The Role of religion in society's quest for a standard of values

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In keeping with my assignment for this paper, I should like to pose my discourse on three probable ways of responding to the question: “Is Religion Functional as a Source of a Standard of Values Today?” Indeed, to pose such a question calls for some kind of definition of religion; not because it is necessary to inform you within this context; but, rather, to guide our discussion under the rubric of the topic assigned. For us to discuss such a subject presupposes that religion is valid. Let us agree then that:
Religion is based on a deep instinctive feeling for higher values. It is the instinctive best within us reaching up to the best that transcends self in any of its particulars. It is looking up very high to ultimate values, and being drawn to them by recognition, acceptance, adherence and intellectual commitment. The religious attitude is one of loyalty, devotion, reverence, and humility.
While philosophy is forever searching, inquiring, questioning; religion, unlike philosophy, in this sense, is an attitude ─ an attitude of faith; faith that the; world is something worth while, that life is worth living, and that the universe is not just a great machine, that there are values ─ perhaps eternal values, which the min(i of man can partly know, that there is after all a moral right that wrong is wrong and never right.
Unlike ethics, which is a normative science dealing with the standards of right conduct, or conduct itself, religion´s essential note is reverence and its peculiar aim has to do with harmony and adjustment with and to the highest, which is related to righteousness and conduct.
You will note, first of all, that I have given this tentative definition of religion without a “God” symbol, although a “theistic symbol” is implied or implicit. The above definition is meant to fit religion both “theistic”and “non-theistic”, as it is understood in the broadest sense with or without a God reference. I give this general definition hopeful that it will he acceptable only as a working definition of religion and, therefore, not final. If this definition is generally acceptable as a conceptualized view of religion; then, we might move to the point of giving three possible answers to the question which the subject of the paper poses for us today.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. Introduction
• Ⅱ. Religion, God, and Human Values
• Ⅲ. Three Examples of How Religion's God Informs
• 1. Example One: A modern scientist is informed because he asked God Questions.
• 2. Example Two: Civil Religion
• 3. Example Three: Values Beyond Religion and God
• ·FOOTNOTES