Caught in the Pulpit, pgs 192-193

“Are these reflections on religion offensive? They concern topics that many people would rather leave examined, but unlike most earlier criticisms of religion they do not point a finger of blame. It doesn’t take conniving priests to invent these cultural contraptions, an more than it took a devious social engineer to create the Japanese tea ceremony or debutante cotillions, no matter how resentful and trapped some of the participants in those superannuated traditions may feel. Just as there is no Intelligent Designer to be the proper recipient of our gratitude for the magnificent biosphere we live in, there need be no intelligent designers to be the proper targets of our anger when we find ourselves victimized by “social cells,” like the church. There are, to be sure, plenty of greedy and deceitful people who tend to rise to power in any of these organizations, but if we concentrate on hunting the villains down, we misdirect our energies. The structures themselves can arise innocently, out of good intentions, and gradually evolve into social mechanisms that perpetuate themselves quite independently of the intentions and values of their constituent parts, the agents who bustle about inside them executing the tasks that keep the institution going. Some of those agents, the clergy who must confront the deluge of information and attendant curiosity on a daily basis, are showing signs of strain, suggesting that the task facing religions everywhere is only going to become more difficult.”

–Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola, Caught in the Pulpit, pgs 192-193

Discuss!