Saturday, February 26, 2011

FROM MAY

"We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.

[several passages later, May is quoting from Erich Fromm] '...There is much less difference between a mystic's faith in god (by which he means the indigenous convictions of the religious person rather than other-worldly creeds) and an atheist's rational faith in mankind than between the former and that of a calvinist whose faith in god is rooted in the conviction of his own powerlessness and in his fear of god's power.'"

- Rollo May, Man's Search For Himself

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