The Rise of Rational Religiousity

I really like the guys over at Pandagon. As I was explaining to a friend over a couple beers yesterday, there are different levels to blog reading: those you read when you have no time to read anyone else, and various levels that exist around those few blogs. Maybe it's because they reside in the same demographic as me - either way, Pandagon's one of my daily reads.

That being said, I think the boys over at Pandagon are just slightly missing the point with this post, which talks about the irrationality of the Religious Right.

I think the views of the Religious Right are perfectly rational - and here's why:

Everything I say here is based on the writings of Karen Armstrong, a former Catholic nun turned religious scholar (and a few others, but primarily her). She postulates that there are two understandings of Christianity - those associated with pure faith, or the mythos, and those based on reason.

Pre-Enlightenment, most of the population based their religious understanding on the mythos. This meant it was very easy for the religious establishment to manipulate the opinions of the masses.

Fast forward a few hundred years. The Enlightenment has liberated the masses from the yoke of the Church, and provided them with Reason to understand God's world. Reason and logic can explain evolution, inter-state commerce, and the secrets of the human genome. What they cannot do, however, is explain the virtues and failings of the human soul - or the place of God in modern life.

This is where modern religion has excelled. Instead of simply appealing to the mythos, or emotive arguments for faith, religion has reinforced emotion with logic. It's easy to argue with emotion - well, not easy, but not entirely fruitless - but when you use emotional underpinnings as a starting point and seal the deal with logic, then there's almost nothing you can do if you're an outsider to this belief system. The problem is that you don't understand the logic of the faith.

Now, I'm not going to lie - I don't really understand it either. My religious beliefs were realized more in my studies of cosmic physics than cosmic religion. But I think the problem is that we're trying to target the rationality, but not the faith. Until we can change the faith, no appeal to economic interests will reap any rewards.

Tax cuts aren't the issue. It's the way that tax cuts have been rationalized as a part of the faith. Sadly, with many people, we're seeing issues such as tax cuts acquire an almost religious element - rationality circling back on itself to create a new set of beliefs. That's what needs to be fought.