Religion, Reality, or Both
Created 9/22/2003; Revised 9/22/2003 ÓDavid E. Epperly, http://www.kingsmission.org/

I have a friend who often asserts that religion is a way that people exert control and influence over a population. In part, I agree, but I do not think that is a complete or fair assessment of religion. I believe that adults, like children, need positive environmental influences so that the entire population benefits. Most religions provide influence through a loose codification of ethics and morals of 'holy' writings that are ascribed to be the work of either a deity or 'unusually good' person. As a community of people, there is a certain level of interpersonal reinforcement of those writings. And, while this can have a good effect on the population, I think there is still more.

It is interesting that we often find a good correlation between religious thought and the laws that govern most of society, again, with the hope of being a benefit to the whole and appealing to the sensibilities of those subject to the law. And, at a deeper level, most of us appreciate the meaning of a law even though we may be subject to a penalty under it; for example, the way we process the event of receiving a traffic citation for unsafely 'running a red light'.

I am convinced that the correlation between religious thought and 'the definition of good/lawful behavior' is not a random association. I think that both are an attempt on our part to codify and describe something that is designed into our beings; a sort of a-priori knowledge that we all hold to varying levels of clarity. Yes, certainly we have learned that many of our rules somehow ensure our survival, but I think there is more, there is a sense of emotional “goodness” associated with certain ideas that transcends an environmentally produced learning – a “goodness” that, for some, becomes more important than life itself – the “principle”.

And I believe that this 'designed-in' knowledge is placed 'within' us by the Entity that reified our existence and the context in which we operate. It might be obvious, and self-evident to most, that we experience great difficulty in our ability to express and codify the notions that we all grasp in much greater abstraction deep within our 'being'.

I believe most religious writings and expression are genuine attempts to describe that a-priori connection we have with our Creator; though some are obvious, or not, counterfeits.

And this leads us to the idea of trying to classify these writings and expressions into categories of 'accuracy', 'usefulness', ‘motivation', etc. One method that can be helpful is a 'pragmatic limits/extremes test': we take an idea or behavior and consider the extremes of it being non-existent (0%), on the one side, and fully pervasive (100%), on the other side, and then consider the implications of that scenario. This process can help us see potential societal benefits and/or faults within the idea or behavior - asking the questions: "does this scale well within society? How will society benefit or be harmed by the widespread existence or non-existence of this idea or behavior?”

Another method is by observing how closely/significantly secular societal legislation mirrors and/or addresses the idea or behavioral issue. Where there is good correlation, it is clear that the society values having a 'ruling' on that issue.

As we evaluate an idea, we should further attempt to identify whether the idea is true on an absolute scale or merely situational. I think that, ideas that have only situational or relative significance are not yet abstracted sufficiently to properly analyze; an idea that is perfectly abstracted and constructed will be either absolutely true or absolutely false. Since our abstractions tend to be incomplete, we often must rely on 'best-effort' abstractions and approximations in our evaluations.

Once we have personally assessed an idea and found it 'worthy' or 'accurate', we then face a potentially difficult inner struggle to reconcile our myriad of other beliefs and our behavior with that idea.

And in this one place, I find the Christian writings rather unique; they tell us that we should make unrelenting efforts toward personal growth to achieve the 'good' behavior, that no matter how hard we try - we will fail, and that our willingness to admit our short-coming will bring us a reward of a restored relationship with our Creator and, adjunctly, our society. From my viewpoint, the Christian writings correlate all too well with reality. And I’ll bet there’s something deep within you, resigned to human limitation as it may be, that desires and drives a more perfect you.