Religion vs. Philosophy

Why is religion, and philosophy for that matter, important?

Originally, somewhere back in civilization’s deep, dark past, religion was the equivalent of science. Grog, in his cave, tried to make sense of the natural world around him; a nature that appeared to be a benefactor and source of fear at the same time. Truth and knowledge were sought. But it wasn’t long before some were able to use that fear and confusion as a source of control if it was manipulated properly.

Later still, someone developed the carrot and stick idea and added rewards from the gods in this life as well as the next, for proper behavior. The original morality consisted of a simple form of the Golden Rule, but it was necessary to include honoring and providing for the gods as part of that favored behavior; and as time passed many more extraneous rules were added to the code of behavior, which eventually ascended to greater importance than proper behavior towards each other. Then finally someone consolidated all the rules from all those gods into rules from just One God, and that mixture of mono/polytheism is where we stood at the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment and the ascendancy of science and the scientific method.

While science has been very successful at acquiring knowledge, the issues of morality (a code of conduct for how we treat each other), virtue (a code for our personal behavior), and of fulfillment and purpose in this life (and perhaps the next), appeared to be beyond the reach of the scientific method. So religion, with all its baggage, maintained its position of spiritual authority—albeit a reduced one.

Enter philosophy, the attempt to use reason to combine knowledge and the metaphysical. But the latter wasn’t subject to reason since there was no knowledge available (other than pure hearsay) with which we could deal. Thus two usually unstated assumptions were made: Human life is of ultimate value, and a laissez faire divine being created the universe. If neither of those was the case there was no possibility for good order or hope for an ultimate purpose.

Today, we stand on the verge of the realization that morality is the only thing that should be the subject of civilization’s legal code—we should never legislation personal virtue. Organized religion continues to fight this principle as if its life depends on it, which it does. It won’t submit to the ascendancy of philosophy for the same reason that governments resist submission to political and economic reason…..the ability to use power to favor an individual or an elite class structure.

Though we have made great strides in science and technology, it appears that we are no closer to conquering evil with good because we still depend far too much on emotion to make our decisions. Progress will not be made until we learn to employ our emotions as the engine to pursue our goals, with reason at the wheel.