{"id":9312,"date":"2012-10-05T05:50:27","date_gmt":"2012-10-05T05:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/10\/05\/no-religion-then-no-solution\/"},"modified":"2012-10-05T05:50:27","modified_gmt":"2012-10-05T05:50:27","slug":"no-religion-then-no-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/10\/05\/no-religion-then-no-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"No Religion?  Then No Solution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">&quot;Imagine no religion,&quot; John Lennon sang.&#0160; Suppose we could take it a step beyond imagination and make&#0160;religion disappear.&#0160; Would we thereby eliminate the problems to which religion is supposed to be the solution? Of course not.&#0160; Suppose we destroyed all the hospitals, old folks&#39; homes, and mortuaries.&#0160; Would we thereby remove from the world sickness, old age, and death?&#0160; That trio of woes that put young Prince Siddartha on the path to Buddhahood?&#0160; No, we would merely have gotten rid of certain ways of dealing with them.&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Religion deals with real problems.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">The problems cannot be solved&#0160;by any other means.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Better the admittedly questionable solutions religion offers than no solutions at all.&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Those who denigrate religion but cannot put anything better in its place do a disservice to humanity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Suppose religion is utterly devoid of truth in all of its central claims:&#0160; there is no God, no soul, no post-mortem rewards or punishments, no moral world order, no final justice, no meaning beyond what we can create for ourselves, which meaning, <a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2012\/09\/if-our-lives-have-meaning-we-cannot-be-its-source.html\" target=\"_self\">arguably<\/a>, is a pseudo-meaning, no higher destiny, no salvation.&#0160; <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Then there is No Exit, to cop a phrase from a certain French existentialist.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&quot;Imagine no religion,&quot; John Lennon sang.&#0160; Suppose we could take it a step beyond imagination and make&#0160;religion disappear.&#0160; Would we thereby eliminate the problems to which religion is supposed to be the solution? Of course not.&#0160; Suppose we destroyed all the hospitals, old folks&#39; homes, and mortuaries.&#0160; Would we thereby remove from the world sickness, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/10\/05\/no-religion-then-no-solution\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;No Religion?  Then No Solution&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}