God is not dead
The importance of religiosity
TOPE ORIOLA STAFF
Is the world becoming more secular or religious? The idea of secularization has been a recurrent theme from the earliest sociologists in memory. Are we truly becoming more atheistic? Friedrick Nietzsche believed that there was an unstoppable decline in faith in the Christian God and that there was a possibility that a definitive victory of atheism might release humanity from the feeling of indebtedness to God. He also questioned what is truly fundamental to Christendom, which he termed “Christianity’s stroke of genius: the creditor sacrificing himself for his debtor out of love.” The whole idea of a sacrificial lamb for the remission of the sins of mankind was abhorrent to Nietzsche.
If Nietzsche abhorred religion, Sigmund Freud found it ridiculous that there could be claims about a God anywhere. In The Future of an Illusion, Freud equates religion with “the defense against childish helplessness.” Karl Marx’s views about religion need no introduction. Needless to say that from a Marxian standpoint, religion is an instrument of oppression, generating false consciousness.
This strong aversion for religion is yet to abate in the present day. Steve Bruce, in God is Dead: Secularization in the West, argues that there has been a consistent “long-term decline in the power, popularity and prestige of religious beliefs and rituals.” Factors such as modernization, individualism, prosperity, diversity and egalitarianism, as occasioned by liberal democracy, are often touted as being responsible for the reduction of religion to a relic of the past.
End of the secularization thesis
Peter Berger, a key figure in the sociology of religion, was one of the major proponents of the secularization thesis. In an interview granted the New York Times in 1968, Berger asserted that in “the twenty-first century, religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a world-wide secular culture.” However, with the benefit of age and experience, Berger stated in 1999 that the world “is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever.” Berger the penitent further wrote that: “I think what I and most sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secularization and modernization go hand in hand. It wasn’t a crazy theory. There was some evidence for it. But I think it’s basically wrong. Most of the world today is certainly not secular. It’s very religious.”
Robert Barro and Rachael McCleary, after a cross-country study, concluded that religion is good for the economy. They found that church attendance and religious beliefs are positively correlated to education and that economic growth responds positively to the extent of some religious beliefs.
Clearly, one of the reasons for the failure of the modernization
paradigm in the third world was its assumption that religious beliefs of any kind and traditional structures, cultures and values must be annihilated in order to achieve development. The modernization experiment of W.W. Rostow failed woefully in Vietnam as it did in other parts of the third world. The spread of religion has since been discovered to be coterminous with economic growth in countries like South Korea, Malaysia, India, Taiwan and even China. Fenggang Yang describes how three decades earlier, China seemed to be the most secularized country in the world but might now have become the most religious.
Religion and politics
At the risk of psychologism, there is an indisputable yearning in virtually all mortals for a higher meaning and comprehension of the significance of life beyond man’s mortality and physical appearances. The Soviets found out in a hard way after squandering resources on a vague and sparsely thought-out ideology that it would take more than the KGB and other spy organizations to stamp this longing out of the consciousness of men.
Contrary to popular, but misplaced belief, the developed world is not becoming secular or atheistic. Religion continues to play a very predominant role in who gets elected or not. John Kerry, 2004 presidential candidate of the Democrats, should know better by now.
There is also scientific evidence that religion enhances the health status of individuals. A group of researchers in the U.S. discovered that frequency of church attendance was associated with fewer alcohol problems, which the World Health Organization believes is the major cause of health complications. Another research shows that those who have doubts about their faith tend to be less satisfied with their health.
In the foreword to Religion, the Missing Dimension in Statecraft, former American President Jimmy Carter, eulogized the role played by religion in the resolution of conflicts in different parts of the world. Negotiations, he said, were often preceded by joint calls for prayers by the opposing sides. From his vantage position as elder statesman and internationally acclaimed peace ambassador (depicted by his Nobel Peace Prize), Carter strongly believes that peacekeeping cannot be accomplished without religion. Religion also cushions the effect of the grim and callous reality of the world on the oppressed.
Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini provided a better aphorism than Karl Marx when he argued that “The masses are naturally drawn to religion,” according to Barry Rubin. More than anyone else, Khomeini having utilized it for praxiological purposes, should know the potency of raw religion. The whole world stood in awe and shock as religion was used to mobilize Iranians to overthrow the government of Muhammed Reza Pahlavi in 1979. In what began as university students’ demonstration, the Pahlavi dynasty was swept away and an Islamic theocracy, purer than that of the Saudis, was instituted. Karl Marx, the theorist, was proven wrong on the role of religion in a revolution.
However, religion or what is assumed to be, has also contributed to man’s sorrows and miseries. The September 2001 attack is undoubtedly the gory side of religion — it is never subject to reason or human logic. It is plainly non-logical, for instance, that two brothers from the same mother, would voluntarily, knowingly and excitedly go into their own deaths as part of a crew of plane hijackers. The Middle East is generally noted as a trouble and troubled spot, where killings, maiming and bombings are routine activities. The blend of political power with religious zealotry is the voodoo for anarchy and catastrophe. Besides, mention must be made of the role Christianity played during slavery and colonialism. Its legitimization of apartheid in South Africa and racism in the United States is already on record. Some churches only recently apologized.
God's existence
In spite of the obvious dysfunctions, religion is still the only hope for the oppressed. It mitigates life’s sufferings and its ethical precepts are capable of generating conformity to the law.
In addition, renowned atheists tend to cling to religion at the twilight of their lives. Martin Heidegger stated, after requesting that his comments not be made public until he was dead, that “only a God can save us.”
The fascinating debate on the existence of God is an exercise in futility. What does not exist or never existed should not have a name. For instance, in countries where technological products are largely imported, there is a constant need to coin names for such items which were never part of the people’s culture, hence in the Yoruba language in Nigeria, the name coined for mobile phones is almost a sentence long and is more of a descriptive term than a nomenclature. However, with names like “Allah,” “Jehovah” “Eledumare” and so on given to God across various cultures, what further prove need we?
Pitirim Sorokin in his cyclical evolutionary theory aimed at determining what reality and value meant postulated three general ontological principles. The second principle of his theory states that true reality and value consist in a supersensory, superrational God or its equivalent.
Francis Abraham, a theorist, argues that Sorokin’s theory describes the course of history as continuous but irregular fluctuations between sensate and ideational cultures. This might be sociological mumbo-jumbo, but it can be deduced from this theory that any unilinear, straightjacketed explanation of social reality is a failure going somewhere to happen. Hence, it should surprise no one that positivism, functionalism, Marxism, modernization theory and so on have largely failed in capturing and explaining social reality because of the unfounded assumption that immeasurable or supposedly distracting factors like religion do not matter.
Extra-theoretical factors like religion are more important than objective or observable facts in explaining what does appear and how it is perceived, interpreted and acted upon. Observable facts are the finished products of a complex sociopsychological process initiated by factors like religion.
Religion can and does affect anything whether or not its influence is acknowledged. Despite the supposed transition of Western societies from modernism to postmodernism, it is quite vivid that the influence of religion has not waned a bit, positively and negatively. We might indeed be in late modernity, but those awaiting the secularization of the world culminating in global irreligiosity have missed a rudderless flight to a non-existent destination.
Tope Oriola is comment editor of the Manitoban; he is pursuing a master’s degree in sociology.
