hen I ponder the emotional and psychological reasons for religion my memory often returns to a little book that I read long ago. I respect what Paul Ricoeur says in his The Religious Significance of Atheism, (1969) where the knower comes to reject and transcend the god of accusation and consolation. This is experienced as a struggle, sometimes a long one, to come to terms with one's religious indoctrination as inherited towards personal authenticity.Ricoeur's last paragraph in the book reads, "There is, I suggest, a certain congruence between this philosophical analysis and an interpretation of the kerygma which would be both faithful to the origins of Judeo-Christian faith and appropriate to our time. Biblical faith represents God--the God of the prophets and the God of the Christian Trinity--as a Father. Atheism teaches us to renounce this father image. Overcome as an idol, the father image may be recovered as a symbol, however. As a symbol it would be a parable of this ground of love; it would be the counterpart, in a theology of love, of the progression which led us from a mere resignation to Fate to a poetic life. Such, I believe is the religious significance of atheism. An idol must die, in order that a symbol of Being may speak."To round out what I want to say, the recovered "symbol," for me, is down-to-earth and genderless. ~ BlogHer
See also METAXY on Paul Ricoeur
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