Bland feels there is nothing wrong with religion per se, a life of spirituality per se, or even the idea of God per se. One problem is that all we have collectively available to us is a set of pretty much fossilized, institutionalized forms that frankly do not support uniquely individual quests or paths. Another problem is that our reservoir of basic knowledge and our means of non-tribal-but-now-global communications has multiplied so far and so fast that our collective symbolic images of "GOD" have in no way kept pace. So now they all seem quaint, old-fashioned, and more than faintly ridiculous. Now the void has begun to be filled with other "images", "faiths", and "beliefs"...in science, government, natural selection, etc., that are all equally dubious but now command that same reservoir of passionate personal identification and belief that was once directed toward God and religion.
Mankind created "God" and "gods". Now official religion has pretty much ceased to evolve the concept and is trapped in its own past. Materialistic science has stepped into the breach, reacting against religious excesses with equivalent dogmatism. Bland would be not surprised at all by a broadly-based swing back in the other direction...against pure scientific materialism...at some point in the future (not next week, of course, or necessarily in our lifetimes). |
