It still creates a plethora of moral issues. We're advocating unfounded belief. When we say things like "God transcends reason," then the terrorists have won. There might as well be no scientific method or human society since anything goes. And as Dawkins put it, accepting a crazy worldview and meaning of the universe is virtually regressing back to childhood psychology. As adults we have gained hypothetical thought processing and the knowledge that things aren't black and white, but rather subtle shades of gray. But religion advocates returning to black and white and bucking the truth in return for comfort. And while the idea of a cold, dark universe may sound scary, that's only part of the picture -- the universe is impossibly fantastic in design and beauty. Sitting breathless beneath a tranquil sky illuminated by a full moon, or beholding the intricate workings of beautiful phenomena -- those are examples of where true beauty and cosmic understanding lie.
Yes, indeed. However, I would also advocate a tempering of the rational. If one stands by reason to the exclusion of religion - or at least something spiritual - one's actually lessened themselves, and have only a half-view of the world, as surely as the purely religious is limiting. Forget organized religion for a second - yes, I advocate that, too, but that's unimportant here - and just consider it as faith and reason, expressions of the spirit and the mind. To fully realise what it is that makes one human, one must strike the balance between these. For most societies of history, things have been almost wholly spiritual - now, we've swung to the fully rational. Both have problems. Thus, strike for the middle.
Okay, that's not my idea. Actually, it was essentially something I read in Edith Hamilton's Greek Way, in speaking of the Classical Athenians. Her stance is that they accomplished what they did, the clarity and the power of their art, because they had both faith and reason in due measure. They looked at things rationally - questioned orthodox, even - but still had that power of spirit that is faith. No other culture was ever so balanced. If one goes to far to one side or the other, to faith or to reason, reality is lost. If we lose sight of either, we lose our humanity.
My desire in life is therefore to always find that balance. If we throw out our religion, wholly disdain it, we not only deceive ourselves (exchanging a god or orthodoxy for a more insidious type of self-worship, often) into a false, and very, very dangerous sense of freedom; if we throw out reason, we lose reality, and might as well not be.
Actually, ZeaLitY, though you're not exactly religious from what I know, you do seem to me to have that sort of classical Greek attitude (or, at least how Hamilton speaks of it - she is a bit, um, philhellenic), for another attribute is one that refuses to see life as grey (here I don't mean truth, or things, but the experiences of life.) Their tragedy is so tragic because life is beautiful. An idea of having things to their full experience, good and bad. Never comfort in exchange for truth.
