Think Again: The religious mind-set [View all]

[rug]

Isolation in private virtual universes, in which death and mayhem have no permanent consequences, makes radical cruelty less unthinkable.

By JONATHAN ROSENBLUM
12/27/2012 14:31

I’m often struck by the commonalities in ways of thinking shared by religious believers of different faiths – or at least by Christians and Jews. (I do not know enough to comment on Eastern religions, and with respect to Islam, those common elements seem to be increasingly overwhelmed by resentment, xenophobia, and a burgeoning death cult.) The morning after the 2012 US presidential election, political analyst Michael Barone described the major division in American society primarily as one between religious belief and non-belief. On one side are those who are “traditionally religious, personally charitable, appreciative of entrepreneurs, and suspicious of government”; on the other side are those who are “secular..., less charitable, suspicious of business, and supportive of government as an instrument of liberal causes.”

He noted that the old religious wars between devout Protestants and believing Catholics are largely a thing of the past, as the two groups find themselves increasingly similar in their thinking on a wide range of social issues. He might have added Orthodox Jews as well.

ONE AREA where the divide between believers and nonbelievers stands out boldly is in response to tragedy – whether at the hands of nature or man. The religious believer tends to use tragedy as a spur to introspection about himself and his society and as a means to work on his relationship with his fellow man and with God. He lives in a world rich in metaphor and filled with hints as to how to improve his own behavior.

The nonbeliever, raised on the Enlightenment confidence in unaided human reason, is far less likely to look within. While he may pay rhetorical lip service to the need for national stocktaking in the wake of tragedy, he does not mean himself. That stocktaking is for the purpose of identifying the villains and coming up with new laws to restrain them.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=297529