RE: What will win the god wars? Faith, Fantasy, Facts, or God?
December 9, 2020 at 11:04 am
(This post was last modified: December 9, 2020 at 11:06 am by The Grand Nudger.)
I'm not sure that I agree with them being self-contradictory...but when has a self contradictory nature ever been a problem for a religion?
Generally speaking, religion accrues value making and value makers. The disposition of those things is a snapshot in time for a culture. Right now, science and humanism have immense amounts of credibility - and that makes them desirable items. Religions compete in the ideological marketplace by supplying the religious products that believers desire - and whatever we may think about iders and young earth creationists - it's clear that they value the credibility of scientific rhetoric. So, too, do we see so-called progressive christians leveraging humanist rhetoric to reimagine their legendary wise man.
It's because these things are so broadly valued that they've been increasingly included in religion. We might view current attempts as contradictory or rooted in falsehoods - but place them in context as current attempts. Weighed down by immense cultural baggage. Their efforts will improve and have improved, again in context. Wholly aside from that, though, there is no reason to assume that we're incapable of making true assertions rooted in scientific facts and humanist values about the sacred and taboo, how things should be, assertions that bring an even greater number of us into a moral community. That's the kind of religion sagan was talking about, the religion of nature that crosby wrote about. Contemporary religious humanism. Distinct from traditional religious humanism in that it references natural facts, rather than facts of the divine, to establish it's religious assertions.
Generally speaking, religion accrues value making and value makers. The disposition of those things is a snapshot in time for a culture. Right now, science and humanism have immense amounts of credibility - and that makes them desirable items. Religions compete in the ideological marketplace by supplying the religious products that believers desire - and whatever we may think about iders and young earth creationists - it's clear that they value the credibility of scientific rhetoric. So, too, do we see so-called progressive christians leveraging humanist rhetoric to reimagine their legendary wise man.
It's because these things are so broadly valued that they've been increasingly included in religion. We might view current attempts as contradictory or rooted in falsehoods - but place them in context as current attempts. Weighed down by immense cultural baggage. Their efforts will improve and have improved, again in context. Wholly aside from that, though, there is no reason to assume that we're incapable of making true assertions rooted in scientific facts and humanist values about the sacred and taboo, how things should be, assertions that bring an even greater number of us into a moral community. That's the kind of religion sagan was talking about, the religion of nature that crosby wrote about. Contemporary religious humanism. Distinct from traditional religious humanism in that it references natural facts, rather than facts of the divine, to establish it's religious assertions.
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