(March 27, 2022 at 8:09 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote:(March 27, 2022 at 8:07 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: I think christopher hitchens used to point out that there's no problem with fundamentalism aside from the contents of what is seen to be fundamental. There's no sense in giving a shit religion a pass as though all religions just had to be shit. It's worse than that. They don't have to be.
Really? Can a religion not be shit and remain a religion?
I think it could. In principle.
What if there was a religion that consisted of only a simple and truthful doctrine? Take your pick as to what that doctrine might be. Buddhism's Four Noble Truths... something like that... but with no doctrine of reincarnation.
I think that what makes religions problematic is that they are founded on falsehoods, engage in interpersonally destructive practices, and fail to question the truth of their own claims. On paper, it seems possible to remove these aspects from a given religion while still letting it retain something we might call religious in nature but yet not have the problems you listed above. Modern Quakerism (the liberal strains anyway) might come close to matching that ideal.
