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Thursday, December 3, 2020

Theism and Liberty

"What light is to the eyes—what air is to the lungs—what love is to the heart, Liberty is to the soul of man." ~ Robert Ingersoll’s famous observation. In our time, most educated folks would reject this view of liberty because they are atheists. They do not believe in the existence of the divine and the soul. Liberty is a value within the framework of the moral values which are derived from the religious teachings. Outside the framework of religious moral values, liberty is destructive. Ingersoll was an agnostic. I can empathize with agnosticism—since the divine is unknown and unknowable but religion, which is founded on the desire to approach the divine, is tangible; its theological philosophy can be a tool for personal and social growth. To reject religion altogether, when you belong to a culture whose religious tradition stretches back to more than two thousand five hundred years, is to reject all of past intellectualism and tradition—all philosophy, science, political theory, and art—and embrace moral nihilism and political corruption.

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