John > But enough religion-bashing.
I think you are trying to trap me. You asked me for my solution to a fundamentally religious problem/dilemma so my suggestion was to get away from the cause of the problem, namely religion. One can't have it both ways.
If you want religion you will have to accept all that goes with it --- the self-righteousness, intolerance, religious wars, inquisitions, conquests, persecutions, holocausts, bigotry, inhumanity etc etc.
> We humans are stuck with this god-loving tendency.
I have no God-loving tendency, that is if you are talking about the God who resides in one these large buildings around the place, usually with various kinds of crosses, stars or other icons affixed to the walls, and whose basic tenet is if you are not for me then you are against me and, meanwhile, let's go and kill the guy in the next building and grab his stuff, all in "my" name, of course.
> How do we work around it to construct a society where we can emphasis the good aspects and minimize the other craziness?
I don't agree that it's our job to do that. In my opinion, each individual has to find his own way to enlightenment, salvation, happiness, whatever. And that's my fundamental difference with organized religion, or with socialism for that matter, which professes that this can be done en masse, in the collective, and usually by coercion.
Meanwhile, I think that do unto others as you would have them do unto you is a good place to start, even for the self-righteous ones who, smugly, like to proclaim their own virtue. |
