Sunday New York Times Magazine has a story on Sigmund Freud - a committed atheist - and his re-examination of monotheism as a potential incubator of abstract reasoning and a rich inner life:
If people can worship what is not there, they can also reflect on what is not there, or on what is presented to them in symbolic and not immediate terms. So the mental labor of monotheism prepared the Jews — as it would eventually prepare others in the West — to achieve distinction in law, in mathematics, in science and in literary art. It gave them an advantage in all activities that involved making an abstract model of experience, in words or numbers or lines, and working with the abstraction to achieve control over nature or to bring humane order to life. Freud calls this internalizing process an “advance in intellectuality,” and he credits it directly to religion.
It is useful to remember that while dogma often marches in step with religion.. it is not exclusive to religion. It is not so much faith as it is obnoxious certainty that really pushes my buttons [beep!]…
