> But that's just it. Politics *is* about "what can be immediately
> seen." It's about making war or peace, delivering social services,
> ensuring occupational safety, etc. It's not about saving souls; it's
> not about the hereafter; it's not about eternity. Politics is
> concerned *exclusively* with the here and now. That's why -- nutty as
> politics can be -- politics is not completely stark raving insane the
> way religion is.
Religion is about more than the hereafter, eternity, etc. Remember the Feuerbach/Marx analysis? Even though the language is "otherworldly," what religion is actually talking about is this world.
Of course, language is important. A huge percentage of disputes between religious groups, and between religious people as a whole and non-religious people. But sometimes it's important to get behind and beyond these linguistic disputes to the world as it is (admittedly, very hard to do).
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax