To survive a war zone, a soldier has to be a combination of good and lucky. He absolutely cannot lose faith in himself and his own abilities. Nor his buddies who are fighting right beside him. But when the soldier starts losing his buddies, one at a time on each side of him, there is quite likely going to be either an anger, even a rage, towards 'God' if the man had any religious beliefs to begin with, and/or a loss of 'faith' in God altogether...
Are we to be surprised with this? Blame them for 'losing faith' in a Higher Power?
God has no impact on man's morality or immorality, his ethics or non-ethics, his good or evil...except to the extent that man -- either religious or atheist -- buys into humanism, in the form of ethics, morality, empathy, caring about your neighbour, and so on...
Religious humanism and atheist humanism have more in common than religious humanism and religious hypocrisy...immorality hidden behind a cloak of religious faith and/or religion connected connected pathologically to righteous and/or narcissistic extremism...l
I can accept any form of religion has long as it is connected to humanistic compassion. But I can also accept atheism if it is connected to humanistic compassion.
I have a Spinozian and Jungian influence in my thinking.
Pantheism attempts to bridge the gap between religion, science, and romantic spirituality. Spinoza was a very influential pantheist (He influenced Einstein as well as a host of later 'romantic philosophers.)
Still, Spinoza was 'ex-communicated' by his own orthodox, religious community for being what they believed was a 'sneaky atheist' -- believing that 'God is in everything and everyone...that God is in all Creation and all Life...'
The orthodox Jews in Holland at this time -- and Holland was as liberal a country as there was in Europe in terms of 'religious tolerance' -- couldn't get their heads around Spinoza's ideas as they wanted to continue to believe that 'God was in Heaven and ruled the Earth' -- not that He WAS the Earth, and everything and everyone on it...
-- dgb. Feb. 1st, 2011,
David Gordon Bain
For those interested in reading more about the life and work of Baruch Spinoza, see...
http://www.zionism-israel.com/bio/Baruch_Spinoza_biography.htm
