Ethics & Public Policy

Essays by Harry T. Cook June 27, 2008

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To read "The Real Question(s)," this weekend's essay, scroll down a bit.

An interesting report released this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reveals that an overwhelming number of Americans "believe in God" and in "eternal life." The report made much of evidence suggesting a growing tolerance of religious differences. I think the real question is why people still believe at all. To post a comment, go to http://www.harrytcook.com [http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001SeJ-OJGRUBV8Q8IBwU93LNvJDfCnmqEUK4F_WS3_pWlRD9v1HfU6ATT4oDlpSgYlEv1SXenWAO_9DULsysMSngF-zWQkeYjcX2hSfn7GIMZ86OAyCIafRg==]

and click on "sign my guestbook." To converse with me directly, just reply to this e-mail.

Harry T. Cook __________________________________________________

By Harry T. Cook

Religion as a topic does not get much media attention these days unless it involves some lunatic shouting Allah akbar just prior to pulling the trigger on a suicide bomb, or a disturbed gunman claiming God told him to shoot an abortion doctor, or a television evangelist caught in flagrante delicto with the lead soprano of the praise choir, or a priest standing in the dock accused of child molestation. Yet earlier this week the newspapers and television news programs devoted considerable space and time to research published recently by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life - a report called "The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey."

The primary and interesting yield of the report is that 70 percent of Americans affiliated with a religion or community within a religious institution agree that fealty to almost any religion can lead believers to eternal life. Sixty percent say they believe God is a person with whom human beings can have a relationship. The good news, of course, is the broader tolerance the researchers say they have documented among religiously affiliated Americans, though Protestants in general seem less inclined than Catholics to say that a religion other than their own is likely to lead to heavenly rewards.

I hope Pope Benedict XVI is listening - he who in that old game "valid-er than thou" has pronounced my non-Roman Catholic affiliation "defective."

Meanwhile, though, the real question is why do 21st-Century human beings believe in God at all, much less the idea of life after death? That's an inquiry into which I'd be willing to conduct extensive research ... if the Pew Forum would give me some money.

If I were to obtain a grant for such a project, these are a few of the questions I would pose to believers:

1. What in your experience has led you to say you believe in a deity with whom you can have a personal relationship?

2. Please state for the record any visual, aural, tactile, gustatory or olfactory evidence with which others might be able to identify that caused you so to believe?

3. Please be so kind as to note any distinctions you perceive between "knowledge" and "belief" and between "faith" and "reason."

4. Do you generally make decisions and choices on the basis of knowledge or belief?

5. For you, does knowledge lead to belief - that is, do you require yourself to "know" something before you affirm "belief" in it?

6. How familiar are you with the scripture or literature of your chosen religion, and how do you approach its reading and study?

7. This business about "eternal life" and "life after death" - what has led you to believe in it? What evidence of an objective nature have you found or encountered that would support such a belief? Do you "know" something that has led you to this belief?

8. If you are one of those surveyed by the Pew Forum who said that any religion may be a path to eternal life, please say why, then, you are a (fill in the blank, e.g. Christian, Jew, Catholic, Methodist, Mormon, etc.) as opposed to an adherent of another religion.

9. Jesus of Nazareth is credited with saying something to the effect that the kingdom (or "domain") of God is within you. What do you make of that? Might that proposition suggest that Jesus - or people putting words in his mouth - thought that what some call "god" might be a human potential rather than a transcendent power?

10. One Roman Catholic bishop in reacting to the Pew Forum data said that his church both knew and proclaimed the "truth," and that any contradiction of such proclamations, at least by Catholics, would be tantamount to heresy and unfaithfulness. Do you think it tolerable in this first decade of the 21st Century and in light of what science thus far has demonstrated about the realities of the universe for any one person or any one religion to claim to have a corner on "truth"?

11. What for you constitutes "truth"?

12. Would you willingly suffer persecution or even death to defend the validity of any one of your religious beliefs? If so, why? If not, why not?

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© Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.