Rational Religion


Contact the author:
tuppennyprofet - at - aol - dot - com
(translate into a real email address)

Vive la Différence!

 

The most important human resource, both for any given group or nation and for the species at large, may be our diversity.

 

 Biological diversity is probably necessary for species survival, given the vagaries of an impersonal and poorly understood Universe.

 

But individual intellectual diversity, historically, has been responsible for just about all the "advances" or innovations which have cumulatively built our culture. 

 

It has also produced some pretty spectacular horrors, but that's the flip side that comes with everything.

 

Conformity and intellectual conservatism, then, may have limited short term value;  in keeping the individual from being burned at the stake, for example, per poor Giordano Bruno.  But many of the heretic Bruno's insights, for which he stubbornly died,  have in the succeeding millennium proven to be remarkably accurate; much more than those of the celebrated mystic called Nostradamus who needs a complex fabric of generous allowances to make his "predictions" seem to come "true."

 

The crucial thing to remember is that intellectual tolerance and religious generosity of spirit cost next to nothing - outside of a little possible discomfort at having to put up with other people's ridiculous ideas - and may pay off for the society down the line in ways which you cannot now anticipate. 

 

Although I cannot make the stretch, myself, by analogy I can  understand how many - probably most - other human beings find it grossly  illogical to contemplate a world which was not "created" by some purposeful intelligence; therefore, God.

 

I only ask that they, by the same analogic process, understand that I find their universe as  illogical as they find mine.   And that they leave me alone to pursue my own connections and permutations as will I abandon them to theirs. 

 

Unfortunately too many (not all of them just insecure) people find the simple fact that I exist; and worse, write; a threat to their beliefs and their very way of life.

 

I repeat, as I have many times in this treatise, in various ways, that my purpose is not evangelical; nor even critical, despite the occasional gratuitous smart-ass remark. 

 

I simply hope to provide a satisfying framework of belief for other minds who work in ways similar to mine, but do not yet understand why.