The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #136446   Message #3117621
Posted By: Lighter
20-Mar-11 - 01:54 PM
Thread Name: BS: Another View of Religion
Subject: RE: BS: Another View of Religion
Any religion worthy of belief has to promote humanitarian principles that ultimately benefit everyone. That includes unbelievers.

To be an actual "religion," it would help if it claimed a "believable" divine sanction. And it would have to promise to reward good deeds and punish bad ones, just to keep people on the straight and narrow. Obviously this would have to happen in an afterlife because it doesn't seem to happen here.

Many popular (though technically often heretical) interpretations of the monotheistic faiths approach this condition. However, they are often ridiculed as "New Age Nonsense." Sometimes your very religious neighbors will go further than mere ridicule.

But this ideal faith would have to be founded on that "believable" divine sanction. Otherwise, no go. Because not everyone wants to love his or her neighbor. Unless the neighbor is really good-lookin'.