"We Are All Abraham Now" (11.02.10) One of Mead's central points
is that "the choices between faith and unbelief did not appear
as stark to much of the English-speaking world as they did
elsewhere." Rather, we have been able to maintain a creative
tension between them, which forms the essence of "dynamic
religion." The dynamic religion of the Anglo-American world has
not just been able to coexist with, but thrive upon, the sort of
skepticism that is so corrosive and ultimately fatal to static
religion (which ends up being the disease that kills curiosity).
In other words, our form of religiosity was well-suited not just
to usher in science, but to then assimilate it and give it
meaning. People naturally seek the comfort of a closed system of
thought, whether it be religious or "scientific." In the West,
we have been able to reconcile the absolute and relative, time
and eternity, through the notion of progress, or evolution
(understood in its broader, non-Darwinian sense). Mead does a
good job of showing how w