Reply #26: Hey, Scooter, I appreciate your yadda-ing about this! [View All]

[BurtWorm]

:hi:

Just wanted to say I'm now finishing another book on a similar subject relevant to your final statement, to whit: "Anyway, my reasons for religion have much to do with raising my kids to understand that there is someting which can help them find their way when things get tough."

This one's called "Without God, Without Creed," which despite its polemical-sounding title is actually an intellectual history of unbelief in nineteenth-century American. I've just finished a section about how nineteenth-century agnostics like Charles Eliot Norton and Robert Ingersoll developed their unbelief directly out of a conviction that agnosticism is at base moral. These were guys who felt they were being dishonest to say they believed, and who held honesty with the self to be one of the highest moral qualities. Does that make sense.

I only post this to argue, in a friendly way, with your suggestion that morality requires religion. It really doesn't. But of course I have no argument with however anyone wants to raise their kids when the objective is essentially moral, however you want to interpret "morality."