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But none of this implies that Communism is not properly a religion, unless one is prepared to question whether archaic religions, also, are religions in the proper sense of the word. Where I was misled, I fear, in much of my more recent thinking about all this was in allowing myself to generalize, invalidly, from what is undoubtedly true of axial religion to what is true of religion simply as such. What any religion necessarily presupposes is only that life is ultimately meaningful or worth living, in the complex sense in which I have explained this, i.e., as involving a basic supposition that life is ultimately meaningful; a basic question as to how, exactly, we are to understand the meaning of ultimate reality for us so as to understand it authentically and truly, as it really is; and an open commitment to obey—which is to say, to understand ourselves authentically and truly, because realistically, in accordance with—whatever we are then given to understand explicitly of the meaning of ultimate reality for us and to lead our lives accordingly. But, as I have usually insisted in my analyses of religion, how different religions answer the basic religious question, or with what radicality of insight, is historical1y variable, depending on which of the conditions of human life are taken to focus the problem and on the depth at which these conditions are grappled with and understood (cf., e.g., On Theology: 108). This means that, in the nature of the case, there is never any guarantee that the account that a particular religion will give of the ultimate meaning of life will be at once clear and coherent, meaningful and true. 

18 January 2010

Replicated in #1712; will be corrected