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     Reflecting further on theology, I explore the hypothesis
that the driving force behind religious expression is social:
specifically that there is an urge to communicate, to
publicize, experiences which are inherently subjective,
personal, inward.

     Of art, a similar hypothesis may be entertained.  Yet,
with art, the compulsion is sublimated by (with) skill,
technique.  Art and religion seem to intersect, in that art
appears as religion, and religion requires art to give it
meaning.

     Public religion exhibits the compulsion to community.
Public confessions of faith, missionary zeal, religious wars,
crusades, intimidation with threats of hell-fire for non-
conformance.  Silence is the expression of absence of
intellectual community, of intellectual separateness and
isolation, if not of loneliness.  At its apogee religion
manifests itself as silence such as Quaker meeting.

     If people would just start taking the second commandment
seriously and stop talking about God, all problems of
religion would be solved.

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Copyright 2005, Ernst Jochen Meyer
