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De Religione

"Unlike science, art, morality, and politics, religion cannot be adequately accounted for simply as one more form of life among several others. For all the obvious specificity of its beliefs, rites, and social organizations, it presents itself as having to do with the ultimate basis of our entire existence and therefore as fundamental to, not merely coordinate with,"all the other cultural fields. In other words, religion in general is the primary and most direct reflection of the basic existential faith that constitutes human existence. Although its doctrines, for instance, have their origin in a quite particular occasion of insight or 'special revelation,' they are invariably put forward as having a general application and, in the case of the great world religions, as being universalIy valid. This is why Whitehead observes that 'the doctrines of rational religion aim at being that metaphysics which can be derived from the supernormal experiences of mankind in its moments of finest insight.'. ." (On Theology: 79).

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