Jag vet inte om jag frstr allt i trdstarten. Men religionen ser jag som irriterande relevant idag, inklusive sklart religionskritiken. Nr man kunde ha haft intrycket att vrlden genomgick en sekularisering, s har religionen uppvisat nnu en terkomst. Men "fundamentalism eller fanatism" ser jag dock som en mer begrnsad diskussion. Det r inte s mnniskan i frsta hand sett p religion genom tiderna, utan det r nog en lokal sak som har att gra med modern utrikespolitik, terrorism och ett politiskt instabilt omrde runtomkring Israel. Intresset fr 'sakliga fakta', som man ser det hos en del moderna humanisters kritik av kristendom, ter sig ocks snarast som naiv. Jag lste The God Delusion och det framgick d att Dawkins inte frstr sig p religion ver huvud taget, s han saknar den mest elementra kvalifikation fr att skriva sin bok.
Religion ser jag som ett frvetenskapligt frhllningsstt till kunskap. Vetenskapen brjar egentligen sin bana med religionen. Mnniskorna i de tidiga civilisationerna visste inte att de sysslade med religion och myter, utan det var med stort allvar det mtte bde vrlden och sitt eget ddliga vara. De iaktog noga stjrnorna och rstiderna, och de drog de ndvndiga slutsatserna av det faktum att om det fanns gudar s var de ofta ganska elaka.
Men om vi ska tala om dialektik och religion fr man inte missa Hegel. Hegel talar om positiv religion som ngot dligt, och nskar i stllet att mnniskor utvecklar sin egen sedlighet. Detta r en text frn den unge Hegel. Den r inte s vrst intressant i sin helhet, utan mer i form av enskilda observationer och formuleringar. Typiskt fr Hegel r frmgan att se hur ngot positivt/auktoritrt/formellt utvecklas till ngot korrupt och tyrraniskt.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/a...s/pc/index.htm
"Christianity has emptied Valhalla, felled the sacred groves, extirpated the national imagery as a shameful superstition, as a devilish poison, and given us instead the imagery of a nation whose climate, laws, culture, and interests are strange to us and whose history has no connection whatever with our own."
"Men thus corrupt, men who must have despised themselves from the moral point of view, even though in other respects they prided themselves on being Gods favorites, were bound to create the doctrine of the corruption of human nature and adopt it gladly. For one thing, it corresponded with experience; for another, it satisfied their pride by exculpating them and giving them in the very sense of calamity a reason for pride; it brought disgrace into honor, since it sanctified and perpetuated every incapacity by turning into a sin any possible belief in human potentialities. The scope of the dominion exercised by the pagan gods, who hitherto had haunted nature only, was extended, like that of the Christian God, over the free world of mind. The right of legislation was ceded to God exclusively, but, not content with this, men looked to him for every good impulse, every better purpose and decision."
"With an upright heart and a well-meaning zeal the helpless human race fled to the altar where it found and worshiped what was self-subsistent and moral. But as Christianity penetrated into the upper and more corrupt classes, as great differences arose within its own organization between the distinguished and the inferior, as despotism poisoned more and more of the sources of life and reality, the age revealed its hopeless triviality in the turn taken by its conceptions of Gods divinity and its disputes about these. And it displayed its indigence all the more nakedly by surrounding it with a nimbus of sanctity and lauding it to the skies as the supreme honor of mankind."
"How could we have expected a teacher like Jesus to afford any inducement to the creation of a positive religion, i.e., a religion which is grounded In authority and puts mans worth not at all, or at least not wholly, in morals?"