While Sol Solomon was superficial in his claims about religion, his points are valid (Sunday Monitor Forum, Dec. 30).
Religion is ancient and universal, predating most common religions of today. Religion itself is inanimate, but of course populated by humanity. No one religion/philosophy can claim ownership of truth or non-rational experience.
Like Sol, many people search for meaning, in deistic, theistic, non-theistic, humanist ideologies to no avail. When we listen with our hearts and not our own personal bias, we can then wish Sol good luck on his search for meaning.
Roy Rappaport wrote in Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity: “I take it to be intrinsic to the human condition, that is, the condition of a species that lives, and can only live, by meanings and understandings it itself must construct in a world devoid of intrinsic meaning but subject to causal laws, not all of which are known. It is, further, a world in which the lie is ubiquitous, and in which the ‘reality’ or ‘truth’ of key elements, like gods and values and social orders, not only have to be invented but maintained in the face of increasing threats, posed by ever-burgeoning alternative possibilities to falsify them. ”
JIM SEIDEL
Barnstead