| |
Description: Is the awe of religion really so declining that, in this day and age of ours, there is even this premature prediction by Daniel Dennett in 2007 that "in about twenty-five years almost all religions will have evolved into very different phenomena, so much so that in most quarters religion will no longer command the awe it does today"?
The secular underestimation of religion in this premature prediction can be contrasted with an opposing idea back in the old days, when Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire once sarcastically said that "[i]f God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him."
Contrary to the two opposing sides of this debate on the future of religion, the promise of secularness (on one side of the fence) and the importance of sacredness (on the other side of the fence) are neither possible nor desirable to the extent that their respective ideologues would like us to believe.
But one should not misconstrue this challenge to the two contrastive versions of the conventional wisdom on the future of religion as a suggestion that religion is an useless field of study, or that other fields of study (related to religion) like philosophy, psychology, biology, or even cosmology are to be dismissed. Surely, neither of these two extreme views is plausible either.
Instead, this book provides an alternative (better) way to understand the future of religion, especially in the dialectic context of sacredness and secularness — while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other). Thus, this book offers a new theory to go beyond the existing approaches in the literature on religion in a new way not thought of before.
If successful, this seminal project is to fundamentally change the way that we think about religion, from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what I originally called its "post-human" fate.
In this book:
• The Awe of Religion
• Sacredness and Its Limits
• Secularness and Its Faults
• Conclusion — The Future of Religion
Contents:
List of Tables • Foreword • Acknowledgments • List of Abbreviations
Part One: Introduction • Chapter One. Introduction—The Awe of Religion • The Secular Underestimation of Religion • Religious Studies vs. Theology • Religion vs. Spirituality • Religion and Supernatural Reality • The Theoretical Debate • The Comparative-Substitutive Theory of Religion • Theory and Meta-Theory • The Logic of Existential Dialectics • Sophisticated Methodological Holism • Chapter Outline Some Clarifications
Part Two: Sacredness • Chapter Two. Sacredness and Its Limits • The Importance of Sacredness • Sacredness and the Mind • Sacredness and Nature • Sacredness and Society • Sacredness and Culture • The Limitation of Sacredness • The Future of Post-Human Religion
Part Three: Secularness • Chapter Three. Secularness and Its Faults • The Promise of Secularness • Secularness and the Mind • Secularness and Nature • Secularness and Society • Secularness and Culture • The Pitfall of Secularness
Part Four: Conclusion • Chapter Four. Conclusion—The Future of Religion • Beyond Sacredness and Secularness • 1st Thesis: The Absoluteness-Relativeness Principle • 2nd Thesis: The Predictability-Unpredictability Principle • 3rd Thesis: The Explicability-Inexplicability Principle • 4th Thesis: The Preciseness-Vagueness Principle • 5th Thesis: The Simpleness-Complicatedness Principle • 6th Thesis: The Openness-Hiddenness Principle • 7th Thesis: The Denseness-Emptiness Principle • 8th Thesis: The Slowness-Quickness Principle • 9th Thesis: The Expansion-Contraction Principle • 10th Thesis: The Convention-Novelty Principle • 11th Thesis: The Evolution-Transformation Principle • 12th Thesis: The Symmetry-Asymmetry Principle • 13th Thesis: The Softness-Hardness Principle • 14th Thesis: The Regression-Progression Principle • 15th Thesis: The Sameness-Difference Principle • 16th Thesis: The Post-Human Substitution • Towards the Higher SpiritualityISBN - 9788130919973
|
| |
Pages : 514
|