Everyone is Religious

Yesterday, I read an online piece by Andrew Sullivan. Writing in New York Magazine, Mr. Sullivan uses the title "America's New Religions". The piece is well written, obviously well considered, rather long, and well worth the read.

I don't know much about Mr. Sullivan. From the text of his piece, I can make an educated guess that he is not a Christian, nor does he seem to follow any of what we would call "organized religion". Still, he insists that everyone is religious. A snippet from the piece:

Everyone has a religion. It is, in fact, impossible not to have a religion if you are a human being. It’s in our genes and has expressed itself in every culture, in every age, including our own secularized husk of a society. By religion, I mean something quite specific: a practice not a theory; a way of life that gives meaning, a meaning that cannot really be defended without recourse to some transcendent value, undying “Truth” or God (or gods). Which is to say, even today’s atheists are expressing an attenuated form of religion. Their denial of any God is as absolute as others’ faith in God, and entails just as much a set of values to live by — including, for some, daily rituals like meditation, a form of prayer.

Given this definition of 'religious', I heartily agree with Mr. Sullivan that we humans are religious creatures.

photo credit: fusion-of-horizons Sitaru via photopin (license)