495 Rise and fall of theistic religion
How have theistic religions, such as
Christianity and the Islam, been so successful, persisting for so long?
My hunch is that this is because of a
clever combination: the universal, eternal, pure, and Platonic, not a plurality
but a single God, or Allah, together with the individual, specific, earthly,
fragile, weak and human, in he form of a saviour or prophet, a Christ or
Mohammed, to bring the universal down to earth. Christ succumbs in suffering
but is resurrected, re-connected with the eternal, and by his suffering offers
the bonus of salvation. The human need for earthly nuance, plurality,
indviduality, tragedy of contingency, is provided but remains connected to the
pure and vigorous, is reabsorbed in celestial universality and eternity.
Then, if that is correct, what about other
religions or philosophies, such as Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism? They
lacked the one or the other: the absolute and universal or the individual, the
earthly nuance. Buddhism and Confucianism are wisdoms of life that have no
absolutes of God. Taoism, by contrast, is oriented not to human tribulations
but to the system of nature as a whole, in its harmony and perfection. As such
it is like the God of Spinoza.
Their histories are patchy, with
intermissions and shifts, thinning out, and their survival was precarious.
In attempts at synthesis between them, as
in forms of neo-confucianism in China, is there a perspective for forging a
unity of the supreme and absolute with earthly contingency, justice and
individuality?
Totalitarian ideologies try to implement on
earth the absolute and pure, of race or doctrine, and cannot tolerate the grace
of nuance and tolerance. The craving for justice, taking into account
individual circumstance, in Aristotelian phronesis, needs to be suppressed by
terror. But sooner or later such ideologies will collapse for want of justice.
Theistic religions are not exempt from the
need for terror to sustain the absolute, as exhibited in old Christian crusades
and inquisition, and present Islamic fundamentalism, and terrorism, which have
the appeal of returning to the purity of old, rejecting the niceties and
decadence of democracy and diversity.
In Western society Enlightenment ideals,
inspired among others by Spinoza, have served to provide the pure, Platonic,
and universal in reason and knowledge. Elsewhere in this blog I noted the
demise of the old culture of delving for the deep, the fundamental, the
abstract, which is being replaced by the rush and race of the superficial. If
that is now being lost, what next will appear to satisfy the urge for the pure
and perfect? Will there be a return to God, or a new ideology?
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