ABSTRACT
We have seen in what ways dogma may be important or indispensable for a religion, but I have now to add that there are few things more fraught with danger for a religion than dogma. It is not very clear to me what merit, if any, should be accorded to a religion which is centred mainly or exclusively on creeds and dogmas without penetrating deeper with the aid of these. There seem to be persons who have accepted their religious beliefs merely as part of the ethos or custom of their set or community, an attitude which owes a great deal to the institutionalizing of religion. Such beliefs need not be insincere, nor need it be thought that they are accepted altogether blindly. They are taken, without much reflection perhaps, to be initially plausible and might have been seriously queried if they did violence to other accepted notions, such as our ideas of good and bad. There may also be some critical thinking within the accepted framework of religious belief. But there is no personal experience which would make possible due appreciation, and absorption into one’s own experience, of the religious events by which the dogmas are warranted. Religion is here lived entirely at second hand, and the loyalties and enthusiasm which it may arouse are pseudo ones in the sense of being concerned with matters incidental to genuine religion. We move, as it were, along the proper course, but not through the power of the live current. Has this any worth ?
