The modern period adds social ethics to religions agenda, for we now realize that social structures are not like laws of nature. They are human creations, so we are responsible for them.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Very long ago our ancestors had moral systems. Our current institutions are only a couple of thousand years old, which is really not old in the eyes of a biologist.
Our civilization, such as it is, was shaped by religion, and the men who aspire to public office anyplace in the free world must make obeisance to God or risk immediate opprobrium.
Now I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings.
A people and their religion must be judged by social standards based on social ethics. No other standard would have any meaning if religion is held to be necessary good for the well-being of the people.
The sad part about our past is that religions, ironically enough, are responsible for creating the most destructive idea that has ever been visited upon the human race: the idea that there is such a thing as 'better.'
If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.
There's always the tendency to transform the Church into an ethical agency, and of measuring the Church by the yardstick of social and cultural utility.
Because contemporary paganism is essentially so new, its underlying ethical structure is not particularly sophisticated.
The ultimate purpose of religious life is to make this evolution move in a direction far more important to the destiny of the ego than the moral health of the social fabric which forms his present environment.
I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.
No opposing quotes found.