( In light of recent discussion on God and Religion,a worth reading excerpt from a recent book by Ronald Dworkin, a well known philosopher, secularist and an atheist. F. Sheikh)

Before he died on February 14, Ronald Dworkin sent to The New York Review a text of his new book, Religion Without God, to be published by Harvard University Press later this year. Excerpt from First Chapter.

The familiar stark divide between people of religion and without religion is too crude. Many millions of people who count themselves atheists have convictions and experiences very like and just as profound as those that believers count as religious. They say that though they do not believe in a “personal” god, they nevertheless believe in a “force” in the universe “greater than we are.” They feel an inescapable responsibility to live their lives well, with due respect for the lives of others; they take pride in a life they think well lived and suffer sometimes inconsolable regret at a life they think, in retrospect, wasted. They find the Grand Canyon not just arresting but breathtakingly and eerily wonderful. They are not simply interested in the latest discoveries about the vast universe but enthralled by them. These are not, for them, just a matter of immediate sensuous and otherwise inexplicable response. They express a conviction that the force and wonder they sense are real, just as real as planets or pain, that moral truth and natural wonder do not simply evoke awe but call for it.

There are famous and poetic expressions of the same set of attitudes. Albert Einstein said that though an atheist he was a deeply religious man:

“To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men.1“

Percy Bysshe Shelley declared himself an atheist who nevertheless felt that “The awful shadow of some unseen Power/Floats though unseen among us….”2 Philosophers, historians, and sociologists of religion have insisted on an account of religious experience that finds a place for religious atheism. William James said that one of the two essentials of religion is a sense of fundamentality: that there are “things in the universe,” as he put it, “that throw the last stone.”3 Theists have a god for that role, but an atheist can think that the importance of living well throws the last stone, that there is nothing more basic on which that responsibility rests or needs to rest.

Judges often have to decide what “religion” means for legal purposes. For example, the American Supreme Court had to decide whether, when Congress provided a “conscientious objection” exemption from military service for men whose religion would not allow them to serve, an atheist whose moral convictions also prohibited service qualified for the objection. It decided that he did qualify.4 The Court, called upon to interpret the Constitution’s guarantee of “free exercise of religion” in another case, declared that many religions flourish in the United States that do not recognize a god, including something the Court called “secular humanism.”5

 

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/apr/04/religion-without-god/

Interesting article on how the concept of Gods evolved from immortal and powerful, but as immoral as humans, to most powerful, immortal and unrivaled moral God- and humans became nothing but morally frail, who need God’s graciousness to become moral. (F.Sheikh). Some excerpts from article;

”  Cruelty, treachery, disloyalty, corruption, meanness – the myths and tales of most ancient societies were alive to the worst aspects of human nature. Such moral frailty was not, however unique to humans. The gods were often equally wretched in their behaviour. The line between humanity and God was drawn not in morality but in power.  Gods possessed powers that humans could only dream of, and as immortals they were untouched by death, but their power and immortality did not improve their moral conduct.

Monotheism remade that line between human nature and divine nature. Gods remained powerful, humans restricted in their powers. Indeed, as a whole divinity of gods was reduced down to a single Creator, that single Creator became far more powerful than previous gods had been.  But the key distinction between human beings and God was now not simply one of immortality and power.  It was also one of morality. The monotheistic faiths drew a new contrast between corrupted humanity and incorruptible God, a contrast that transformed moral frailty into a condition, not of the cosmos, but of being human. It was in Christianity that this distinction was made clearest.

In redrawing the line between humanity and God, monotheism both adopted and discarded major themes in Greek philosophy. Greek philosophers had recognized human moral frailties, but had also believed that through reason and education some individuals at least could overcome the lure of the baser aspects of the soul. It was in the use of reason to accommodate life to the exigencies of fate that human dignity lay. At the same time, there was a strand within Greek philosophy that  helped make more profound the distinction between Man and God. The distaste for the idea of capricious gods, and the desire for naturalistic explanations, evident from the Presocratics onwards, led some, like Democritus, to dismiss the very idea of gods and to insist on a purely materialist universe. Others redefined the nature of godliness.”

“Greek philosophers had accepted that the standards followed by virtuous people are too demanding for ordinary folk, but believed that, given the appropriate knowledge and character, human individuals are capable of satisfying the most exacting moral measure. For Aristotle, humans were capable both of establishing what constituted the good and of working their way towards it. For Plato, the Good was defined by a transcendental Form in a different realm. Humans, however, or at least some humans, possessed the capacity to apprehend the Good and to attempt to create the good life on Earth. For Christians, however, only through the grace of God could humans be moral. ‘None is good’, as Jesus was to say, ‘save one, that is, God.’ Or as Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians ‘For by grace are ye saved through faith and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God’. The other side of faith in the goodness of God was the insistence on the moral wretchedness of human beings. Not for more than a millennium would a new vision of human nature, and of human capacities, begin to challenge Pauline despair.”

http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2013/12/11/what-did-the-greeks-ever-do-for-god/