William Deresiewicz: Disenchantment and Dogma

By Dilip -

Ross Douthat ponders why his brothers and sisters in the educated elite are averse to religious affiliation. The answer seems simple to me: because religion is a lie. Douthat is “puzzled” that secular-minded people think the rationality of religion has been disproven. We are puzzled that anyone as intelligent as Douthat (my favorite of the Times opinion columnists, though I often disagree with him) can still believe, not just in a higher power or cosmic intelligence, but in the whole menagerie of dogma: miracles, messiahs, resurrections, angels and demons and heavens and hells, the literal truth of ancient myths. Or, at least, I am puzzled by it. 

I believe that all religions are false; he believes that all religions are false but his. But Douthat is right about one thing, and it is a very big thing. He is right (the point is only touched on in this particular piece, but he has pursued it elsewhere, and it is the very premise of the kind of argu-ment he’s making here) that secularism leaves us in a moral and spiritual and in some sense emotional vacuum. It doesn’t tell us what to do or how to live; it doesn’t connect us to anything larger than ourselves; it doesn’t bring us into relationship with other people. It leaves us alone with our terrors, our confusions, our despair….

https://salmagundi.skidmore.edu/articles/360-disenchantment-and-dogma


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