From The New York Times-
It’s a tough time to defend religion.
Respect for it has diminished in almost every corner of modern life —
not just among atheists and intellectuals, but among the wider public,
too. And the next generation of young people looks likely to be the most religiously unaffiliated demographic in recent memory.
There
are good reasons for this discontent: continued revelations of abuse by
priests and clerics, jihad campaigns against “infidels” and homegrown
Christian hostility toward diversity and secular culture. This
convergence of bad behavior and bad press has led many to echo the
evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson’s claim that “for the sake of human
progress, the best thing we could possibly do would be to diminish, to
the point of eliminating, religious faiths.”
Despite
the very real problems with religion — and my own historical skepticism
toward it — I don’t subscribe to that view. I would like to argue here,
in fact, that we still need religion. Perhaps a story is a good way to
begin.
More here-
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