How Our Rational Age Will Transform Religion
Participation in organized religion has certainly been on the decline over the past several years. Church attendance is way down and atheism is on the rise. Why is this happening? Can and should we do anything about it?
At first glance, religiously minded people consider the decline to be a terrible thing. However even for the religiously minded, it can be understood as a positive thing. This can be a guiding light for a future spiritual renaissance, in which attendance at spiritual organizations could reach an all-time high. How could this be?
We live in a rational time. Things have to make sense and if they don’t, they are rejected. Even just a couple hundred years ago, people were not nearly as rationally oriented. Science was considered to be blasphemy. Questioning religious principles was strictly off limits and, at times, even punishable by death. The good intentions behind such edicts were to keep the teachings pure and unaltered. Not a thought was given to whether or not those teachings made any rational sense. People were just expected to have faith—blind faith. Over the generations, as misunderstandings crept in and superstition infiltrated, those teachings became less and less credible and, as a result, people turned their backs on religion.
Christian religious history reveals an interesting insight into what happened. Early in the first century, there was the emotional aspect of religion as well as the Gnostic aspect. The Gnostics brought forth the rational basis of religion. However, historians have said that people back then didn’t want to have to think. They so strongly preferred the emotional perspective that the Gnostics were driven underground, even burying their scrolls in caves several hundred yards from the monasteries. Today, many of those scrolls have been recovered and are being translated.
Society has become so rationally oriented that an ever-increasing portion of society rejects religion. People look at it, it makes no rational sense, and they can’t blindly accept such proclamations. The whole arena has become so lost to the quagmire of misunderstanding and distortion that people completely reject the very idea of religion, God, and spirituality, and instead become atheists.
There is a silver lining to this cloud and it points to the future of spirituality over the next decade. A rational look at the underlying tenets of religion will reveal what is superstition or dogma, as well as what those teachings really meant. Ultimately, people will discover that there is such a thing as rational spirituality, which was the actual foundation of religion in the first place. Religion and rationality then will no longer be viewed as diametrically opposed, but instead as seamlessly merged. Rational understanding will raise our appreciation of religion to greater heights.
The future of spirituality and religion lies in the integration of the rational with the emotional—one supporting and giving greater insight into the other; one purifying, stabilizing, and enhancing the knowledge and experiences derived from the other. It is a bright and beautiful future. Young people will no longer reject their religion, but will instead enthusiastically celebrate its beauty. Spirituality will be respected and valued as the foundation that supports all areas of life.
Michael Mamas is the founder of The Center of Rational Spirituality, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the betterment of humanity through the integration of ancient spiritual wisdom with modern rational thought. Michael Mamas helps individuals and organizations develop a deeper understanding and more comprehensive outlook by providing a 'bridge' between the abstract and concrete, the Eastern and Western, and the ancient and modern. Dr. Mamas writes on a variety of subjects on his blogs: MichaelMamas.net and RationalSpirituality.org.
Administrator at Science Journalism Cyprus
7 年You make at least three very problematic statements in your article, which are the following: (1) "...People completely reject the very idea of religion, God, and spirituality, and instead become atheists". COMMENT: People do not become atheists, they are born atheists, or if you prefer, they are born Tabula Rasa, i.e. Blank Slate. Nobody is born theist, until someone indoctrinates them to a god, through religion. Spirituality (not in the strict sense that you define it) is a natural state, while religiosity is taught. God and religion is not in our genes, but they are nurtured (see Social Learning Theory). (2) "Rational spirituality, which was the actual foundation of religion in the first place". COMMENT: The actual foundation of religion in the first place was not rational spirituality. On the contrary it was the complete irrationality, emanating from a full ignorance of the physical world in pro-scientific periods. Add to this anxiety, metaphysical quests and fear of sickness, loss and death, and you get superstition, which is the beginning of religion. Until today ignorance, which is the enemy of both rationality and spirituality in the intellectual sense, is the conservation tool of the God of the Gaps. In The Storytelling Animal, Jonathan Gottschall writes that humans are not so much natural storytellers as much as our brains are susceptible to the power of a story. Our brains hate gaps. We’ll invent all sorts of tales to fill in what remains unexplained. This might be the neural basis for religion. (3) "The future of spirituality and religion lies in the integration of the rational with the emotional". COMMENT: Rationality is spiritual, not in the religious and godly way that you seem to limit and understand it, but in the philosophical/scientific one. Scientists are spiritual people in the sense that they produce intellectual work, based on the rationality of the scientific method they apply. So there is no need to integrate your form of spirituality into rationality in order to ensure a safe future for religion and god. Additionally, intellectually spiritual people are also emotional beings, so again there is no need for adding additional proportions of emotion into rationality. CONCLUSION: There is no need to incorporate the religious/divine spirituality into the scientific/philosophical rationality, there is no need for additional emotion in intellectual rationality, religion and scientific rationalism are totally incompatible, since they differ on a methodological level and hence on a philosophical and conclusive one: i.e. the results, explanations, theories and truths they deliver to the people are totally different and the gap between them is bridgeless. Thus, the term Rational Spirituality is just an oxymoron.
Business Development Consultant
7 年Michael, I'm grateful for having found a mind such as yours. It is inspirational to know someone sees what I see happening. I look forward to meeting you someday. God bless you!