About this episode
This is episode 4, Toward a Functionalist Understanding of Religion. This is part one of a three-part series.(You can find my other podcasts here)In the first episode I will explain my functionalist theory of religion. Though I have many influences, this framework is original to me. In the second episode we will discuss the American Civic Religion through the lens of my functionalist theory.In the third episode, we will talk about religions as organisms, the online right, and the possibility of Christo-Nietzschean synthesis.But First, a DisclaimerToday I am going to speak about the nature of religious sentiments.This is an easy topic to understand if you can maintain an impartial disposition, but it is a nearly impossible topic to talk about, because it occupies a mental territory which is perpetually inflamedIn order to understand the nature of religious sentiments, one must view them “from the outside” — that is we must be able to look at them from the perspective of one who is not possessed by themI am not suggesting you should abandon religion, in fact I think that is impossible, rather I am telling you that if you can emulate the intuitions of an unreligious person sincerely, with neither condemnation nor acceptance, then you can also broaden and deepen your perspectives as a man of faith.This is much harder than it sounds, because most anyone who is sentient — and I must point out here that I believe a great many people, maybe even a majority, are not sentient. They have phenomenology and base desire but they lack a certain ineffable quality, an inner spark —Most anyone who is sentient is governed by something quite like a religious sentiment, though often, and in our modern age in particular, he denies itto the modern man, an important article of faith is that his religion is not a religion; it is the pure and self-evident truth about the world, informed by rationality and dispassionate observationAnd a huge part of my message to you, to every single one of you, is that no matter what you believe, it’s retarded to think that your worldview is the pure and self-evident truth about the worldThis is one of the many ways that revealed religion is better than deduced religion, because the former is self-aware, open and honest about the necessity of faith. For Christians, this is hardly a novel observation, I know. But here we have a sort of tension in this talk I am about to give, because there are two very different sorts of people who I think are probably listening to it, and so I have to couch every statement about religion in a kind of double disclaimer, one for the Christian, and one for the modernAnd I contend that if you are a Christian, and you primarily try to justify your beliefs on the basis of evidence or rational argument, you are actually do
