Religion and Morality: A Static fait accompli or a Dynamic Possibility? by Douglas R McGaughey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Religion and Morality:
A Static fait accompli or a Dynamic Possibility?
Religion is a conundrum. We all recognize religion when we see it, but we can’t define it. Rather than waste ink on a new attempt to define religion, these reflections examine the religious conundrum with respect to what it says about humanity. Without denying the importance of the empirical examination of the human species biologically and psychologically, these reflections engage the empirical phenomena of religion as a product of humanity, the only species as far as we know that generates these phenomena that we readily identify as religion. In other words, the religious conundrum will be approached not by an empirical analysis of particular religious traditions. Such an investigation primarily establishes differences among religions. In contrast, our question is: What do religious phenomena suggest about humanity’s capacities and role in the order of things? By shifting from the empirical phenomena themselves to focus on the capacities that humanity must possess in order to generate religion, we can learn something profoundly significant about religion as well as identify what is universal in religion.
