Like a lot of Atheists I am fascinated by religion. It is interesting watching western religions trying to be moderate and acceptable in the face of science and general opinion. I was listening to a discussion about the new Arch-Bishop of Canterbury at 4 in the morning on Saturday night (picking Abby up after a night out in case you where wondering) and it was interesting to hear various church dignitaries reactions to the so called liberalisation of the church.
Now all religions have a problem in modern times and that is because things they traditionally gave explanations for – like the world around us and how it came into being etc. have got now got thanks to science perfectly good explanations that don’t need God. There are two approaches to dealing with this – refutation, that is saying that whilst it might look like we have an explanation it is in fact wrong because God did it and we are not up to understanding it. Or religion can embrace science and from then on in the religion is fighting against a “God of the gaps”. What is startling is that even some creationists try to reconcile science with their beliefs. Its not just science either. As attitudes to different social behaviours – the acceptance of women as full members of society, the acceptance of homosexuality as a valid alternative, in the increasing commercial usage of the traditional day of rest etc – then any religion must change its attitudes in line with the changes in society. However changing with the times leads to an unstoppable erosion of the basic premises of any religion and once this starts you have real issues because if one law or rule is mutable why aren’t others? and if the mechanism that drives the changing of rules is a reaction to external influences rather than theological reasoning then its difficult to maintain any theological authority either.
This is all made worse by the fact that by social convention criticism of religions is not considered acceptable and so each institution is left with a confused and often contradictory set of behaviours that have not been honed into something workable by the normal processes of debate and dissent that shape our society. I was going to say that it will be interesting to watch how the new Arch Bishop deals with this but the sad truth is that he won’t – all that will happen is that the Church of England will slide further into obscurity and irrelevance by failing to either fulfil a social need (except perhaps at grass roots level) or to provide a coherent and relevant voice as part of society.
Posted by Mark at March 3, 2003 11:40 AMQuite so. And well said.
Posted by: Richard Wright at March 3, 2003 01:19 PM