Religion & Evil
Raymond Tallis has some inconclusive thoughts.
Resolved in what way? Scientifically? Philosophically? Theologically? Empirically? Spiritually? Net positive or negative using “the greatest good for the greatest number” as a yardstick? Or one or another deontological assessment of good and evil? Or sheer numbers alone?
Instead, we are left with a jumble of religious denominations intent on proselytizing the Word. Scouring the globe to preach the faith. And why not given what is at stake? It’s only the fate of your eternal soul.
And history among the ecclesiastics is no less written by the winners. There are still only a relative handful of major religious denominations that [by far] sustain the largest flocks.
On the other hand, some have argued that religion here is more in sync with materialism. That in order to understand the role that religion plays in our daily lives it must be fitted into one or another historical evolution of political economy. Thus in the West as feudalism gave way to mercantilism and burgeoning world trade configured into full-blown capitalism, religion itself configured from focusing the beam less on the “next world” and more on “this world”. Protestantism and capitalism making a much more seamless fit.
As for “returning established religion to a central place in our cultures and power structures” just look at how this is unfolding in America now as Trumpworld forges an allegiance with the multitudes that encompass the evangelicals. That Trump may be playing them for suckers doesn’t make that demographic segment itself go away in November.