Abstract: The future of religion is a problem which to-day is holding the attention of many thoughtful minds, and not without reason, for nothing can be more evident than that among the educated classes there is a general dissatisfaction with the present form of religious expression and content of religious dogma. The belief of our forefathers, simple but crude, is no longer found adequate, yet there seems to be nothing better to take its place. Many fear for the future, not knowing in what direction the evolution will tend, while others generalizing from the limited view-point of their surroundings, believe that a finality in this evolution has been reached, and that religion is to decay and finally die. Of writers holding this latter view no one, perhaps, has given more forceful expression to it than Guyau.l He says: Human beliefs, when they shall have taken their final form in the future will bear no mark of dogmatic and ritualistic religion. They will be simply philosophical. Again he writes of religion: Born as it is of certain beliefs and certain customs, its fate is one with them. As he regards religion in its inception as 'nothing more than an imaginative extension of human society, the explanation of things by a theory of volitions,' he concludes that its end will be a return to philosophy and morals. In his belief concerning the approaching annihilation of religion as such and a substitution for it of speculative thinking and practical ethics, Guyau finds a wide concurrence. For example, Zola asserts that the world to-day is without mysteries. Empirical knowledge has taken the place of religion. Renan has a similar view, and replaces theology with science. John Stuart Mill sees the religion of the future satisfied with an enlightened morality. Even Henry Ward Beecher wrote, Nobody ought to be called an infidel who sees in justice the great creed of human life, and who aims at an increasingly complete adjustment of his will to his moral sense. On the other hand there are many who regard the religious consciousness as something fundamental and implicit, and although they conceive the possibility of any particular faith
Publication Year: 1902
Publication Date: 1902-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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