The Origins and Resolution
of the Culture War
Many are destined to reason wrongly;
others, not to reason at all;
and others to persecute those who do reason.
Voltaire
What Is a Culture War?
Wars of any sort are the ugliest and most tragic of all human events. That's what makes understanding the causes of war urgent. We can't hope to bring an end to what we don't understand. Yet it often turns out that causation in war is complex. And so it is with the causation underlying the "culture war" that the US is currently engaged in — a war some have spoken of in terms of "red states vs. blue states." Nevertheless, for all the surface complexity, it is usually possible to discern core issues in most wars; and the culture war is no exception.
What you are about to read is an analysis of the deepest issues underlying the ongoing culture war, and a prescription, possibly a very surprising one, for bringing that war to an end.
But before proceeding with this analysis, it might lend clarity to begin by asking what, in general terms, a culture war really amounts to.
Most fundamentally, then, culture wars concern values; and since wars always involve conflict, culture wars are conflicts over values. Historically, culture wars most often arose among societies dominated by one religion or another. Here the conflicts were of two sorts. First, there were conflicts for dominance between different majority cultures. The crusades of the medieval era provide an example of culture wars of this kind. Secondly, there were conflicts that arose when a majority culture demanded a religious and/or cultural allegiance of a minority culture that the miniority culture didn't feel it could, or should, offer. The many conflicts between Catholics and Protestants provide examples here.
The modern secular societies of Europe and the Americas arose precisely as a response to the almost interminable misery caused by conflicts of this nature. That's why, though many Americans are highly religious people, we haven't chosen to officially enshrine any one religion, and require everyone to declare their loyalty to it. Mindful of the tragic consequences of minority/majority conflicts, we have instead embraced secularism. We have also broadly embraced a more general principle: we have held that to require religious and/or cultural allegiance even of the members of the majority culture would be to do serious violence to freedom of conscience; and we have held that this is still more the case with respect to demanding such allegiance of a minority culture.
Yet values are to a society as bones are to an organism: they give society its shape, and inform all of its institutions. How, then, to be a secular society, and yet a society shaped by good values?
The effort to arrive at an answer to this question can, itself, be part and parcel of a culture war; and so matters sit with the US today, at least in part.
"In part," because an especially ugly truth about all wars is this: there are those who profit handsomely from them and who, therefore, have a powerful motive for fanning the flames. This is also the case with culture wars. It has proven tremendously profitable for some political leaders, some businessmen, and some clergy to inflame and exacerbate conflicts which had long been present without becoming ugly. However, as our purpose here is to discern the nature of culture wars in general, we won't pursue this particular thread any further here. Those interested in this aspect can read further at this link.
To sum up our analysis thus far: culture wars are conflicts that have values as their root cause. Historically, culture wars arose either between competing majority cultures, or between a cultural majority and one of its cultural minorities. By contrast, in the US today we have a culture war that has arisen partly because of the tension between those desiring a secular society and those desiring instead a theocracy, and partly because of the political and economic advantages that have accrued to some from encouraging this conflict.
This analysis, however, is all very abstract, and has been offered in general terms. So far nothing has been said about the substantive issues underlying this particular culture war. To deepen our understanding, a more substantive historical analysis is what we must turn to next.
What is the Most Fundamental Substantive Issue
of the American Culture War?
The American culture war generally presents itself one inflammatory issue at a time. An especially inflammatory (and politically and economically exploitable) issue in this context has been that of abortion. Some hold that abortion is murder; others hold that it is not. Likewise homosexuality: some hold that it is an abomination to God, others hold that it isn't a moral issue at all, but simply a minority sexual orientation. The "Pledge of Allegiance" and the "Ten Commandments" issues have arisen because of our choice of a secular society. Numerous other issues could also be offered as examples, and a detailed analysis of each of the issues in contention could be offered. To do this, however, would be to completely overlook the more basic conflict underlying each of these individual conflicts. This more fundamental conflict is especially complex, but can be broadly characterized as a conflict between rationalism and what might be called "traditionalism." However, the conflict more obviously manifests itself as a conflict between science and religion. Thus we find, for example, fundamentalist Christians objecting to the teaching of evolution theory in the schools.
Because rationalism is a somewhat unfamiliar concept, and traditionalism is an exceptionally complex one, we'll continue our substantive analysis in the more familiar terms of the conflict between science and religion. And because one way out of this conflict lies in a better understanding what it is that science and religion are all about as disciplines, we'll focus next on an exposition of the nature of science and religion.
What is Science?
In the most general terms, science is a body of knowledge concerning the physical nature of reality, together with a methodology that time has proven effective as the single best means of resolving questions concerning that reality.
That doesn't sound very controversial, and indeed most of the time science isn't. It tends to become controversial primarily where it touches upon issues that aren't properly scientific in nature, or else when religion touches upon issues that aren't properly religious in nature.
Science can't tell us anything about the nature of a meaningful life, or about the nature of morality. No scientist can be certain whether or not there is a God, particularly if God is conceived as being an entity with an existence outside of what we know as physical reality.
What is Religion?
Our definition of religion is quite a bit more controversial and unconventional than our definition of science. Here it is: religion is properly a set of values, together with a body of practices and a set of institutions that have in common the aim of encouraging human morality and a way of life that is as meaningful as possible.
What may be shocking about this definition is the absence of any reference to God. But there are three compelling reason to define religion in this way.
The first is the fact that not all religions have claimed to have any special knowledge of God. This is true, for example, of Taoism and Confucianism.
However, even if we take the drastic step of denying that Taoism and Confucianism are religions, there remains two compelling reasons to define religion in this way: rational thought about God is properly the domain of philosophical theology, and this is a philosophical, not a conventionally religious discipline. (We'll discuss this controversial claim in greater detail below.)
Finally, on any rational account of God, God would commend the good because it is good. That is, the good isn't good solely because it is commended by God. So, even if we accept the existence of God, there is no intrinsic connection between God and goodness or morality.
If we accept the definition provided above, then religion isn't a body of knowledge about the nature of the physical universe (almost everything most religions have ever had to say on that subject is known today to be wrong). No religion possesses a proven methodology for discovering new knowledge about the nature of the physical universe, or even for validating old knowledge. Nor is a religion, most fundamentally, a set of doctrines concerning a supreme being, though doctrines of this kind are often offered. Morality and a theory of life purpose are more fundamental.
A mistake that many people make is to suppose that whatever religion they happen to be most familiar with is the one and only religion that there ever has been, or ever will be, and that therefore the whole of religion is identical with the specific doctrines of that particular religion. This is like a French chef supposing that cooking consists exclusively of preparing French food, or a chess master supposing that chess is the only game because he knows little or nothing of other games.
The truth is that there have been a great many religions. Each of them has set forth one or many views that contradict the views held by the adherents other religions. The Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Egyptians, and Sumerians all created religions that they believed in just as fervently as any religious individual alive today, many years before the first Christian ever walked the Earth. (Christianity borrowed quite heavily from one or two of these religions.) As was mentioned above, some religions, such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism don't claim any specific knowledge of God, and don't ground their views of morality or life purpose in anything supernatural. The Bible sets forth not one, but two moral standards, one authoritarian, the other philosophical. The authoritarian moral standard simply says: Do what God says (or else). The philosophical moral standards says: do unto others what you would have them do unto you (because that's the right thing to do). These two quite independent and quite different views of morality lead to two entirely different moral standards, or at least they would if the difference was clearly understood.
So, once again, when we eliminate claims that are specific to any one religion, most of what is left is the definition of religion that we supplied above. Here it is again: religion is properly a set of values, together with a body of practices and a set of institutions that have in common the aim of encouraging human morality and a way of life that is as meaningful as possible.
An especially serious deficiency of all of the religions is this: none provides the religious equivalent of the scientific method, that is, some methodology for arriving at certainty, or at least real confidence, concerning religious truth. Faced with the task of choosing one religion instead of another, the individual has little choice but to shrug and make an entirely blind "leap of faith." The majority simply follow the path of least resistance, maintaining whatever religious views they were taught in childhood right into adulthood.
In any case, it is precisely this difficulty concerning methodology that brings us to the threshold of philosophy.
What is Philosophy?
Philosophy is much harder to define briefly than science or religion. It has something important in common with science, and that is its commitment to rationalism. Stated in the simplest terms, rationalism is the view that the more evidence there is for a belief, the better that belief is, and the more it deserves to be accepted as the truth. Rationalists also try to be logical. One of the most fundamental principles of logic has to do with consistency. For example, it would be self-contradictory to say that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and to also maintain, at the very same time, that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. A rationalist would point out that systems of belief that are inconsistent in this fashion are flawed and in need of either repair or rejection. To the extent that they can be accepted at all, views of this nature may only be accepted provisionally.
Philosophy also has something in common with religion. Here the common ground is an interest in questions concerning morality and the nature of a meaningful life. However, because of the commitment philosophers have made to rationalism, they cannot be satisfied with making "leaps of faith." Philosophers always want to see good evidence, and logical and consistent arguments for any and all beliefs. Ideally, they would like to offer us absolutely certain beliefs; but, failing that (the task of arriving at absolutely certain truth has proven quite difficult), they suggest that we ground our beliefs in the best available evidence and logic. Since our knowledge and understanding is never perfect, philosophers, like scientists, urge us to keep the door open to the better understanding that we can often achieve as time goes by. New evidence and stronger arguments often develop as our insight deepens.
In addition to the concerns that philosophy shares with religion, philosophers are also concerned with a great many other issues. These include the nature of ideal governance, questions concerning free will and the nature of the mind, the problem of determining what it is that makes beliefs sound, questions about the nature of mathematics, and the development of aesthetic standards for the arts. In general, if the issue is at once abstract and fundamental, it probably falls within the province of philosophy. So, for example, if you want to do research on the nature of the subconscious mind, then you're a scientist, because you are concerned with empirical (factual) issues. But if you want to determine whether our ordinary ways of speaking of the subconscious mind make good, logical sense, then you're a philosopher whose concern is with philosophical psychology.
Disciplinary Relationships Among Science, Religion, and Philosophy:
What Falls to Each?
Having arrived at a clearer understanding of the nature of science, religion, and philosophy, our next task must be to try to work out the proper relationships among these three disciplines.
In the thousands of years before there was any science as we know it today, disciplinary lines between science and religion could not be drawn. A natural consequence of this is that we often find in the early religions of humanity some element of purely speculative science. There was surely nothing wrong with that. Human beings hunger for understanding, and the task of arriving at understanding must begin somewhere. A good place to start is with speculation. However, speculation is not a good place to stop.
As we began to arrive at a clearer understanding of the nature of science in the course of the Renaissance, and as the body of knowledge secured by the sciences began to grow during the Early Modern period, intellectually honest religious leaders and their adherents should have brought their own scientific understanding forward in recognition of the many new developments. However, this intellectual growth was instead stunted and resisted at every turn. Among the underlying causes of this resistance was a profound fear of the apparent implications of the new scientific knowledge. (There was also a threat to an extant structure of power.)
Resisted, and often even persecuted by the religious, yet confident of the falsity of scriptural scientific views, scientists were prone to become contemptuous of religion as a whole. Some crossed disciplinary lines to declare religion to be nonsense, root and branch. In making these declarations they sometimes went beyond their well-justified claims that the pre-scientific physical speculation to be found in religious scripture is false, and in so doing threw out the baby with the bathwater. Had they known a little philosophy, they might have been more cautious — and thoughtful.
Philosophy and the Development of Rationalism
in Thought Concerning Morality, Life Purpose, & God
Just as scientific thought broke away from religion as our understanding of the physical universe grew, so, too, did thinking concerning morality and life purpose break away as thought concerning those topics also deepened. (In the East, this break never really occurred, because the primary Eastern religious figures adopted a considerably more rationalistic approach to these subjects from the very beginning.)
The seminal figures in this advance — beyond question, the most important advance ever made by humanity — were the Ancient Greek philosophers, most notably Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Among these men, thought concerning morality and life purpose made an enormous leap forward in both logical consistency and in conformity with a scientific understanding of the physical universe.
Yet, interestingly enough, while none of these men believed in the Zeus of their contemporaries, all three did believe in a quite different sort of God. Aristotle is a particularly interesting and important figure, because not only was he the founder of science and a great teacher of ethics, he was also among the first to take an interest in discovering what reason alone might have to tell us about the existence and nature of God. He evidently saw no reason why rationalism, which had enjoyed such success in philosophy and science, and in a more specialized sense in mathematics, should not also be brought to bear upon theology. Accordingly, the God of whom Aristotle speaks is not Zeus, the hurler of thunder bolts, but rather an altogether more abstract sort of entity.
Socrates shared a similar view, for which he was persecuted and put to death by the traditionalists among the Athenians. Lorie MacGregor describes his trial in the following terms:
In his trial as recorded in the Apology, Socrates is accused of ". . . not believing in the gods in whom the city believes." It is possible to interpret this accusation as a charge of atheism and it is on this charge that Socrates is condemned to die. However, this interpretation is too narrow. The accusation is both negative and positive: his accusers see not only that he does not believe in the gods whom the city believes, but also that he does believe in "other new spiritual things." And they are right, for Socrates holds a dramatically different view of god than that of the typical Athenian: he believes god to be perfectly wise, moral and good. Furthermore, he believes that man would be like god if he were to emulate the god by doing the god's work. Assisting in that work would be the ultimate form of pious worship, for the god's work, Socrates believes, is to improve men's souls. Thus, Socrates believes that man can become like god, if the man, like the god, works to improve mens souls. This, for Socrates, is piety.
American philosopher Mortimer Adler has called theology of the sort Aristotle and Socrates engaged in "philosophical theology" to distinguish it from both the scripture-based "sacred theology," of which Aristotle was unaware, and the "naturalistic theology" that was to come later, which went some way toward acceptance of rationalism in theology, while still attempting reconciliation with scripture.
Though few were to attempt a purely philosophical theology, Aristotle's approach nevertheless proved profoundly influential: in the spirit of naturalistic theology, the great church father, St. Thomas Aquinas, undertook to reconcile Aristotelian views of God, morality, and life purpose with Christian theology.
Unfortunately, this promising reconciliation of reason and religion was abandoned during the Early Modern period. Just as Socrates was persecuted for his reconciliation of reason and religion, so, too was the Italian scientist Galileo persecuted for bringing rationalism to bear in the sciences, despite the fact that he was not an atheist, and despite the fact that he believed that science and scripture could be reconciled in important respects. Galileo's great sin was his advocacy of the Copernican model of the solar system, in which it was held that the Earth revolved around the Sun, instead of the reverse. In 1633 Pope Urban VIII (who, like the other Christians of his era believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth) decided that the Copernican view was heresy, and the Inquistion first threatened Galileo with torture, then ordered him placed under house arrest. (Of course, Galileo was right, and the Pope was very much wrong, but this state of affairs wasn't finally recognized by the Catholic church until 1983.)
In a sense, then, Pope Urban VIII might be nominated the first influential fundamentalist in the current sense of that term (and in a sense even the initiator of the current culture war). Implicit in his persecution of Galileo was his rejection of rationalism, a rejection that has continued to this day among fundamentalists (whose main concern often seems to be the persecution of secular Humanists). The essence, and nearly the whole, of fundamentalism has been stated on a bumper sticker: "God said it. I believe it. That settles it."
Unfortunately, left unstated is how the fundamentalist supposes the truth concerning what God said should be determined; and here is the crux of the dispute between the fundamentalist and the rationalist.
While a qualified, if provisional, trust in some things is part of life, believing critically important things simply because we're told to believe them is known as authoritarianism, and, quite apart from its failure to supply much truth, authoritarianism has a very long and very evil history.
Believing things because we want to, or because they make us feel good, is known to students of psychopathology as rationalizing. Rationalizing has nothing in common with rationalism, and in the long run is also apt to have bad consequences in the real world. To draw an analogy: insisting that one has a full tank of gas when one actually has an empty tank is likely to result in trouble.
Working Together:
Cooperation Among Science, Philosophy, & Religion
The plan of cooperation which we wish to outline here will not make any ideologue very happy. It can only begin with the adoption of rationalism, and this is already an insurmountable obstacle for many, perhaps even the majority. We have no wish to force this acceptance on anyone. It would, in any case, be futile. Trying to force rationalism on someone who rejects it is like trying to force romance on a woman who detests her suitor: the enterprise cannot possibly end well. Yet the rejection of rationalism cannot possibly end well, either. The Pope Urban VIIIs of the world have sometimes been powerful and influential, but if they had had their way we would still be hurling spears, and dying of diseases that are today easily cured (courtesy of rationalism). If the impulse to conservatism is the preservation of what is best in our heritage, it is implicit that it must also entail the rejection of whatever has not been found to be the best (otherwise it isn't preservation of what is best).
Thinking devoid of rationality is never for the best.
The next stumbling blocks, which are also formidable, lie at the foundation of human nature. The first of these is human pride, which has arrogance as its worst, and unfortunately common, manifestation. Even if rationalism is accepted in principle, many will wish to reject the conclusions that rationalism leads us to because they may be perceived to undermine existing institutions and figures of authority. All that can be said here is that there is life after dethronement, and indeed the potential for a much better life, for all concerned.
In a similar way, some of the conclusions that reason leads us to may not be very flattering, and many may make us uncomfortable, or even fearful. Yet this is like a Victorian woman rejecting a gynecological exam: she may feel far more comfortable foregoing her pap smear, but her cervical cancer isn't interested in her comfort level.
We cannot begin to address our anxieties and fears until we have first faced up to them; and in the end we cannot face up to reality until we have first understood it. Many people fear death, yet it doesn't seem to have occurred to them what being forever unable to die would be like. Eternity is a long, long, LONG time: no human being could possibly endure it, in or out of the presence of God. Sometimes the boogeyman in the closet can even turn out to be, to some extent, a friend.
So, here we must part ways with those who feel compelled to oppose rationalism. Unfortunately, there really is no alternative, whether we like that, or whether we don't. We would simply ask those who reject rationalism to think long and hard about their shameful tradition of persecution of those who do not. Can a God who has given us reason expect us to persecute those who make use of it?
So, then, given an acceptance of rationalism, what comes next?
The Limits of Science
To begin with, we must understand an important philosophical distinction between the positive and the normative. The positive, in this sense, refers to the factual, and here we must emphasize the purely factual. This, and only this, is the domain of the scientist. The normative, on the other hand, refers to the desirable, or to put it another way, the justifiable. This is not the domain of the scientist; nevertheless, the scientist must understand that there is more to an understanding of life than what falls within his domain.
This all-critical point has been a stumbling block for some time now. This is because of a purely metaphysical (that is, non-scientific) commitment that has been made by many scientists, that of reductionistic materialism. Yet reductionistic materialism is only one form of materialism, and by no means the most credible form. There are two premises at the foundations of reductionistic materialism: 1) the universe is made up of tiny bits of stuff (true, so far as we can tell, except that matter isn't really very solid); 2) everything follows from the properties of these tiny little bits of stuff (false, as we have begun to learn).
Beginning from the falseness of premise 2 above is an alternative, non-reductionistic form of materialism known as emergentism. The key insight of emergentism is often made in Aristotle's somewhat vague terms: "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
Leaving aside further discussion of this very interesting issue here, we would simply say to the scientist that the normative, in the end, is grounded in this "something greater." And while the physical aspects of this "something greater" do lie in the domain of the scientist, the aspects that are not purely positive — that is, the normative aspects — do not.
Likewise, anything that is not essentially material in its nature is also not properly the domain of the scientist. Mathematics and logic, for example, are not subjects which scientists have anything to tell us about as scientists. Provisionally, at least, God is another subject that scientists have nothing to tell us about. That task falls to the specialist in philosophical theology, a point which brings us to our next topic.
The Limits & Proper Responsibilities of Religion
It has often been thought that while scientific questions may nor may not fall within the domain of religion, questions about ethics and the nature of a meaningful life clearly do. It has also been thought, even more certainly, that questions about the nature of God are central to the very meaning of religion.
Are they?
If we begin from an acceptance of rationalism, then questions about the nature of God are questions about what, if anything, we can know about God on the basis of reason and evidence alone'; and questions of that nature fall to philosophy, not religion. This is also true of questions concerning morality and the nature of a meaningful life.
If that is, in fact, the case, the bewildered reader may now be wondering what it is that actually does properly fall to religion.
The answer is: a very great deal; and this is owing to the limits of philosophy. Philosophy is concerned with theory, not with practice. This is like the distinction between science and engineering, which are often mistaken for one another. Science is concerned with understanding the nature of the physical universe in the abstract. Engineering is concerned with making use of the abstract understanding achieved in the sciences and applying it to the development of useful devices.
Similarly, while it falls to philosophy to work out the answers to questions concerning the nature of God, the nature of morality, and the nature of a meaningful way of life, philosophy comes to an end with the resolution of the theoretical issues. Philosophers are not concerned, as philosophers, with seeing to the practical implementation of those answers in the real world. This is the great task of religion.
Think for a moment of what takes place in "Sunday Schools." The faithful are both taught the moral principles of their religion and exhorted to live out those teachings in their everyday lives. So, too, with those scriptures that concerning the ends of a meaningful life.
One may also think of the religious practices of prayer, or more secularly of meditation, and of what might be called "cloistering," or withdrawal from everyday life for the purpose of devoting sustained focus to the contemplation of the spiritual (or, more properly, philosophical) issues of life.
There are also religious dimensions of many disciplines, ranging from medicine and psychology to politics and economics. Any discipline with a normative dimension has, in its practical applications, a religious dimension. For example, a doctor is not ordinarily a religious specialist; but issues which are essentially religious arise in her work on a routine basis; and she cannot carry out her task properly unless she also understands good religious practice. Thus, one religious specialization would be medical ethics, in which the practical implications of theoretical ethics (the task of the philosopher) are worked out.
The Limits of Philosophy
As noted above, the limits of philosophy fall short, on the one hand, of purely empirical (positive) issues, and on the other hand also fall short of issues of moral instruction and exhortation, as well as issues of practical application. There is no reason why any given philosopher cannot, as a human being dwelling in the real world, concern himself with, say, moral exhortation or with working out the practical implications of his moral theories in, say, the development of law. But neither of these tasks falls to him as a philosopher. (Similarly, the religious practitioner may interest himself in the theoretical issues of philosophy, or with the latest developments in cosmology and quantum physics; and the scientist may want to know what the latest thinking concerning God might be, but not as a scientist.)
Rationalism and the Two Materialisms
It may now be apparent that two great (and not yet fully resolved) issues underlie all of the controversy and confusion concerning science, religion, and philosophy. They center, first of all, on the nature of a sound rationalism, and also on the status of materialism. Both of these issues, being primarily theoretical, fall mostly to philosophy for resolution; but philosophers have done a poor job of bringing forward their best understanding of these issues to a lay public. This isn't entirely their fault. The public isn't fully aware of the importance of these issues, and to the extent that they are, think that they ought to be looking to science or religion for the answers. Thus, we have a circular dilemma: the philosopher can't bring forward his understanding unless there's someone to bring it forward to, and there are few individuals to bring it forward to, because the philosophers haven't brought forward their understanding. Philosophers are also inclined to suspect that the average individual lacks the patience and/or intelligence for extended philosophical discourse. Their suspicions are immaterial: their task is to educate, and if they have neither the patience nor the ability to do so, they should seek some other profession.
The task of cultivating philosophical literacy in America must begin somewhere. For the moment, one place that it might begin is with renewed debate concerning both the nature of rationality and with the issues surrounding reductionistic versus emergentistic materialism. Here the philosophers themselves must begin by getting their own house in order. At present, many have simply borrowed the prejudices of the sciences instead of working through the issues on a rigorous and philosophically independent basis.
Philosophical literacy cannot be provided in the course of a short essay; however, as a stopgap, some recommend reading fruitful for further discussion and thought can be provided here.
Where rationalism is concerned, two traditional stumbling blocks to its acceptance have been as follows: 1) acknowledging and working out the proper role of creativity and the subconscious mind; and, 2), working out the place of emotion in the context of rationality. A third stumbling block has been the persistent tendency to think of rationalism in purely abstract terms, when perhaps the single greatest need lies with its application in the travails of daily life.
Books that discuss these issues clearly and in depth are as follows (be aware that most are out of print, and are probably best read on loan from a library):
For the role of creativity and the subconscious mind in the context of discovery in the sciences and arts:
The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler
For the place of the emotions in the psychological economy:
Reason and Emotion, John Macmurray
For the role of reason and rationality in everyday life:
Four Reasonable Men, Brand Blanshard.
With regard to the metaphysical issues underlying the two materialisms, good introductory readings may be found in the following books:
General System Theory, Ludwig von Bertalanffy
and
The Web of Life, Fritjof Capra.
A good book on the nature of God, from the standpoint of philosophical theology is:
How to Think About God, Mortimer Adler.
For a clear discussion of the nature of morality and especially of moral relativism see:
Reason and Goodness, by Brand Blanshard.
Lastly, a good, readable first introduction to philosophy is:
The Story of Philosophy, Will Durant.
Other recommendations for reading may be found in the Everything Progressive philosophy resource.
Perhaps the best way to close this essay would be with a quotation from Corinthians:
For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully. . . .
The essence of rationalism has rarely been expressed more beautifully.
