Beyond Religious Conflicts--2

In the first posting to this blog, I suggested we might find it useful to search for a common denominator of all religious in the emotional comfort they provide their believers.  Today I will say a bit more about this comfort.

First, we should recall that in the Enlightenment period, the 18th century, reasonable thinkers often cited a belief in God as the element shared by believers as different as Native Americans, Europeans, Africans, Moslems, or any other believers Euro-Americans could imagine.  My sense is that the word 'God' has proven such a broad term and has so many different meanings to the various believers that it has lost his usefulness in seeking the unifying factor of the many faiths that find themselves in conflict with one another.  Otherwise, why would they fight the way they do?  Certainly their doctrines and dogmas differ more than they would vary if all these believers were speaking of the same God.

For that reason, it may be valuable to seek a unifying energy in the psychological comfort each group of believers finds in its religion.  Even though the types of comfort may vary greatly, the psychological gain of each would be both vital and a force they share.

For example, when the West shifted in the years between 1 AD and 325 AD from polytheism to the monotheism of Constantine I's Christianity, Europe was substituting the comfort of a centralized religious vision for the various comforts of a more diverse system.  Seen differently, it was sacrificing Diversity in an effort to establish Order.  Whereas Zeus/Jupiter, on the one hand, had sometimes had difficulty maintaining order in his own household and throughout the Olympian system, famously so in THE ILIAD,  Jesus/Yahweh, on the other hand, had 'given' Constantine victory in a great battle.  The psychological gains of diversity and order differ, but they are both comforting.

Similarly, for the family of Abraham, members of a small tribe endangered by the great empires surrounding them in the second millennium BC, it was no doubt comforting to identify with a single omnipotent being like Yahweh who for regular sacrifices of a few birds, sheep, goats, even an occasional son, would grant them his protection as well as all the lands between the Nile and the Euphrates.  Later, the followers of Mohammed received a comforting empowerment and justification from Allah for their campaigns to conquer even greater lands as they swept across north Africa in a crescent stretching from eastern Europe to Spain.  Again, differing comforts but equally vital ones psychologically.

With such examples in mind, I find it useful to apply a view to religions that is both polymorphic and psychological--in short, that is psycho-polytheistic.  Since this approach is not original with me and may have been used by the early Hindus, by Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, and many others, I refer to it as neo-psycho-polytheism  (NPPT, for short), a term which is both descriptive and good-natured. 

In coming weeks, NPPT will allow us to consider a variety of religions as well as such associated entities as the French Grail, Mary Magdalena, the Black Madonna, Black Sarah, Holy Blood, Deepest France, fictional knowledge, all of which figure in an eccentric pair of novels I will publish either this summer or in the early fall. 

Let us continue this conversation with your comments and objections.

Beyond Religious Conflicts: Beyond Religious Conflicts

Beyond Religious Conflicts: Beyond Religious Conflicts: "This new blog proposes to explore a way of thinking that seeks to transcend religious conflicts by exploring a common denominator of all rel..."

Beyond Religious Conflicts

This new blog proposes to explore a way of thinking that seeks to transcend religious conflicts by exploring a common denominator of all religions, not just those that descend from Abraham.

Most of us are appalled by the numerous and dangerous conflicts between Christians and Moslems, Jews and Moslems, Christians and Jews, Protestants and Catholics, not to mention Moslems and Hindus, Buddhists and Hindus, Sunnis and Shiites, Believers and Atheists, even between Atheists and Agnostics.  Wherever we journey, we often are in danger of wounding someone's sacred cow by word or action.  Rather than bringing order or conflict to the world, religions appear to lead to arguments and wars.

For example, a few years back I was having lunch with a good friend, a well-educated man who had been born in Brooklyn, in a largely Jewish environment, and through his intelligence and diligence had made a distinguished career for himself as a doctor, a scientist, a professor and consultant.  At some point in our conversation, he amazed me (I had grown up in a totally different region and religion) by saying,  "You can't imagine how startled I was in school to start studying the Protestant Revolution and to read about the wars it set off.  Until that point in my life I had no idea that Christians killed Christians.  I thought they only killed Jews.  What a relief!"  His amazement and relief still showed in his face and his body language.

What a commentary on the effects of our religions that little anecdote was.  It and other tales like it lead us (me at least) to search for a way around such destructive misunderstandings.  And that search has caused me to wonder what trait is it that religions share.  What is their common denominator?

In this blog in the weeks ahead, I wish to explore the answer that makes most sense to me.  Stated briefly it is that peoples believe in their religions because they seek comfort from them.  Whatever the religions' differing claims about the nature of reality, about truth, about the past and the future, about causes, about our sources of knowledge--however these differ, the religious find that their beliefs bring them comfort.  They have a psychological benefit.

Therefore, I take this psychological function seriously and plan, with your help, to explore it in future installments of this blog.  I invite you to share your thoughts with me.  So please feel free to respond as you see fit.