Wayne, I like what you said about uncertainty. The way I see it, the less we know about a proposition, the more staunchly we tend to defend it. It happens in science too much. But it happens in religion, even more. In the end, we can know with some certainty what we feel at the moment. And with a great deal of reasoning we can be pretty sure of the proposition "I think I think; therefore I think I am." Further afield, we actually know very little. So I tend to think that the truth of a religious proposition lies not in some essence of fact, but in how we would feel about living in a group, a society, a world that embraces the same proposition. For example "all people are equal before the law." When religious ideas and practices help us to be more kind, reflective, and open to other people, I think they can help us feel better about our place in society. And they can help us be part of a happier society. It is my opinion, however, that a great deal of theolog...
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As useful as religious practice is for helping children and adolescents understand and practice a way of life that connects them with others in a deep and meaningful way, my own prejudice has been that one can only fully internalize moral principles by being critical of the principles one learns as a child - choosing ideas on the basis of their merit.
The idea that there is a universal moral code to which we aspire, I think, is an excellent one. The idea that we can completely and definitively define its details, however, can be very divisive and dangerous.
Jim
"The Universal Moral Code is not a set of principles that everyone follows successfully every day, nor a set of principles that each of us would apply the same way in every case. (Sometimes we disagree very strongly about how to apply them!)"
In my opinion, I think where things get "fuzzy" is that we (everyone) likely disagree about how to apply them more often than we agree ...