The text for today's sermon is from William Barrett's Irrational Man, the chapter on The Decline of Religion.
The central fact of modern history in the West -- by which we mean the long period from the end of the Middle Ages to the present -- is unquestionably the decline of religion.
The decline of religion in modern times means simply that religion is no longer the uncontested center and ruler of man's life, and that the Church is no longer the final and unquestioned home and asylum of his being.
Oh really?! Hadn't Barrett ever heard of Marxism? What would he say of Global Warming and the regulation of carbon? If the Warmists had their way, the taxation and regulation of carbon would make Muslim Sharia law look as watery and flexible as the Garrison Koehler's proverbial Ten Suggestions of the Unitarians.
As religion came to be doubted, it learned to adapt itself. It became less about quasi-mythological persons or writings of a distant past, and more oriented toward the future. Holy Books, written long ago, are static targets for scholars and historians. Their authority is gradually eroded as flaws and inconsistencies are identified, or as scientific discoveries are made. Thus it's an evolutionary advantage for any religion to essentially worship a Church (or Party), rather than a Holy Book. The Church can adapt and evolve.
Religion has learned to dress itself up as Science and Progress. Logic-chopping by medieval theologians is seen today as being no more useful than chasing mice around inside one's own skull. But a modern belief system can wow the modern world if it is "proven" by mathematical modeling, which modern divines have been sly enough to call computer "experiments." Many people just don't catch on to how circular computer modeling is.
Instead of an erodible fable from the past, religion has learned to center itself on the Future. No smart-guy can disprove your theory of Future, since it hasn't happened yet. Of course the religion must be a bit vague about the actual date of the Second Coming, the Revolution, or Icecap Melting. Look at the Great Disappointment of 1844 or more recently, the Y2K farce.
It's a difficult balancing act to make a theory of the Future compelling and urgent, in order to cut through all the noise. It must also put the Future far enough out as to avoid looking foolish to the present generation. How did Christianity ever survive the embarrassment of Christ's own prophecy not coming true? (The Second Coming happening in the lifetime of his generation)
Regarding the religion of Progress, I can remember all kinds of false prophecies from my youth. People haven't switched from going to work in their cars to helicopters; they just spend more time stuck in traffic.
Regarding the religion of Progress, I can remember all kinds of false prophecies from my youth. People haven't switched from going to work in their cars to helicopters; they just spend more time stuck in traffic.
Literary and humanistic types were frightened of robots back in 1950s and 1960s; they turned out to be nothing more than machine tools with microprocessors attached. The futuristic utopia of the space age fizzled out; putting Man on the moon had no more consequences than Perry reaching the North Pole or Hillary reaching the top of Everest.
Around 1980 researchers in the military-industrial complex were screaming about America's supercomputers losing out to Japan's; ironically big mainframes were on the way out right then, since it was the dawn of the personal computer age. (Still, you can't blame the researchers for trying the tactic that had delivered the funding in the 1950s, due to the fear of Russky H-bombs and Sputnik.)
Around 1980 researchers in the military-industrial complex were screaming about America's supercomputers losing out to Japan's; ironically big mainframes were on the way out right then, since it was the dawn of the personal computer age. (Still, you can't blame the researchers for trying the tactic that had delivered the funding in the 1950s, due to the fear of Russky H-bombs and Sputnik.)
One of Star Trek's favorite episodes was the one with Ricardo Montablan playing "Khan," the leader of eugenically engineered supermen of the 1990s. The show was written in 1967; how many generations of breeding did they expect to squeeze into 25 years?! Well, no matter; in 1967 the 1990s seemed so far away.
It is doubtful whether humankind will ever outgrow its emotional need for utopian or apocalyptic prophecies, especially when its mental world is drawn for it by intellectuals who are making a good living in the racket. The modern bureaucratized intellectual uses dreams about the Future the same way official priesthoods used myths and fables of the past in an earlier age.
Comments
As far as the apocalyptic prophecies, after all, 95% of the species that have lived on this planet ARE extinct or at least that is what I have heard quoted.
Of course we can object to extinction on aesthetic grounds -- that it makes the world a less interesting place -- and I do object. But it is not a scientific argument.