Religion & Evil
Raymond Tallis has some inconclusive thoughts.
Of course this is the part where the focus shifts from religion examined, assessed and judged by theologians, philosophers, scientists, politicians, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, etc., to the fact that all of us as individuals come to embody it in all manner of conflicting and contradictory ways. Given all of the very different lives that we live.
We start with the part where the evolution of life on earth has culminated in a species able “think up” God and religion as one possible explanation for existence itself. The source one can go to for all things ontological and teleological. And given all of the profoundly complex and problematic contexts in which any particular individual might take this, sure, there are going to be any number of examples of what are deemed by most to be “good things” coming from the “vast, rich cultural legacy owing to, or inspired by, religious belief”.
On the other hand…
Of course: Assessments that only intellectuals are prone to dispensing. I try to to grasp it in terms of my own life but nothing really clicks. Yes, given the role that Christianity has played historically in the shaping of “Western culture”, there’s no getting around the manner in which it sinks into any number of relationships. But how on earth am I to connect the dots here between Christianity as a “schemata” and the manner in which my own unique experiences led me to abandon it in favor of moral and spiritual nihilism?
As soon as I make the attempt to translate this particularly abstruse “intellectual contraption” into something more substantive – existentially substantive – and make it more pertinent to the life that I live, it all just vanishes into thin air.
Though, sure, others might read it, and make considerable sense of it in terms of their own lives. And, if so, tell us about it.