Om Shanti Shanti Shantihi

We need a new way entirely to think about what it means to be a human being and what the purpose of our lives is.

Yep.

That excerpt is from this Kristof column, in which he continues the series on conversations with the religious.

To me--born into a traditional Hindu Brahmin family, and an atheist by choice--the question "what it means to be a human being" has nothing to do with any religion.  It is an existential one that all of us have to think about, given the certainty of death.  I sometimes think that I spend time thinking about all these more than most religious do!

I have blogged in plenty about this topic.  A few years ago, a neighbor, who had known me well over the years, commented that I was more of a Christian than many of the people who went to their church.  Coming from born-again Christians, it was high praise.

I am far from confident that religions--old and new--have succeeded in making people think about what it means to be a human being.  It is clear that millions of born-again Christians here in the US have a strange interpretation of what it means to be human.  Elsewhere, there are even Buddhist monks who systematically advocate for violence against others.  Hindus seem to be increasingly jingoistic about their faith in ways that lead to oppressing others.

Kristof's interviewee notes:

The structures of religion as we know it have come up bankrupt and are collapsing. What will emerge? That is for our children and our children’s children to envision and build.

It is irresponsible of us to collectively place such a burden on future generations.  Hopefully, they will do better than us.