Religion And Wallpaper

"Choosing a religion, says philosopher Ernest Gellner, has become akin to choosing a wallpaper pattern or menu item—an area of life where it is considered acceptable to act on purely personal taste or feelings. Most people do not look to spirituality for an explanatory system to answer the cosmic questions of life. Instead they choose their spirituality based on what meets their emotional needs and helps them cope with personal issues, from losing weight to gaining self-confidence. But, when “serious issues are at stake” like making money or meeting medical needs, Gellner says, then people want solutions based on “real knowledge.”⁷ They want to know the tested outcomes of objective science and re- search.

What this means is that most people live fragmented lives. In the private world of home and friendships, they operate on view of truth (subjective values) that is completely contrary to the one they employ in the public world of work, business, and politics (objective facts). The opposition between facts and values has become the main obstacle to living as whole persons with a consistent, coherent philosophy of life."