Jan

26

Common-Sense Religion

January 26, 2006 |

A truly well-written article about applying common sense to religious dogma.

…What alternatives are there? There are moderates who revere the tradition they were raised in, simply because it is their tradition, and who are prepared to campaign, tentatively, for the details of their tradition, simply because, in the marketplace of ideas, somebody should stick up for each tradition until we can sort out the good from the better and settle for the best we can find, all things considered. That is like allegiance to a sports team, and it, too, can give meaning to a life — if not taken too seriously. I am a Red Sox fan, simply because I grew up in the Boston area and have happy memories of Ted Williams, Jimmy Piersall, Carl Yastrzemski, Pudge Fisk, and Wade Boggs, among others. My allegiance to the Red Sox is enthusiastic, but cheerfully arbitrary and undeluded. The Red Sox aren’t my team because they are, in fact, the Best; they are the Best (in my eyes) because they are my team.

That is a kind of love, but not the rabid love that leads people to lie, and torture, and kill.

In order to adopt such a moderate position, however, you have to loosen your grip on the absolutes that are apparently one of the main attractions of many religious creeds. It isn’t easy being moral, and it seems to be getting harder and harder these days. It used to be that most of the world’s ills — disease, famine, war — were quite beyond the capacities of everyday people to ameliorate. There was nothing they could do about it, so people could ignore the catastrophes on the other side of the globe — if they even knew about them — with a clear conscience. Living by a few simple, locally applicable maxims could more or less guarantee that one lived about as good a life as was possible at the time. No longer….

Tags: Religion, Philosophy, Common Sense

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