ETHICS, RELIGION, and SPIRITUALITY
[This piece was promised (in http://www.extremeethics.org/?p=745 ) earlier. Please refer to it.]
Why has religion been so dominant in the rise of man? It was, until the Enlightenment called it into question and the ‘enlightened’ threw it under the bus and put their money on science.
In the first place: is religion valid? Atheism says ‘no.’ Atheism is the belief that there are no deities to worship, one reason being that they cannot be proven. However, atheism doesn’t necessarily deny a first cause (a cause is something that is NOT an effect).
There has to be a first cause, and whatever it was, it could not have been impossible (and as a first principle would have to be ethical). The evidence for a first cause by any name is all around us: the Universe–it’s here. That we are here is