The insight point convinced me personally most - from an Egan perspective, the mythic understanding is all about stories, and oh boy does religion have stories. Karen Armstrong's A History of God is as good a place as any to start reading about the place of stories and texts in religion, and how it evolved and adapted to changing times. Storytelling is perhaps the most human activity there is, and many religions certainly tap into that.
You can find all kind of romantic stories (in Egan's sense) too - king David the hero, sticking to the One God as a kind of idealism etc. just for starters. And then there's the community-building and social cohesion and giving comfort to the grieving and other "side-effects" of religion done well.
But religion can also take us to the ironic level. There's all kinds of writing in Buddhism and the Koans of Zen that take you beyond the philosophic into the ambiguity and not-knowing of the last stage. Maybe religion is a uniquely good way of getting you from the philosophic to the ironic stage? There's a history of mysticism and transcendence and inexplicable experiences in religion, after all.
Insight, Understand the World, and Not be fooled all are about equally compelling for me. I'm not sure what Understand yourself adds; to me it seems to just be saying that to gain any insight from any types of religious tradition is to be religious.
Some great points here.
As to loving your enemies, Scott Alexander made the point (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization/) that Christianity went up against the Roman empire, the most powerful entity of its day, and somehow won in the end.
The insight point convinced me personally most - from an Egan perspective, the mythic understanding is all about stories, and oh boy does religion have stories. Karen Armstrong's A History of God is as good a place as any to start reading about the place of stories and texts in religion, and how it evolved and adapted to changing times. Storytelling is perhaps the most human activity there is, and many religions certainly tap into that.
You can find all kind of romantic stories (in Egan's sense) too - king David the hero, sticking to the One God as a kind of idealism etc. just for starters. And then there's the community-building and social cohesion and giving comfort to the grieving and other "side-effects" of religion done well.
But religion can also take us to the ironic level. There's all kinds of writing in Buddhism and the Koans of Zen that take you beyond the philosophic into the ambiguity and not-knowing of the last stage. Maybe religion is a uniquely good way of getting you from the philosophic to the ironic stage? There's a history of mysticism and transcendence and inexplicable experiences in religion, after all.
By the way, here's atheists doing something as close to a religious ceremony as possible while not actually doing religion: https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/bay-area-secular-solstice-2024-script . That's the kind of thing I wish I'd experienced personally, maybe I will some day.
Insight, Understand the World, and Not be fooled all are about equally compelling for me. I'm not sure what Understand yourself adds; to me it seems to just be saying that to gain any insight from any types of religious tradition is to be religious.