LECTIONS
What are the origin and nature of religion? The question has haunted the West for centuries. Religious dogma long supplied the answers, as Jewish and Christian theologians variously in- sisted that other religions were distortions of the original, pure, monotheistic faith. In the 18th century, rationalists, notably France's Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire, proposed a new dogma: Mankind had originally placed its faith in reason; latter-day religions were the distortions. With the 19th...