[K T Ong]

I can never figure how we can think of separating religion from politics. How can religion be separated from any aspect of human existence?

But I suppose it all comes down to how we define religion. To me, religion is about ultimate concerns. What's the point of our existence? Is human life a fundamental or an incidental feature of the Cosmos? Where will I go when I die? To be religious is to be serious about finding answers to these and similar questions, and to believe it's worth our time finding out. You can go to church unfailingly every Sunday and donate millions to the poor like Oprah, but if you don't ask questions like these, then you're not a religious person.

In this sense of being religious, though, you can no longer settle for ready-made answers. You can't be dogmatic. Dogma would murder religion (in the sense in which I understand religion) -- and by dogma I can mean the dogma of the hardliner atheist as much as that of the fanatical believer. Instead you must be constantly searching, and retain an open mind. Dogma is just sheer intellectual laziness and it puts an end to all further inquiry.

Understood in this way, it should be perfectly possible for truly religious people to sit down together and talk, to share their insights and find out what they have in common, rather than fighting with each other over the respective dogmas to which they stubbornly cling (and they'd have no dogmas to cling to if they were truly religious, as I said). And religion of this nature should be an integral part of politics -- and science, art, philosophy etc etc. It should be an integral part of life itself.

Agree?

[ 02-06-2002: Message edited by: K T Ong ]