Religion in the 21st century
The term religion is said to directly derive from both Old French and Anglo-Norman terms dated to the thirteenth century after Christ, and has various connotations: the idea of religion encompasses many moral and doctrinal aspects pertaining to daily life, and these most commonly include respect for the ability to differentiate right and wrong, moral obligations and responsibilities, sense of duty and purpose, religious sanctity, reverence for the Gods, and the spirits, differentiation between the sacred and the profane, definition sacred spaces, source of divine knowledge, liminality and liminal rites, etc. Thus, religion has always played, and continues to play a central and a pivotal role in human lives. It is quite foolish and absurd to expect that science will replace religion automatically and completely.
Firstly, this is because religion is tied to personal and group identity on which we had written extensively. Secondly, religion plays many functions such as personal functions including spiritual and moral functions, economic functions, social functions, cultural functions, political functions, etc – we had written extensively on all these in the past. Major religious are well-entrenched identities with strong institutions, machinery, and cabals. We had also written about thought worlds, mindspace, worldviews, mind orientation and cultural orientations besides bounded mindspace. Anthropologists such as Edward B Tylor, James George Frazer, Emile Durkheim, Clifford Geertz, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach and others have studied religion though not mostly in a contemporary, mainstream format. They have not linked a study of religion to modern challenges faced by society; hence our work. Not everyone can become an evolutionary biologist or an anthropologist. Humans will always be humans, and are driven by fear, emotion, love, hate, and other feelings to name a few. CH Cooley has also written about we feeling and our feeling. There are also cultural differences with anthropologists must acknowledge, and researchers must therefore pursue different types of emic approaches. We had dealt with these extensively in the past. We also have the theory of cultural lag as proposed by William Fielding Ogburn in 1922. Therefore, changes will happen slowly, but they must come about. New forms of religion may emerge in the long-term. Mainstream scholarship driven primarily by left-liberals has also been too limited, fragmented, disparate, one-sided and non-cohesive till date, and such myopic approaches are bound to induce counter-reactions. Scholars must serve science, society and the education system, and not themselves or primarily their careers. They are being paid for their work. We must also make use of social science research techniques extensively such as interviews, surveys, questionnaires, ethnography and participant observation method to name a few. Apparently, they are not fully or extensively used as yet. We had also recommended quail-statistical approaches in this regard using mostly qualitative techniques, but also some quantitative techniques thrown in.
In addition, we had also proposed the following. The ten canons or the ten commandments of the thinktank “Scholars and intellectuals for mankind” (SCHIMA) would be as follows:
- A complete and a total separation of religion and state
- Developing secular constitutions that grant all human rights to citizens
- Universal education for all groups and both genders, and being UpToDate with latest pedagogical techniques so that educational systems can be brought UpToDate from time to time
- Granting complete religions freedom including freedom to practice, freedom to convert, and freedom to non-religion
- Saying no to religious inspired laws, and instituting and promulgating secular laws
- Taking steps to promoting a scientific temper and a spirit of enquiry in society, by allowing meaningful and productive debate, and improving education systems
- Phasing out religious education and teaching universal human values instead
- Allowing free media –There must be absolutely no censorship of internet and media
- Allowing complete freedom of speech and free and open discussion of religion, and permitting constructive criticism of religion in various platforms such as the media, and in universities.
- Moving all nations towards democracy and democratically elected governments in due course
We must fight to gradually bring them into fruition, and slowly if not immediately. All countries on earth must comply in the interests of technological and societal progress and change and human rights. Mainstream scholarship driven primarily by left-liberals has been too fragmented, disparate and non-cohesive till date, and such myopic approaches are bound to induce counter-reactions. There are wide and unnatural gaps everywhere; hence, our mission.
Our publication on the role of religion in the twenty-first century:
| 1 | Religion in the Twenty-first century and beyond: A Social sciences perspective | Google books |