[MD] Religion is not created by man. Men are created by religion.

[erinnoonan74 at gmail.com]

Hi all,

I am so sorry to hear of the passing of Mr. Pirsig.  My thoughts, prayers, and heart go out to his family.
He has had such an influence on so many people of different faiths that I have been thinking about his above quote about religion.  I wanted to share a quote I came across that reminded me of Pirsig.   First a short intro to the author.  This was written by Rudolf Allers M.D.,Ph.D. (1883-1963).   Allers was an Austrian psychiatrist – a Catholic taught by Sigmund Freud. He later distanced himself from psychoanalysis.  When the Nazis took Austria Allers emigrated to the United States. He was master of Viktor Frankl and a friend of St. Edith Stein

 “A man may think well of himself because he is conscious of devoting his energy to the pursuit of some goal he wants to reach, because he is indeed enthusiastic about it, because his whole personality has become wrapped up in his purpose. But there are few people who care to find out whether these goals really deserve the spending of so much of energy, and whether it is right to let them occupy so large a place in life, or whether their objective importance justifies  the mental reactions associated them. This question is not asked  because man loves to believe that objective values exist necessarily wherever his personal likings are engaged. This primitive attitude has been strengthened by the unlucky course philosophy has taken  for more than a century.  The philosophers have told mankind too often that there are no objective values, that values do not exist at all outside the mind, that they are but the result of human predilection, and the projection, as it were, into the world of reality , of the subjective attitudes.......
Every being strives for the good.  This may be used as a kind of definition of what is good or a value: good is what every being wants. This is quite true so long as it is taken in the right sense.  Every striving indeed is significant of some good having been sighted.   The study of strivings or human wants may, therefore, serve as a point of departure for an inquiry into the nature and the order of values. But is absolutely wrong to conclude that striving creates, so to say, the value; in fact it is the value or the good existing in reality or capable of existing there which causes the wishes, the wants, the cravings and strivings of man to arise. Modern mind has become thoroughly imbued with the utterly mistaken idea of the subjectivity of values.”

Erin