It would all make sense if the church and churches which are devoted to religion weren’t also nasty, corrupt and immoral. They have all the things we keep saying will rid our society of societal ills. The ten commandments. Prayer. Meditation. Bible study. All that. And yet the leaders, pastors and members are themselves nasty, corrupt and immoral.
By denying the existence of God makes those who do irresponsible for their own actions with no repercusions
Religion has the rules that allow for society to function stably, starting with the Golden Rule, and working outward from there.
The problem with religion is that it requires belief, and belief is difficult to fabricate. Philosophers have debated for centuries whether you can have religions’ rules for social order, without actually having the religion itself, and it appears that probably you cannot. The belief in a divine authority is what makes those rules permanent and, I guess, sacrosanct.
But when today’s religious leaders insist on defining that belief in terms that are incompatible with modern scientific knowledge, the belief becomes impossible to maintain for many intelligent people. It’s not necessary for those leaders to do this. St. Augustine long ago realized that when science and the Bible conflict, that science must be given its due. The Bible, in his view, was given by God to a primitive tribe and so was expressed in terms that a primitive tribe could understand. A more sophisticated world needs to re-define those Biblical terms so that they are not out of keeping with a more sophisticated understanding of the natural world. That is the challenge for western religion today. How to define what is meant by the word “God” in terms that someone who has taken college Biology can understand. I believe that is possible, but I believe that few religious people try to do it.
So much pain, to the nation and the world, that the sexual revolution gave us and continuwa to givw all of us.
It's not that “religion” is so very good. It's that the purpose of government is to protect freedom while the purpose of religion is to guide and support our efforts to use that freedom well.
From the beginning of Xtianity there have been remarkably imperfect leaders. But even when Jimmy Swaggart gives in to strange and perverse appetites, Jesus remains Lord and is still the source of abundant graces.
The old Catholic line is that it takes a lot of manure to grow roses ... and we have manure aplenty! Rusty pipes can yet deliver pure water, and a bad salesman can deliver a good product.
I suppose we could consider whether we bring a “welfare mentality” to our religion. We don't have pastors so that they can do the heavy lifting for us. They assist while we conduct our own relariosnhip with God.
That's certainly my experience as a Catholic for 22 years. Only in particular and sacramental ways can pastors be though of as “between” me and God. They're at my side, and many are a little behind many very holy people. Some even hold them back.
But that's almost beside Ms. Parker's point. The government cannot heal our souls and ought not to try. But especially for about 150 years, though reaching back at least into the 18th century, many of the intelligentsia have tried to reduce God to an intellectual concept to be held or not ... it would make little difference.
Morality ceased to be about the best way to be a just human and became increasingly about easing suffering, one’s own and that of others. And if killing people was an easy way to ease their suffering and ours ... have at it! Of course, since “man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward,” this is a futile effort, and people suffer in mansions and in the Holodomor ... But those in soviet mansions lose their souls.
Ms. Parker raises good points
These training programs are designed to make people parrot the "correct" answers to questions--I doubt they actually do any good as far as preventing harassment (since the grownups who are perpetrators are already well aware they are doing something wrong--unless it is a question of innocuous behavior that the feminists have redefined as harassment). And to have to re-take the program every two years? Seems designed to create jobs for the people who run programs like these.