Categories: uncategorized
Date: 01 September 2005 10:25:43
Been reading a new book by a non-realist theologian who most religious types would describe as being pretty progressive, to some shockingly so. In it he states that the purpose of religion is to comfort us. To me this isn't half progressive enough. OK, the afflicted need comforting and at sometime or another we're all afflicted, although in the wider scheme of things this is all relative, i.e., I haven't heard of thousands of starving children in the home counties, not even Tyneside. If the purpose of religion is to comfort us then this leads to all sorts of problems, not least religion becoming the opium of the masses. Marx wasn't having a go at religion when he said religion was the opium of the masses, he was merely observing a social reality. If the purpose of religion is to comfort us then we all become stressed and harrassed secondary teachers desperately trying to keep our heads above water until the safety of the end of term. Life, I think, should be much better than that, though in order to make it better requires courage and responsibility. Personally, I tend to think that the purpose of religion is to make us courageous enough in the face of the universal problems of life (death and income tax) that we don't need to use religion as opium. If we were to cultivate courage and responsibility then we would find that we wouldn't need to use religion as opium because our fears (of death and income tax) would soon give way to a wider gratitude for the possibilities of life, which it is our responsibility to actualise. Start to develop this free thinking courage in yourself and you'll find it starts to get a bit chilly, that's ok, it does tend to get colder the higher up you get, ask any mountaineer. Bertrand Russell was well acquainted with this phenomenon.
"All sorts of intellectual systems - Christianity, Socialism, Partriotism, etc., - are ready, like orphan asylums, to give safety in return for servitude. A free mental life cannot be as warm and comfortable and sociable as a life enveloped in a creed."
Drugs really don't do anything for you.