There is so much controversy whirling today among religious or non-religious outlooks on life: Questions of God or no God; Fundamentalism or Atheism.
Overall, religion is a worldview, a way of shaping and perceiving reality. In this sense, everyone is religious. Atheism is a religion as much as Catholicism. Each structures the way we perceive ourselves and others, and our relationship to the stars; and this has consequences. For as we believe, so do we act; and as we act, so do we create our destinies and the happiness or unhappiness not only of ourselves, but of the world.
Atheism, and the proponents of the most militant atheism, such as that espoused by Richard Dawkins, would denounce and destroy the ancient dogmas of Christianity and Islam which are God-centered. These ancient ways of looking at ourselves and the universe around us deserve, from their viewpoint, to be finally swept away to allow for the emergence of a more rational approach to life.
Increasingly, people are falling away from the old religions. Approximately 25% of the populace in the United States now classify themselves as “nones”, as those having no religious affiliation at all. Many of them see themselves as atheists, agnostics, humanists, or somehow “spiritual”, but not religious. But atheism also leaves something to be desired. There is still a desire, a hunger even, to answer the most basic of questions: Who am I? Why am I here? In this incredibly vast universe, where no other life like ours seems to exist so far, what is this life all about?
For both those who still hang on in a perfunctory sort of way with their religious heritage, and for those who have discarded those heritages, the gnawing answers to these questions still beckon.
Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychoanalyst, once wrote:
“I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life – that is to say, over 35 – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook.”
So the problem now is that we have reached a point in time and space when a new outlook is needed – a new religion, if you will, that anchors us both in this everyday world and, at the same time, connects us to the incredible universe that science has opened up and explored – the world of the macrocosm, the stars and galaxies beyond number, and the inner world of the quantum, of quarks and bosons and dark matter. A religion that enables us to solve and overcome in a real tangible way the problems and sufferings that we inevitably face in life, and also opens our lives to the vast world of eternity.
Religion must work in our lives. It must supply both of these needs.
At its heart, the problem is one of identity. Who are we really?
The new religion must answer this question, presenting a new vision of ourselves, coinciding with reason, while opening up deep within ourselves the larger truth of our connection to our existence in this incredible universe of time and space around us.
This new religion is even now coming into being. It is sprouting up among Christians, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, Hindus and others. It is a vision of life and humanity broad enough to encompass every man, woman and child on the face of the planet – a religion beyond race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, and even religion. It is a religion based upon the sanctity of all life, and one that empowers the individual to become all that he or she is capable of. It is a religion without dead dogma, but also without the barrenness of sterile intellect. It is a religion of the heart, and of people; no priests, no popes, no ayatollahs, no authoritarianism, no bowing down to authority. A religion centered on people, and peoples’ happiness. A religion for people, not people for religion. A religion of men and women, equal and side by side.
A religion of happiness, here and now, and forever.
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James Hilgendorf is a writer, speaker, poet, and filmmaker. His books cover a wide range of subjects – religion, politics, economics, science, social issues, the future of America. A highly-acclaimed filmmaker, his travel films and documentaries have been seen around the world. He is a long-time member of the SGI, or Soka Gakkai International, the largest Buddhist lay organization in the world now, with 12,000,000 members in 192 countries and territories around the globe – a movement of people of all backgrounds working for peace, education, and culture, grounded upon the fundamental premise that the life of the individual, and, indeed, of all of life is deserving of the highest respect.
