> If the fundamentalists are a problem, maybe there’s a problem with the fundamentals?
Not a bad argument, but if we need religion to be 100% accurate then we'd only ever support the most modern and innovative religion.
The issue is that most religions (including my own) place tremendous importance on the accuracy of teachings that go back hundreds or thousands of years. It was impossible for the original authors to know what we know today, yet we either fault them for it or declare any advances in knowledge to be heretical. Clearly, both of these positions are wrong in the extreme.
And yet, there's a good reason for that, too. If we subject religion to every modern idea, then the religion doesn't really stand for anything. It simply mirrors society back at it.
I don't know the solution to this. There may not be one (short of saying "f--- religion" as a whole, which I think would be a terrible mistake).
If anyone has ever participated in a 12-step program, you can see this in action in a much more modern way. Every program has an unchanging dogma, based on the assumption that the founders hit on something special and right, and that any changes would risk watering it down. As a result, you end up with programs that have ideas that would have been very mainstream when they were founded, but are now largely viewed as wrong-headed or even cruel. And yet, these programs continue to be a lifeline to many people who would have otherwise spiralled into self-destruction.
Not a bad argument, but if we need religion to be 100% accurate then we'd only ever support the most modern and innovative religion.
The issue is that most religions (including my own) place tremendous importance on the accuracy of teachings that go back hundreds or thousands of years. It was impossible for the original authors to know what we know today, yet we either fault them for it or declare any advances in knowledge to be heretical. Clearly, both of these positions are wrong in the extreme.
And yet, there's a good reason for that, too. If we subject religion to every modern idea, then the religion doesn't really stand for anything. It simply mirrors society back at it.
I don't know the solution to this. There may not be one (short of saying "f--- religion" as a whole, which I think would be a terrible mistake).
If anyone has ever participated in a 12-step program, you can see this in action in a much more modern way. Every program has an unchanging dogma, based on the assumption that the founders hit on something special and right, and that any changes would risk watering it down. As a result, you end up with programs that have ideas that would have been very mainstream when they were founded, but are now largely viewed as wrong-headed or even cruel. And yet, these programs continue to be a lifeline to many people who would have otherwise spiralled into self-destruction.
Again, what's the solution? Heck if I know...