terrshee's Diaryland Diary

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Reading \"The Reformation\"

I've been reading a book on the Reformation and Counter-Reformation given me by KnitGeek. It is truly excellent, but dense. The book is packed with information and insights yet keeps you on track with some very welcome internal cross references. I've never read a book that so carefully tries to trace both sides of an historical shift. I've been reading it for three weeks and am only barely past the halfway point (admittedly it is long). It is one of those works you can only read for a little bit before your brain has to stop assimilating and start processing.

But one question it does not answer, and which I keep coming back to, is why on earth religious dissent mattered so much? In a way I understand why the church would want to maintain its internal consistency of belief and ritual, but what exactly is the threat of schism beyond the fact that someone no longer agrees with you? Why should it be so important to impose a religious conformity if it doesn't really threaten the civic well being? If the results of your religious practice don't result in an appreciably different result (i.e. you still think murder is bad whether you accept the principle of transubstantiation or not), then what does it matter? Where does the spiritual altruism of wanting to save someone's soul cross over into worldly domination?

I suppose that in the past religious life did not deviate from civic life, and that if you are going to use a sacred document as the basis for your law, then it really isn't any difference.

But I'm sure that wired somewhere within human DNA and evolutionary imperatives is a deep-seated need to create a world that doesn't threaten us, and that at least outward conformity maintains that illusion. Of course the problem is then that we are operating on millenium of survival behaviors that don't really apply any more, but which are integral to our beings. The only solution is to think and act on reason, but when did that ever happen except when the Constitution was written?

Ugh. It is too early for this and I've got to get ready for the carpeting guys, whenever they are to arrive. In theory they'll call with me a time this morning. How nice.

7:04 a.m. - 2005-02-25
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