Great article, thanks.

The lesson is clear: don't base you life on existence - or mess up with existence at your own peril.

The non-existence of God should not be used as an excuse - and excuse is all it is, to stop loving and worshipping Him, or to lead a wanton life instead. Man knows inherently to distinguish between good and evil and the idea of existence, whose root is temptation, does not come into it.

“the key role of the Church of mediating reality”

More a role ‘assumed’ by the church through history, too often used to manipulate, exploit and tyrannise.

“There has never been a time in which faith has not been fragile and rare.”

‘fragile and rare’ makes faith sound ‘precious’ as well as difficult to maintain. Faith is more commonly a conservative custom, abject poverty of mind, or obstinacy of intellect.
Faith in anything is a dangerous disposition, robbing the individual and society of their wonted agility in a dangerous world.
I do think we need ideas to believe in, but these have to evolve and address the changing human condition. The church is merely a relic.
The Enlightenment on the other hand, wound up like clockwork and set running by the philosophes to follow a random, market-based trajectory of human ‘progress,’ has to be idealistically reconceived and ‘plotted’ to follow not a ‘Messianic’ path, but a prudent and human ‘pre-destiny’—a true Enlightenment.
The second half of the article is simplistic, comparing Updike’s credulously-flawed characters and “lost souls” with the worthies he knows and promotes:
“Most people I know, churched or not, are decent and reliable and honest. Those who proclaim atheism are perhaps even better than most because they have actually thought about the question of god.”
You forget Peter that Updike looks beneath the ‘appearances’ churches (including the scientific church) are so keen to maintain; ‘decency’, ‘reliability’ and ‘honesty’ are performative at best, but more often modes of forbearance—or complacency!
“So how do we assess our culture compared to the past and as associated with the decline of the influence of the Church?”
The Church's past is barbarism. Scientific culture has great potential but must take the helm, guided by new values which dictate ‘over’ the market place.
Unless the Church can contribute to the design of a new ethics—more importantly, convert its squawking flock to it—it’s part of the problem rather than solution.

The “supreme task of raising the next generation” does not belong to mothers—conservative creatures (by nature) reliant on stability—but polity!

Yes and hear hear.
Rhrosty.

A lovely piece, thank you.

Beauty is, of course, 'in the eye of the beholder'. It is a deeply individual creation of our perception interacting with our cognition, experiences and limbic system to produce a powerful response, sometimes so powerful that it changes lives. It is a private act of experiencing that cannot be taken from us and if we practise, we can find it ever more easily and experience it more completely.

While it has been at the heart of the great religions, inspired art and driven philosophies, its power is genuinely transcendent and it sits comfortably at the lab bench or the boardroom table. Richard Feynman, a colossus of that hardest of sciences, particle physics, on beauty:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbFM3rn4ldo

Steve Jobs put his personal quest for beauty at Apple's core (evem puns can be beautiful) and when Brin and Page started Google they set a beautiful idea - "Do No Evil" - as the minimum standard to be aspired to.

What we find beautiful and where we find it tells us a little about ourselves if we choose to listen. When we share our experience of beauty with others we are telling them something about ourselves that may be hard to express any other way.

Their response may tell us more about them that they realise.

Yes, an unusually good essay, but as usual flawed in its understanding of the human situation in the mid to late 20th century, and of course now in the 21st.
The various essays available on this site address the relationship between science (and scientism), popular self-serving religiosity, and culture altogether. The subtitle of the featured book is:
Prophetic Wisdom about the Myths and Idols of mass culture and popular religious cultism, the new priesthood of scientific and political materialism, and the secrets of Enlightenment hidden in the body of Man.

http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/ScientificProof/tableofcontents.html

Squeers.
There you go again: "Faith is more commonly a conservative custom, abject poverty of mind, or obstinacy of intellect." This may be true of millions of believers but surely it cannot be true of, for example Rowan Williams, ex Archbishop of Canterbury, one the the great minds of our time or any number of well educated and deeply considered believers. The anglican congregations that I have been associated with are full of professionals of all sorts as are all sorts of congregations. Your opinion is pure prejudice and cant. You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. When was the last time you talked with someone educated in theology or visited a congregation anywhere.

Please, if you want to contribute to the conversation do some research into the facts before you blow your mouth off.

“This may be true of millions of believers but …”

But nothing! I was only talking of the ‘commonality’. Incidentally ‘I pay’ subscription for the journal ‘Political Theology”, among others, and I respect many of the thinkers on each side of the ‘debate’ (whater that is), Rowan Williams being just one who tends to take both sides and certainly struggles with his faith.
You must recall that I vigorously defended ‘savants’ of mysticism in your last, and my critique of liberal rationalism is again implicit above.
The way you’ve heatedly responded to what was a thoroughly considered post, only tells me I’ve struck the nerve—roused your defences of your own deep-seated insecurities.
If you read my post more carefully you’ll see I agreed with your central theme about the crisis of faith/meaning of modern secularism—a world view beautifully tailored to capitalism. Unlike Protestantism, whose fetishized austerity caused a drag on economic growth. Whereas Secularism is next to liberalism.
(An uncle of mine was the bishop of Nottingham and I have fond memories of exploring is palace. He was a salaciously naughty fellow and should have been a Catholic).
Hoisted on your own petard, it is ‘your’ opinion that is, “pure prejudice and cant”. Unlike you I favour no bias, theist or atheist, but try to get outside this futile debate about God.
Protestantism kicked off individualised faith and has met its comeuppance. Broken free, we must each find our own meaning, or despair.
What we lack is moral authority, and I don’t believe the church can supply it—certainly not free of corruption.
The corporeal conditions of our existence, our aspirations, and our capacity for altruism should inform polity, so that we ‘pursue’ our destiny and follow no rubric—neither religious nor economic

.

Dear Peter,

.

I have not read Updike’s novel but judging from your brief description of it I am left with the impression that it mirrors the Waco tragedy as it might apply to an individual family without analysing the human drama it represents and attempting to identify the psychological mechanisms which made it possible. The author’s regard does not appear to make any attempt to transpierce the surface of his characters, nor to understand the intricate relationships which bound them all together so tightly as to deprive each of any possible individuality or independence of mind.

The interest of Waco to me is to try to understand the mechanisms which produced it. If, as you seem to indicate, the only explanation offered by the author is that the family patriarch and Presbyterian minister lost his faith, with repercussions for four generations, I find that rather poor and hardly credible to say the least. I cannot imagine who could be satisfied with that as the unique explanation of such a traumatic event as Waco, even, and perhaps I should say, especially as applied within the intimacy of a single family hierarchy.

The author’s attempt to emulate Waco at the family level for four generations with loss of faith of the patriarch as the unique generating event rings of the pastor thundering the fear of God as a warning to his timorous flock:

« This is what happens to a family when the father loses faith in God ! Beware ! »

As you rightly suggest, it is a narrative, not an in-depth analysis, and as such, it does not advance us one iota in our understanding of Waco and its derivatives.

The folly of mankind and his faith in God know no bounds. We have not yet found the antidote to Waco and, judging from your description, it is evident that Updike’s novel is no help.

.

Squeers,
I stick to my line, your expression "Faith is more commonly a conservative custom, abject poverty of mind, or obstinacy of intellect." is not considered, it is a universalising calumny on millions of diverse Christians.

Peter,
and I stick by my line! It is a very fair assessment of religion as a historical and contemporary phenomenon.
The vast majority have no inkling of theological complexities/sophistry. This doesn't mean simple faith isn't profoundly necessary for those who need an anchor. I agree we need an anchor! But religion is a ball and chain. Even if it weren't, religious teachings don't accord nearly enough consideration for 'this' world.
We were all moved by the testaments to simple faith put forward in your last, but simple faith these days translates as naivity, and more importantly as neglect.
Obstinacy of intellect is not restricted to religion, but for all those whose 'faith' has to be couched in pseudo-rigorous terms that Jesus and Bacon would have despised.

Sells, I wonder have you ever considered the reason why God apparently forsake Jesus as he hung dying on the cross. Jesus himself probably didn't considered it himself and neither do any of his followers. The plain and obvious truth is "There is no God". He is just a figment of the imagination of those who wish to believe, no more, no less.

David

Dear David,

<<The plain and obvious truth is "There is no God".>>

All the more reason to love and worship Him.

Had God existed, then worshipping Him would amount to idol-worship or to a business deal: expecting God to exist, to reduce Himself to some silly object, is akin to expecting a king to clean toilets.

<<He is just a figment of the imagination of those who wish to believe, no more, no less.>>

While an idea about God may well be a figment of imagination, that has nothing to do with God Himself: God is not an idea, but imagining God as something, though factually incorrect, is for some at least, a useful religious technique which helps them to purify their hearts.

The ultimate fallacy in Squeers' dogma Sells is that two of the largest religions in the world - Christianity and Buddhism - are anything but "conservative". One seeks to radically remake the world in a way which empowers the least powerful, and the other holds that the world is just an illusion.

Christianity has been behind such a radical transformation of the Western World that when we run up against groups like ISIS, which are behaving in ways which were quite common even 500 years ago we see their behaviour as totally foreign and aberrant.

We are a society that values equality, trust, inclusiveness and charity precisely because an outsider was tortured and killed for sedition 2,000 years ago in Palestine, and his message, and that of his followers, was so powerful that today only a minority would try to justify torture and capital punishment by an empire.

Perhaps my first post above was too abrupt and insensitive of Peter's efforts and feelings and fellow Christians, so I apologise for my tone. in my efforts to be economical, yet still say something substantial I do tend to offend in this way. Sorry Peter, I'll try to be more considerate in future.

I don't retract anything of substance, however with the qualification that all such sweeping opinions as I've offered are necessarily lacking substantiation. Paradigm critiques and conceptions are useful however in the long process of transformation that cultures unfortunately seem to require. We no klonger have the luxury.

Graham, if I have any religious inclination it's for Buddhism, about which it's clear 'you' don't know what your talking about. But more later perhaps.

Squeers is corect. If religious belief had any positive benefit at all then the USA, where the vast majority of the population are believers in a supernatural personal deity, would not be the worlds greatest threat to peace, have the most teenage pregnancies, the world's highest civilian murder rate, more police murders and the highest prison incarceration rate and...need I go on? Check out Uganda...what an example of religion-inspired love and kindness. And then look at agnostic northern Europe and compare.
Updike is a shallow author, obsessed with sex and populist ideas, I'm astounded anyone would use him as an example of philosophical merit.

Graham:
“The ultimate fallacy in Squeers' dogma Sells is that two of the largest religions in the world - Christianity and Buddhism - are anything but "conservative". One seeks to radically remake the world in a way which empowers the least powerful, and the other holds that the world is just an illusion.”
I wasn”t aware I had a dogma, but no matter.
As for these potted accounts of Christianity and Buddhism, I beg to differ.
Jesus was indeed radical, if the Gospels are testament, but I’m afraid it ended there and then. When the Catholic church had the running Christianity was used to engorge the coffers and empower it. It’s certainly true that the current Pope offers hope that Christ’s radicalism survives yet: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2013/11/24340/ though it’s doubtful he will get anywhere with his neo-Christian mission, threatening just too many vested interests, including the Vatican of course.
The Protestants are infinitely less likely to fill the shoes Graham lays out, having long since made their piece with the drastic inequities with which they ideologically sympathise; the self-made-man ideology of neoliberalism is a perfect fit with Protestant austerity of spirit, punishing the dissemblers and rewarding evangelists/entrepreneurs.

The Buddha saw human existence as unsatisfactory and irredeemable, though suffering could be mediated and enlightenment attained once we see through the illusions that enmesh us. The world is real and indifferent and the illusion only obtains at the level of socially-mediated desire—if the Buddha’s teachings ever really took hold it’s doubtful capitalism could survive, but alas they too are corrupted.
tb

Squeers,

Christianity, building on Judaism and Hellenism, gave rise to what we call the West with its emphasis on “knowing the world you live in”. Historically, it complements the Eastern religions represented by Buddhism with their emphasis on “knowing the world within yourself”. Because of globalisation, this complementarity is becoming a dialectic of perspectives, if you like: depending on where you come from, the one is the thesis, the other the antithesis leading to a synthesis, hopefully incorporating the positive sides of both the perspectives. [Here a pessimist might replace “positive” by “negative”.]

As you suggest, Buddhism on ist own, (without the West/Christianity) would not have led to capitalism, but neither would it have led to scientific and technological achievements that we all enjoy. Of course, both beliefs are unverifiable speculations.

George:<<Christianity, building on Judaism and Hellenism, gave rise to what we call the West with its emphasis on “knowing the world you live in”.>>
No, George, It was the rejection of religion by rational thinkers of the "Enlightenment" [1650s to the 1780s] that gave rise to the current situation...and look where that led us.

ybgirp,
Although I don't think "rational thinkers of the Enlightenment" rejected religion as such - after all, most of them believed in the Judaeo-Christian notion of God - I don't se where this contradicts what I wrote about the East-West complementarity.

George,
it's a nice idea seeing these traditions in dialectical terms, but such grand narratives are old fashioned and even meaningless on the ground. Realistically, the human race is just a violent rabble, reading all sorts of historical trends into its ethnocentricities, powerplays, genocides and shuffling borders. Even were it so, 'twer a happy accident, rather than any manifold destiny.
But it isn't so. If anything I agree with Adorno and his 'negative dialectic,' much like Weber's iron cage; modernity is a human trap that is never likely to spontaneously synthesise.
Man's problem is we leave our destiny to 'cosmic forces'--God, Enlightenment, progressivism, free markets, dialectics or whathaveyou--but nothing is deliberated, planned, sustainable, congenial, ethical, 'self-directed'.
This is the next stage if there's any progressive hope for the human race. But it's not gong to just happen, certainly not as a hybrid religion! This is just more examining of cosmic entrails that have no rhyme or reason except in the mind's eye. Meaning and destiny are imaginary products of hindsight. Only the future can bestow meaning on the past.
And then only once the past becomes an 'accomplishment', rather than an accident, an excrement.

Ah Squeers.
That post is perfect. Beautifully constructed, succinct, to the point, and makes excellent sense as well! Like all wisdom, I imagine it will fall on deaf ears, but thanks for writing it.

Squeers,

"Meaning and destiny are imaginary products of hindsight." Well said! But why is that a negative? After all, it encompasses the whole of culture, including, especially Scripture. I would claim nothing more. I agree with your naturalistic nihilism, there is no, plan, no destiny, we are on our own in a meaningless universe. I agree with Clarence Wilmot's conclusion, there is no God. But......we do have meaning and destiny as imaginary product of hindsight, that is the only thing we have. Christian theology is all about just that.

A reversal of this: "Only the future can bestow meaning on the past." makes no sense since once in the future we have only the past. Our situation in time does not change, the future is obscure and can only be predicted with reference to what has gone before.

That prediction can only be a waiting for a hoped for event. Welcome to the season of advent!

ybgirp,
thanks.

Peter,
we're not really on the same page.
Your position is closer to that which George found pleasing on your last thread, whereby we celebrate and go with our cultural constructions, rather than bemoan the universe's indifference. This indeed is the concolation of culturalism, popular in academe, but it's not where I'm coming from.
It's surely also a major step into the secular for religion? As well as a post-secular step for sociology: Humanity resigned by sociology to its hopeless infatuation with the symbolic; religion reconciled with the task of fostering a culturally-conceived dimension of meaning?
All very nice existentially, but it doesn't address the problem of securing the future in a sustainable or self-directed way; if anything we become narcissistic in our faith.

My position is only 'naturalistic nihilism' apropos the past. Especially the past we've achieved to date. Despite those 'achievements' as a species, they were merely serendipitous; contingent upon specific circumstances/stimuli. We are not today the collective product of our own determination and husbandry.
There is no 'qualitative' meaning in Wilmot's position unless tangible and self-directed progress is accumulated.
Progress in morality is not enough; ethics is largely cant unless it's directed at an object/ive. We tend to use ethics to rationalise actions in the present, rather than to direct the future in transformative ways; progress is slow, piecemeal and again contingent.

Where my position radically differs is while I acknowledge that "we are on our own in a meaningless universe", this only 'necessarily' obtains in 'our' past present, and not in the future. The future is maleable. We can construct a premeditated future and continue to improve it.
This doesn't only mean we may build an impressive legacy, but remain in a meaningless universe. The future is infinite and I am sceptical of our linear conception of time, within which we live in an eternal present. I suspect this not so, at least not for all time, and if not it changes everything. The future can redeem the past, perhaps even modify it; hindsight becomes 'retroactive'.
Here I'll stop, on the border with mysticism.

Squeers,

Thanks for the rich collections of thoughts that would take many more than 350 words to react to piece by piece.

I agree that dialectics as a grand narrative is old fashioned and I attached it with the proviso “if you like” assuming it was a language you would prefer, since I associated you somehow with the Frankfurt School (c.f. reference to Adorno). My emphasis was more on the concept of complementarity, yin-yang, again, if you like: it is a way of reading cultures (civilisations) - and other realms of human enquiry outside natural science - which others might or might not share.

Another perspective is your “the human race is just a violent rabble, reading all sorts of historical trends into its ethnocentricities, powerplays, genocides and shuffling borders“ which does not negate the legitimacy of other insights, other readings of history and philosophy in general.

You mention God in a context, where I have to agree with you, that “nothing is deliberated, planned, sustainable, congenial, ethical …” although that is not the context of my understanding of God. Meaning (like other concepts) are indeed “imaginative products” of human mind, and when applied to history, of hindsight.

Some people think that higher mathematics is also just a product of the mind, nevertheless it has been shown that it can - not all of it, there is also useless mathematics - be useful for understanding the physical world. Why not accept that religion, with its psychological, sociological even metaphysical dimensions, can also be useful by giving meaning to human experience, to individual or collective self-understanding - again, not all religions, not even all forms of one religion, and of course not to all individuals?

There is mathematics that is beyond the comprehension of people who do not have the “insider knowledge”, and there are ways of living and understanding faith that are beyond the comprehension of people who do not have the “insider experience”. And there are people who need to rationalise their lack of insider understanding of the one or the other. At least, this has been my experience.

George:

"...Why not accept that religion, with its psychological, sociological even metaphysical dimensions, can also be useful by giving meaning to human experience, to individual or collective self-understanding..."

it's a good question and argument, that in the circumstances of the human condition we are entitled to find solace where we may?

I would answer a) this has a history of mutating into self-affirmation, complacency, intolerance and rationalisation of current evils; b) if our object as a species/race is to prosper and reproduce ourselves--not merely for the sake of it, or eudaimonia, or Buddhist renunciation, but genuine progressivism defined as sustainable, praiseworthy and teleological, in earthly terms--then the logic is counterproductive, settling for contrived meaning in the circumstances over realistic aspiration (when modernity finally makes the possibility plausible!); c) the very consolation of contrived/finite meaning carries an implicit denial of the transcendent, amounting to existential affectation, a la Sartre.
Whereas I gather you're positing an affected metaphysics, or speculation for its therapeutic effects? my metaphysical speculation is predicated on the provisional 'acknowledgement' of religious/mystical experience, which I'm not prepared to consign necessarily to the unconscious, or any other trendy repository for what's arbitrarily designated by materialists as delusion.

There is a tendency to reductionism on all sides that's hasty and unjustified

I think it's worth reflecting on the words of the hymn that Lilies invokes. Verses of the Battle Hymn of the Republic are often sung in Christian churches in Advent - the season that looks forward to the coming of Christ. It is a season full of portent, prophecy and foreboding. The hymn is theologically good, and the specific verse goes:

"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea
With a beauty in his bosom that transfigures you and me
As he died to make men holy let us die to make men free
Our God is marching on"

This isn't some conservative, anachronistic, backward looking theology. It is revolutionary and looks forward with such conviction that it is prepared to pledge the ultimate sacrifice.

Another hymn sung in this period is the Magnificat which is similarly revolutionary with its vision of a world turned up-side down.

I think the debate about whether the world has meaning or not is ultimately arid. For a human being to act as though it doesn't is to be a psychotic.

And when you look at the parts of the world that do best you find that one of their underpinnings is Christianity. It's provided the best meaning so far. And so much of what masquerades as progressive is actually a retreat from the principles of humanity into a more "rational", but inhuman, future. The 20th Century showed us what a cul-de-sac that sort of "progress" is.

Squeers,

>>in the circumstances of the human condition we are entitled to find solace where we may?<<

If arithmetics made sense only in counting apples and oranges it would not be very useful. Neither would religion if it functioned only as a source for finding solace. Therefore I like the metaphor of the elephant and the “six blind men“ - a psychologist, an anthropologist, a sociologist, an evolutionist, a philosopher (metaphysicist), an ethicist, a historian (sorry, that makes seven) - to point to religion's multifunctionality.

>>a) this has a history of mutating into self-affirmation, complacency, intolerance and rationalisation of current evils<<

Agreed. You could similarly point to negative mutations, cul-de-sacs, of many achievements of human endeavour. After all, evolution of anything is usually not a straightforward sequence of gradual improvements but a tree.

>>b) if our object as a species/race is to prosper and reproduce ourselves …then the logic is counterproductive, settling for contrived meaning in the circumstances over realistic aspiration … <<

I decipher this as a critique of progessivism, Marxist or not, couched in dialectical langauge or not, and I agree. You and I can, and perhaps should, strive for something; humanity as such cannot.

>> c) the very consolation of contrived/finite meaning carries an implicit denial of the transcendent, amounting to existential affectation, a la Sartre. <<

I would rather say that the a priori denial of the transcendent - more often than the seeking of consolation in meaning, contrived or not - amounts to existential affectation `a la Sartre.

>>I gather you're positing an affected metaphysics, or speculation for its therapeutic effects? <<

The metaphysics a Christian intellectual posits might look affected to an outsider, and its possible therapeutic affects might by an unintended consequence. These affects are an intended consequence (if you believe in God) of faith which in its turn influences the metaphysics a (philosophically concerned) Christian “posits”.

I find the rest of your post very insightful. What you call “provisional 'acknowledgement' of religious/mystical experience” does not stand in contradiction to what a philosophically savvy Christian believes.

Graham:

“ when you look at the parts of the world that do best you find that one of their underpinnings is Christianity. It's provided the best meaning so far. And so much of what masquerades as progressive is actually a retreat from the principles of humanity into a more "rational", but inhuman, future. The 20th Century showed us what a cul-de-sac that sort of "progress" is”.

Can’t see it, Graham. Christianity is global but prosperity isn’t. Nor does Christianity have any real impact on polity. It’s just a mode of rhetoric that’s never prevented States from perpetrating their enormities. Sometimes it’s encouraged them, looked the other way, perpetrated its own evils…
The view of progressivism I’ve tried to invoke above is not pegged to an economic rubric (which has proved itself fickle), nor to an archaic morality, but to a humanist ethic based on the actual conditions of scarcity we ought to respect. Such a neo-progressivism would plot an ethical and sustainable future via which we might finally emerge from the dark ages.

George,
A central point I’ve tried to make above is that time is past where we can take a passive stance apropos our condition, which is what religion does, whichever part of the elephant we find a comfort.

“You and I can, and perhaps should, strive for something; humanity as such cannot”.
This is the opposite to my position! I’m saying individuals should quit navel gazing, and that humanity should put its efforts and faith in a noble and achievable future. This would also inspire individuals. How can we believe in our current rapaciousness?

“the a priori denial of the transcendent - more often than the seeking of consolation in meaning, contrived or not - amounts to existential affectation `a la Sartre”.

Agreed, but I was making the point that “yours” and Peter’s concessional culturalism is implicitly sacrificing the transcendental—not mine! The next passage you quote was making this point. I’m offering a transcendental alternative.
I’m concerned that the therapeutic effects of religion are more a sedative and diversion than a positive plan for humanity.

Squeers,

>> A central point I’ve tried to make above is that time is past where we can take a passive stance apropos our condition, which is what religion does <<

Christianity, when it actively shaped the culture of the West, hardly took a passive stance on what it was shaping, and today I doubt you could accuse Islam (that inspires e.g. the Islamists) of taking a passive stance on the world around them. On the other hand, admittedly, contemporary educated Christians might not be as eager to engage in military or ideological fights as they were in the past. However, exercising and advising caution before swinging from one extreme to another, does not necessarily mean taking a “passive stance apropos our condition”.

>>I’m saying individuals should quit navel gazing, and that humanity should put its efforts and faith in a noble and achievable future. <<

Many political actions started as a few persons' brian activity, call it navel gazing or not. However, what I meant was that you and I can will, humanity - or a nation - cannot. Society defends itself by punishing individuals who voluntarily do things that go against its interests but one does not, or should not, punish nations. For the same reasons an individual can strive, not a nation or even humanity.

Humanity cannot put its efforts to anything unless individual humans do it (voluntarily or not), although if there is a general agreement on what that is, we might say that “humanity” strives, or should strive, for it.

Sorry, but a don’t know what is “concessional culturalism” that Peter and I are supposed to have in common. On the other hand, religion as humanity’s opiate is a standard Marxian cliché. It is true in the sense that the sedative or “pain-killing” effect of religion is just one of its many functions, which in some situations can prevail over others, in other situations is practically absent (Islam has hardly a sedative effect on suicidal islamist terrorists).

Anyhow, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year full of new philosophical insights.