Forgiving David Brooks

It isn't easy, but Mr. Brooks has almost redeemed himself in Pretty Lady's eyes, after he championed that ridiculous ABC debate. With one bold move, he has defined the nature of the coming socio-spiritual debate:

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day.

And what, pray tell, is wrong with a 'cultural artifact,' when culture plays an integral part in how we define 'self'? Hmmmm?

Pretty Lady has come to subscribe, herself, to a sort of relative absolutism. She believes that it is essential to the expansion of human consciousness to subscribe, at one time or other, to a doctrine of absolutes; this is essential to the training of the mind to recognize its unity with God. However, in retrospect, these absolutes will be seen to dissolve utterly, as only being the structural supports of one's spiritual childhood.

So Pretty Lady agrees to respect people's cultural artifacts, with deep reverence, as long as they refrain from bashing others over the head with them. Agreed?