Challenges To Religion

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty


We cannot say the exact date of the beginning of religions but a safe guess is when agriculture started in different parts of the world theist religions started. Biblical Judaism mainly focused on the shepherds and peasants. Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism created cosmological myths to bolster up an agrarian value system and a social life veering around villages, domesticated animals and agricultural produce. The Hindu imaginary had a three layered universe in which the earth was below heaven and above a subterranean life system. They believed in a Brahmanic energy similar to the élan vital but also conceived of several gods in an asymmetrical structure which slowly became unwieldy and polytheistic. Christianity and Islam, however, believe in a personal God and a non- urban system of life management. These religions and myths continue to dominate modern man’s belief and even lifestyle. But this is being challenged by two other systems: Politics and Science. As the One God idea is not accepted by all in Hinduism, one authoritarian ruler is also not accepted in politics. The monistic ideals had created monarchy but slowly monarchies have given way to democracy where every individual is sacred and divine. Science has given rise to a myth-breaking logic which can demonstrate the inadequacy and unsustainability of certain beliefs. Technological revolution has changed man’s life-style which now is more urban than rural- agrarian. The other challenges to religion come from Humanism.

Human organisations, such as the Maurya empire in India, the Pharaonic Egypt, Chinese Communism and the European empires, enforced another kind of ‘religious’ discipline. The modern Organizations like the Railways, Army, Indian Space Research Organization (or NASA and others) and such like Organisations are self-contained belief systems. They have their by-laws or constitutions, worldviews, duties and work ethic well crafted so that an individual is bound to be devoted to those values or ideals pursued where he finds his earthly salvation. Most organizations function like religions. They give us a system of ‘moral‘ laws made by a god or few godlike experts in the interest of men and women of the world. Hindus believed that divine laws were revealed to men in the Vedas. For the Jews it was the Bible. But the modernists and humanists would argue that Buddhism, Nazism or Liberalism were natural laws which have evolved in course of time. In the political evolution democracy has emerged as the most advanced and acceptable ’religious’ system. Democracy gives the individual a feeling of freedom and sanctity. Man can exercise his choice and pursue his vision but he must follow the constitution and obey the rules and regulations as is done in a religious system. The sub systems of democracy like election management, party line campaigning, booth management and strategy planning etc are like the elaborate yajna rituals and austerity practices. Except the spiritual goals of religions these sub systems give all other things. Spirituality is also often independent of religions. In a democracy there is no provision  for soul and immortality which most religions believe in and practice ways of attaining spiritual essences. Otherwise, these sub systems are self- sufficient units of absorbing an individual's total self and the ‘citizen’ soul. The hold of religion therefore gets weakened by the social, educational and political systems which claim soulful attention.

Today no one subscribes to the view that man plays his allotted role in the cosmic scheme of things.Man today is empowered by technology, secularism and liberalism. In the 21^st century man can speak with some conviction ‘’yes I can’ which is taboo in religion. All these challenges from science, politics and social humanism threaten religion existentially. Those religions which  have regimented the rituals and papal or shrine authorities over social behaviour may face revolt from inside or may adapt the changes and become more liberal. But we are moving towards a stage where the individual emerges as the measure of things and human will moderated by opportunities will determine ways of life.