. To the question ‘Why did you stop practicing the religion?’ he answered the following:
‘Well, I never took to the belief system. I find religion wacky. Reincarnation is an absurd, incoherent idea. The Buddhist psychology is as silly as Freudian psychology. If I had to pick a religion to subscribe to, it would be Daoism, which only requires that you agree with one statement, which is that the middle path is a good idea. I don't subscribe to that, but it's only one statement that I disagree with rather than thousands in the cases of Buddhism or monotheism. But that doesn't mean that I don't feel sorry for displaced Tibetans.’
At last, someone who dares to criticize Freudianism! No seriously, I like it when someone is not politically correct and speaks up his mind like this. Especially in these dark times, when Grammys winners thank their God instead of their lawyers, when the most common things of our daily life (like the contraceptive pill) are brought back in the political debate in the name of religion! Go Stephin!
But later in the interview he was asked about proposition 8 which was recently banned and his feelings about the gay-marriage question? To what he answered:
‘I don't discuss politics because I like to keep my passport.’
Funny, but he may well equally be concerned about discussing religion in these not so modern times.