Democracy may have arisen in the West as the way of striving for the universal aspiration to dignity and freedom, but it isn’t alien to the underlying concepts that infuse religion and moral philosophy everywhere.
Category: religion
In the relationship between man and religion, the state is firmly committed to a position of neutrality.
In every religion there is an element of the supernatural, varying with the influence of pure reason over its devotees.
It’s fun being in Islamic countries, to know there’s only one religion. There’s order. You wear a burqa. There’s no choice. People are happy with that.
Man is the religious animal. He is the only one that’s got true religion, several of them.
Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers.
You can’t write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I’m very interested in what religion does to us – its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.
Religion is doing a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he lives his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy.
I also don’t have organized religion on Pern. I figured – since there were four holy wars going on at the time of writing – that religion was one problem Pern didn’t need.
Even though you can’t expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That’s morality, that’s religion. That’s art. That’s life.