Thinking about Religion in the 21st Century

This book argues that there is a new way to look at religion ‘that requires no sacrifice of the intellect or abandonment of moral sensibilities.’ This involves both a process of deconstruction and reconstruction on the basis that ‘cognition, empirical experience, and moral intuition all point more towards the existence of a spiritual reality than they do to the atheistic alternative.’ (p. 11) Chapters on deconstruction offer advice about how to think about traditional religions, sacred texts, ritual, doctrine and religious diversity in ways that do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The second part begins with the familiar theme of dismantling the myth of scientific materialism before moving on to consider epistemology, perennialism, consciousness, the sense of moral goodness, the significance of religious experience, suffering and meaning.

Key to the argument (p. 119 in relation to perennialism) is the existence of a spiritual reality, the importance of our relationship with that spiritual reality, virtue as an essential element of sacred reality, and the basis that this forms for interconnectedness of being. Recent research on consciousness is explored in some detail, concluding (p. 161) that ‘the existence of consciousness confirms the presence of a nonphysical element in reality; consciousness cannot be adequately explained by science; it allows humans to have access to the realm of moral value and meaning.’ Missing is any reference to the development of post-materialism, and, in the section on religious experience, to insights from NDEs, as set out in the work of Douglas Hodgson. The final chapter offers some evolutionary pointers towards new pluralistic forms of spirituality grounded in experience and with minimal doctrinal content. Here, the approach of Peter Deunov is relevant in his reference to fundamental universal principles of Love, Wisdom Truth, Justice and Goodness – these are not beliefs, but principles to be understood and embodied in our post-Axial Age. A valuable contribution.