3/08/2010

Religion Without Mysticism?


Commonweal 

 Luke Timothy Johnson

 Dry Bones: Why Religion Can't Live Without Mysticism

The great religious battle of our time is not the one being waged between believers and unbelievers. To be sure, that is an important and certainly a noisy conflict—never before have the voices of religion’s despisers been more numerous, loud, or confident than those of our proselytizing atheists today.
More significant even than that struggle, though, is the clash occurring within religious traditions. The battle within each of the three great monotheistic religions is between the exoteric and esoteric versions of each. .......more from Commonweal 



Pin It

1 comment:

moonrat said...

Fine article. Reminds me of a recent email chat with a friend in Europe who is a staunch atheist.

His basic chant is, "when you're dead you're dead and that's it." This reminded me of a lecture by Alan Watts who addressed this issue. To paraphrase him from memory Watts said:

"Let's look at that for a moment. What kind of a person says, "when you're dead you're dead, see?" Who says something like that? Well, that's someone who wants to rule the world. If they can get you to buy that, they become god.

And that's why the guardians of the game can't stand mystics, because mystics don't fear death, and death is the final weapon the guardians hold over the heads of anyone who will listen to them."

He develops it more, but that's the gist of it.