Religion In A Postmodern Age – Part 3

Subjective Experience of Religious Texts
As for Religious Texts, no holy book is accepted as absolute but simply viewed as the subjectivity expressed by its authors. For what really happened is unknowable, and if it is knowable, it is unimportant.

The postmodernists tell us that religious texts are neither to be taken literally nor dogmatically. They are simply an avenue whereby we come to our own subjective “experience” in the religion we have created for ourselves. You have the right to draw from the Upanishads, the writings of the Hindus; the Sutra, the writings of the Buddhists; the writings of the Koran; or any other religion. All texts are permissible in order to gain your own “inner” perspective of reality.

It could even be through an assortment of all these writings that this reality for yourself is found. There is no “truth”; there are only truths, and those truths may be for “the moment” and only for that individual at that time.

Ironic isn’t it, that a philosophy opposed to absolutes and dogmatism would be so absolutely and dogmatically opposed to anyone holding to objective religious beliefs. Go figure.