Hmmm… it’s happened again. I start to make a teeny tiny comment on someone else’s blog and suddenly it becomes an essay. Well, this time I’m resisting the temptation to reprint it here as a post, because I think it’s actually better if you go to the original blog to see what I’m responding to and read the other comments. This one is on religion’s role in creating or facilitating morality.
See http://de-conversion.com/2007/07/04/humans-do-not-need-religion-to-be-moral/#comment-5651. In brief, I agree with the writer’s assertion that religion isn’t necessary for morality, and support this with reference to Erich Fromm, but also call to mind M. Scott Peck’s assertion that religion may be a useful transitional tool in the movement toward maturity.
Some of my previous posts that are relevant to this topic (and which also began life as Comments on other people’s blogs) are:
Love as yardstick of truth
What do I believe?
Tia Azulay 22Jul07
Copyright © 2007 Tia Azulay
Tia
I am trying not to get embroiled in the ping, but rather to one or two comments in this post itsself.
— religion isn’t necessary for morality
The goal that I reach for is post-religion, post-morality. The idea that Love is the yardstick of truth appeals much more than any necessity of religion or morality. Isn’t what one is searching for always going to be bigger than these human notions?
–a useful transitional tool
I like this because you can get into mystical fascism where you start to exclude others at different stages in their journey. One thing I have been fond of saying is “Religion is disposable, what you need is Sprituality”. By doing so I have set up a dualism. In n years time I might be saying “Enough of all this Spirituality, thats such a human term, what you really want is …”.
If we are moving towards the truth, we are moving towards a great cloud of unknowing. We need to continuously unknow what we now know in order to get there.
Thanks for your comments, Nic! Re Spirituality – yes, it’s the current buzzword – the option often chosen when the speaker doesn’t opt for atheism or humanism because there is a need to acknowledge the existence of something larger than ourselves, or simply of the limits of our current knowledg. Many in the New Age tradition use it too, but their practices are often overtly religious, and this overlap already creates confusion.
… and I’ve just read this post which I found through my Tag Surfer which seems relevant to the point about Love: http://masbury.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/what-i-learned-from-church-that-didnt-ring-true-and-what-i-have-been-learning-lately/
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
Hi Idetrorce, thanks for stopping by. I’d be interested to know specifically what you don’t agree with, as I covered many different points in all the posts and comments referred to above! (That’s if you’re interested in having a conversation, of course. If you just needed to say you disagree with me… fine. You’re not the only one, I’m sure!)