The reluctance to
reason about religious beliefs must be overcome.
The recognition of other beliefs (other religions as well as other beliefs in our religion), the desire to understand, the hope to explain to another, the wish to know the truth, and the attempt to unify all of one's beliefs into a coherent whole are motivations for
reasoning about religious beliefs.
Not exact matches
Gary: The
reason I'm hesitant
about your definition of «
religious» is because, as you say, your definition has everything to do with your personal views and
beliefs, and not as much to do with how people who call themselves
religious perceive themselves, nor with the 150 or so years of academic research into
religious phenomena.
Having an academic discussion
about religious views and theological
beliefs is fine enough, but there is certainly no
reason to go into a discussion of who is right an wrong because frankly, you do not know.
Which leads Eberstadt to this: «There is plenty of
reason for pessimism
about what the future holds for
religious belief if by «pessimism» one means further decline.
Questioning long held
religious beliefs can bring
about very compelling
reasons for making this change.
Just
about everyone agrees that one
reason religious belief and practice have flourished in the United States, in comparison with Western Europe, is that one state after another in the early republic ended the «establishment» of a preferred denomination and allowed all
religious groups to....