Given the unique
character of religious experience, science must be quite wrong when it
trivializes religious conviction as merely a manifestation of wishful thinking,
faulty logic, or fear of the unknown. Quite clearly, as the examples
illustrate, the sense of the supernatural lies at the heart of religious
conviction. And the centrality of the supernatural sense has been confirmed by
archaeological, mythological, linguistic, ethnological and historical studies
which find a belief in the otherworldly dimension, along with a host of
spiritual forces and agencies as far back as we have identifiable records of
human habitation.
The sense of the
supernatural, of the reality of an otherwordly realm forms the core of the
world's religions. In fact, as a few pertinent examples will confirm, religions
the world over share a common voice when they assure us that all activity takes
place within a divine or supernatural context that provides the basic
parameters for understanding the significance and purpose of human beings,
including the nature of human experience. In essence, all religions trace a
direct connection between the heart of humankind (the soul) and the supernatural
essence or sphere of existence. That connection implies a supernatural origin
as well as a divine future, and in addition, assures mankind of pre-eminent
position in the overall scheme of things here on earth.
In his treatment
of religious worldviews around the globe, Ninian Smart sums up the overall
outlook as follows: 'For the person who believes in God (the theist) the cosmos
is a divine creation which reveals God's glory: I am a creature and I am made
in God's image, and others are too. For the self, there is the hope of
salvation, a kind of blissful union with god, . . . The cosmos is full of signs
of God's goodness and of his purposes.' These factors can be found, in varying
degrees in the teaching of most of the world's major faiths. For example, the
Bible, reputedly in the hands of some 1.3 billion Christians worldwide, tells a
straight-forward tale of the creation by God of this world and of mankind (Gen
1:1-4, 26-7). Humanity's spiritual birth is complemented by a heavenly future
(conditions apply!), and life under God's sovereignty here and now. If, on the
other hand, we are Muslim, we are similarly assured that the creator and
central controlling agency of the universe, Allah, has each and every human
being, saint and sinner alike within His watchful eye:
Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being
the All-Merciful, the All- Compassionate
the Master of the Day of Judgement.
It is God who created the heavens and the earth
and sent down out of heaven water
wherewith He brought forth fruits to be your sustenance
... and he subjected to you the sun and the moon constant upon their courses
and He subjected to you night and day.
Whomsoever God desires to guide
He expands his breast to Islam
whomsoever He desires to lead astray
He makes his breast narrow, tight (Suras 1/ 14.32/ 4.37/6.125).
Within the
Islamic worldview, man is said to be theomorphic, a life-form having the
capacity to know God as well as the dignity of accountability to God, the
source of all existence. And it is this unique capacity that marks man above
the beasts, which God has created for man's use (Sura 16.3). Thus, as noted
Islamicist Kenneth Cragg writes, 'Man in Islam is firmly and vigilantly set in
the divine milieu, not by election in distinction from others, but by dint of
natural human worth, universally shared, born under the Divine mercy, destined
for immortality.'
Again, following
these themes Eastward, we note that according to one of the world's oldest
faiths, Hinduism, the cosmos is geocentric, the earth is the centre of the
entire universe. Within this geographical context, the doctrine of
reincarnation (the cycle of rebirth or transmigration), becomes central to the
Hindu perspective over time. Placing humanity at the forefront of creation,
this developmental scheme was played out on a graduated scale of bodily
progression over successive incarnations, from plants to insects, fish, animals
and finally the human condition, described as the most favourable because it is
only from a human birth that an entity can perform the rites and religious
sadhana (devotion/yoga) necessary to attain release from this endless round.
Over the course
of this rise to ascendancy within the Hindu worldview appear many religious
doctrines, varying widely on a scale from optimism to extreme pessimism in
regard to the prospects for a happiness in this physical plane of existence (as
opposed to the supernatural or heavenly realms), but all of which, in one way
or another, treat the human estate as a central point of the cosmos. The early Vedas,
for example, while maintaining a cheerful, buoyant, life-affirming outlook on
life featured the prospect of a journey, after death, to the 'land of the
fathers' (pitr-loka), a realm of felicity where God-devoted people are
described as enjoying themselves (RV 1.115.2; 1.154.5). Later, Brahmanic
ritualists came to believe that they had access through ritual to the powers
that created and controlled the world, and that without their regular
sacrifices, all cosmic processes would cease, and chaos would come again.' And
confidence in the centrality of Homo Sapiens within the makeup of the cosmos
continues undiminished, in the insistence of the mystical treatises (The
Upanisads) that in each human heart reigns a holographic emanation, as it were,
of the supreme supernatural principle of the universe, the Atman, or cosmic
soul. This equivalence is expressed in the famous assurance of the vedic
meditative master to his disciple, Setaketu: 'That which is of the finest
essence of Being--the whole world has that as its soul. That is reality. That
is Atman. [and] That art thou, Svetaketu.'
Finally, within
the Chinese religious cosmos, the strategic importance and theomorphic nature
of the human estate finds equal support, as expressed in several characteristic
ways. We see this focal perspective in the prominent position of ancestor
worship (and the underlying convicition in the ongoing influence of human
ancestors in life's affairs) within the overall religious cultus, in the myriad
forms of spirit presence that are considered accessible to human influence, in
the general Confucian understanding of the way the world works as a
family-style web of interpersonal relationships, and of course, particularly in
the notion of portents as outlined in that most ubiquitous of all Chinese
life-guides, the I-Ching or Book (ching) of Changes (I); Tutor to both Lao Tzu
and Confucious, this chronicle of the various configurations of cosmic
circumstances (or states of change), is based on the implicit assumptions that
the significance of the various patterns of the world situation at any given
moment are accessible to man and, more importantly, that man is an organic part
of these successive patterns of cosmic circumstance. Thus whatever symbol is
found to be applicable to this world-moment, is considered applicable to the
subject's life as well.
In addition to
these more or less implicit man-centred assumptions built into Chinese
religious cosmology, the priviledged position of humanity is occasionally is
set out explicitly. Tung chung-shu, Taoist-Confucian court philosopher of the
Han dynasty (202 BCE-221 CE), writes directly on this matter:
There is nothing
more subtle than Ch'i (supernatural life-energy), there is nothing more endowed
with wealth than Earth, nothing more numinous (full of supernatural power) than
Heaven. And of the essence of both Heaven and Earth, whereby things are brought
to life, there is nothing of higher estate than Man. . . . [Thus] the heads of
those that receive less from Heaven and Earth (the plants) bend down while the
heads of those which receive more from Heaven and Earth are erect and face the
Heaven. This shows man in his superiority to ordinary things and in his
intimate association with Heaven and Earth, and man's task is to complete what
Heaven and Earth have produced but left incomplete.
In sum then, we
can say that over the millennia, both eastern and western religious cosmologies
have remained remarkably consistent in their assurance that within the
divinely-created and controlled cosmos, humanity occupies not merely an
integral position within the web of life, but a privileged role characterised
by its unique capacity for direct access and accountability to the 'Lord of all
Being.' Intentionally created by the supreme sovereign agency of the universe,
human life is thus inherently important and meaningful, human activity central
tothe divine plan for the management of all existence. And in light of the
supernatural context within which the activity of this life is cast, humanity
enjoys the future hope of everlasting happiness beyond the physical span of
years in a supernatural domain of unparalleled perfection.
As night differs
from day, of course, this worldview is directly contradicted by [P-View-b] the
scientific account of a universe consisting of physical forces, particles and
mathematically-precise patterns of interaction that combine, moment by moment
to fashion the observed ongoing mechanical flux comprising all that is.
But disregarding
these differences with the scientific view for the moment, the pertinent
question is whether the religious worldview which is so closely allied to and
depenent upon the testimony of religious experience, has been has been telling
the whole truth on this matter of the supernatural sense. For millennia it has
been more or less assumed that religious experience is self-authenticating,
that the sense of the supernatural is itself proof positive of the reality of
the supernatural; that God experience demonstrates the reality of God.
Religious scholars, moreover, both ancient and modern, have advanced these
claims explicitly, citing, for example, the universal belief in the spiritual
dimension ('the consensus of the nations') as proof of the existence of God.
For post-Renaissance Western scholars, more familiar with Judeo-Christian and
Muslim notions of heavenly revelation than Eastern notions of meditative
'insight,' the evidence of universal religiosity testified to a primeval or
'Adamic' revelation by God to mankind as a whole. This, in turn, was overtaken
by the notion that universal religiosity can be traced to a unique, inbuilt
human capacity for communicating with the divine ¾ a kind of 'God-radar.' And
this too witnessed the reality of the divine. The 'universal impulse to seek
for God' it was said, 'must invariably be given due prominence among other
legitimate proofs of the Divine existence.'
But
as in the case of science, the religious perspective has not been presenting
the whole truth on this issue. For commonplace phenomena such as dreams,
hallucinations, even the effects of hypnosis, confirm that what we seem to be
experiencing need not necessarily be an objective reality at all. Could this be
true in the case of religious experience as well?
