Excerpt #88 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
After a year at Yale Divinity School, I had enough of the charade.
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg. – Abraham Lincoln
I decided to drop out of Yale, get a job, and support my wife who was studying for her second degree.
It Just Works
One day near the end of spring semester at Yale, I was out for a run with my friend Richard, a professor at Yale Divinity School; he also has a law degree from Yale Law School.
Richard, a Christian, was not pleased that I planned to leave the divinity school as he knew of my great concerns about humanity and the state of the world in general.
During our run, he said, “You ought to be Unitarian Universalist. You think like them.”
As an aside, let me note that Richard and I occasionally discussed theology during our runs.
One day, I asked Richard how he could believe the stories in the Bible as they were so clearly contrived.
Richard replied, “I know. I know. It just works for me. I made up my mind to accept it all, and it just works.”
This kind of thinking, I have found is not uncommon.
Back to Richard’s remark that I think like Unitarian Universalists.
I did not know what he meant because I was unfamiliar with their belief system.
Just then, as if it were scripted, we ran by the New Haven Unitarian Universalist church.
I noticed the name of the minister on the marquee in the front of their building.
That evening, I phoned her.
I was intrigued by her explanation of the Unitarian Universalist belief system.
I learned that she had graduated from Harvard Divinity School.
The next day, we met and talked some more.
As I learned more, I thought to myself, “Here is a sensible religion in which I could be a minister.”
I phoned Harvard Divinity School and I asked if I could transfer.
I was told that I could, but only three days remained before admissions were closed and there were a number of stringent requirements I would have to meet in that timeframe.
In those three days, to fulfill Harvard’s requirements, I wrote a very long essay, a number of shorter essays, provided official transcripts and financial records from the four universities I attended previously, and three letters of recommendation.
Two weeks later, I was accepted.
It was the fastest acceptance to Harvard Divinity School ever, I was told.