Sunday, July 3, 2011

Is Religion Outdated, or the "Old Answer"?

"The taming and domestication of religion is one of the unceasing chores of civilization. " Christopher Hitchens

Do you agree? Or do you think that without religion, man is "lost", either literally in an afterlife, or metaphorically, in the 'here and now"? One truly believes in "God" as a personal being, while the other is a more "socialized" undestanding. Is the socialized understanding against what our Enlightened Founders understood to be the basis of our liberty?

Does it take religion to get man to "behave himself"? Or is man made to develop morally speaking? And how is that to be accomplished?  Is such "moral development" an innate nature, or is it something that is culturally defined and determined?

Is man only a blank slate that society and his environment "form"? and what and how does individual experience "form" or correlate to society's impact?

Does man's environment impact him physically, or does his physical pre-disposition impact his "understanding"? Science has determined that liberal and conservative bents are innate/genetic or pre-determined...How much is pre-determined by our genes...and how is this pre-determination influenced/impacted by one's environment...and how?

These are questions that science is studying, and bringing in new results and information that will impact the future of our understanding of religion... amd society at large! We must stay informed...

3 comments:

David said...

Completely out dated. Needs to be replaced.

Angie Van De Merwe said...

David,
Out of curiosity, do you adhere to chaos theory? And do you think that such a theory is applicable to society/government?

Our minds look for explainations and cause/effects. So, I have been wondering is the "free market", that is now world wide, has produced a "chaos" that undermines "societal order"? How do you see the ordering of society, when the world is fighting for resources, and struggling to survive?

Angie Van De Merwe said...

P.S. I tend to not hold to an absolute "order", in and of itself, as a good gauge for creating a "free society". Americans have had an "open-ended" position/view toward "law and order", where it concerned social change and individual liberties.