Faith, History and Science in a Secular Paradigm - 2
By Prof. Dr Nazeer Ahmed
Adviser, World Organization for Resource Development and Education
Washington, DC
A dynasty is not a civilization. A civilization may contain within it several dynasties. Each dynasty is like a fresh wave overtaking the one before it. Observe an ocean wave as it overtakes the one before it. The wave in the front disappears and gives way to the one behind it. In the same way, a dynasty gives way to another one. A particle in the ocean moves up and down as a wave traverses it. Similarly, a body politic endures a dynasty as it makes its appearance and disappears. As long as the ocean provides the energy, new waves are formed and the show goes on. Similarly, as long as faith propels a civilization, it renews itself even as it endures the vicissitudes of history.
Civilization is a monarch that rides on a chariot with four wheels: justice, perseverance, mutual support and righteous action. If any of these wheels becomes unhinged, the chariot topples over. Faith is the propulsive power for this chariot. When the reservoir of faith is exhausted, the chariot grinds to a halt.
What does faith mean in a secular paradigm? Each religious tradition in a multi-religious, pluralistic society has its own personal space and its own community space. The personal space defines its doctrines and belief systems. The community space defines its ritual systems, feasts and festivals. But the bulk of societal space is shared space, which is common to all faith groups.
It is this shared space that is the domain of secularism. While one respects the doctrines and belief systems of the other, one works together in this common space for the common good.
This shared space need not be anti-religious, certainly not anti-spiritual. It is like an edifice supported by many pillars, each one representing a different religious tradition. This edifice has a vast common space with multiple doors, each one representing a separate tradition of humankind.
It is in this shared space, transcending individual faiths but supported by them, that one finds social and economic justice, rights and responsibilities of men and women, human rights, environmental protection, love of the homeland, common defence, mutual respect, righteous and noble action, individual dignity and societal welfare.
Faith in a secular paradigm embraces not only faith in one’s individual spiritual tradition but faith in the systems that sustain the common good in shared space and a willingness to continuously struggle for them. The two are not exclusive; they complement and reinforce each other. Modern man has concurrent and overlapping identities. Secularism must accept these overlapping identities and redefine itself as the transcendent aspect of individual faith that governs shared space and the common good. The paramount dialectic of modern man is the definition of the interface between the individual space and the shared space in a spiritual matrix.
In India, for instance, one can have an abiding faith in Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Sikkhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, or any other faith system, and be a staunch secularist with an equally abiding faith in the common good based on justice, mutual love, good deeds and a common destiny.
How do history and science fit into this spiritual secular paradigm? The separation of the world view into the secular and the sacred has resulted in the fragmentation and fossilization of knowledge. Truth is one and indivisible. There cannot be one truth for nature and another truth for faith and a third one for history. This self-evident reality is overlooked by modern man who has compartmentalized science, history and faith.
The discipline of each – science, history and faith- is a noble and grand enterprise in its own right. Each one shows the grandeur and majesty of creation and guides man to his noble destiny. Each one has its own assumptions. A man of wisdom is aware of these assumptions so that when he embarks on his discovery of the Truth, he does not confuse what is apparent with the reality that lies hidden behind the manifest.
History is not merely a compendium of dates and events. History is a study of the laws that govern the formation and dissolution of civilizations. What makes it possible for common people to work together to achieve uncommon results? Similarly, why do civilizations decay and disappear? These questions transcend any specific dogma and therefore belong most appropriately to the shared secular domain.
There are a host of theories about the rise and fall of civilizations with which the reader is no doubt familiar.
Ibn Khaldun (d 1406), the great philosopher of the Maghreb, and the father of historiography, studied the Berber dynasties in North Africa and postulated his theory of the rise and fall of civilizations based on tribal cohesion. Ibn Khaldun found that the desert nomads possessed the qualities of courage, valor, integrity, hard work and mutual support in abundance. He contrasted these qualities with those found in the city dwellers where the ease of city life led to lethargy, mutual rivalry, chicanery, deception, acquisitiveness and a lack of ethics.
Ibn Khaldun observed that as city dwellers succumb to the pleasures of a settled life they are overrun by the desert dwellers. With time the newcomers themselves settle down and develop the flaccid habits of city dwellers only to be overrun by a fresh wave of conquerors from the desert.
Ibn Khaldun’s theory has universal application. Civilizations decay from within. Righteous action fosters mutual support and sustains a civilization. Vices destroy a civilization, and as they decay they are overrun by other civilizations that are more cohesive and virile. And the process repeats.
However, Ibn Khaldun’s path-breaking theory leaves several issues unanswered. Must city life necessarily lead to corruption? Were not some of the great civilizations of the past city based? Secondly, once a civilization begins to decay, must it necessarily fall prey to outside forces? Ibn Khaldun’s theory leaves no room for internal renewal.
There are other theories for the rise and fall of civilizations. Those of Toynbee, Adams, Hegel, Marx, Spengler, Kennedy and Diamond deserve serious study. Toynbee’s challenge and response is a further development of cause and effect. Brooks Adams saw economic centration as the driving force for the formation of civilizations. Hegel’s dialectic found a concrete expression in the material dialectic of Marx and Engel. Kennedy advances his thesis for the decay of empires based on over-stretch in relation to its resources. Diamond takes an ecological view to societal collapse postulating that the capacity of a society to endure is directly connected with its ability to maintain a balance between the availability and exploitation of natural resources at its disposal.
As I was dissatisfied with each of these well known theories, I have advanced my own theory for the rise and fall of civilizations based on a theory of renewal (reference: www.historyofislam.com). I have postulated that a great civilization is based on faith. It is faith that provides a reservoir of energy for the civilization to renew itself from within as it faces the vicissitudes of time. Those civilizations endure that have this capacity for renewal. Those that do not, disappear.
Faith is not only the cement, the glue that holds a civilization together but is also the reservoir that a great civilization dives into for its renewal. Faith fosters righteous action which alone propels a civilization forward. Take the faith away, a civilization degenerates like a brick that has not been fired. It collapses into dust. Such a civilization does not endure. It is overwhelmed and is swallowed up by the turbulence of time.
Secular India must cultivate and foster an unshakeable faith in the shared space of its people who enter this domain from multiple spiritual platforms. Only such faith can provide a reservoir of energy as India seeks to build a great civilization that draws upon the energies of multiple faiths but in its functionality transcends them all.
The function of science is to find the truth. In this grand enterprise, the mind, the body, the heart, the soul and the spirit work together. Man is both spirit and body. It is not the body that contains the spirit. It is the spirit that surrounds the body many times over. The secular cannot comprehend the spiritual. It is the spiritual, supported and confirmed by the empirical and the rational that leads to the truth.
It is a tragedy that modern man accepts the compartmentalized assumptions of science that the body and soul are separate and distinct. He relegates the soul to “the other world”, while assuming that the body belongs to “this world”. In such a soulless world, he cannot find joy, happiness, justice, feeling and compassion. What he does feel is der angst. He is lonely, lost.
Science, history and faith are interrelated in their origin as well as their functionality. The origin of all knowledge is the search for the Truth.
Knowledge is a treasure. It is gifted through the Spirit which is the source of life. Whether one is a saint or a scientist one must concede that with birth come life, knowledge and power. A dead man has no life, no power and no knowledge. It stands to reason that knowledge is a gift that accompanies the Spirit which is infused into a person between conception and birth. It is the Spirit that is the life source. Without the Spirit, there is no life and no knowledge.
Science, or at least science as we know it today, grew up in the cradle of secularism. While science has bestowed unprecedented riches on humankind, it has also extracted an enormous price in the bargain. While we know the objective characteristics of nature and have used them to our advantage, we have lost touch with a sense of beauty and feeling. Let me illustrate this with an example from physics.
The senses act as windows to the physical in time-space and facilitate the construction of an empirical worldview which forms the basis of science. This worldview, based on the assumptions of before and after, subject and object, is flawed, deceptive and imperfect. Consider a rainbow. A physical description of the rainbow would take us in the direction of wavelengths, dispersion, wave propagation, optic nerves, and neurons in the brain. Consider this worldview of wavelengths, dispersion and neurons. Where is the enchanting beauty of the rainbow as it vaults the sky from horizon to horizon? It is not there. Yet, even the most unlettered human can relate to the beauty of the rainbow and be awed by it. The beauty of the rainbow is not in the physical description because beauty is not in wavelengths, cells and atoms. It is in the soul which is hidden from the physical, but makes its presence felt through interaction with it.
Secular man is constantly at war with himself. He cannot circumscribe the heart with his logic. Traditional secular thought would have us believe that there is nothing more to the cosmos than the physical. The materialists go even one step further; they reduce all experience to the physical. In the process they negate the essence of being human which lies in the perceptions of the heart and the soul. In their world there are new tears, only chemical changes in the body, no smile of a baby, no beauty, no joy and no sorrow.
Despite Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, modern man clings to the belief that the incomplete picture provided by science reveals the whole truth. Indeed, science has become the new religion of man.
The dichotomy between the physical and the soul is removed when the physical is presented within a spiritual paradigm. Such a perspective does not negate the scientific approach which demands its validation in observation and measurement. It merely imparts a transcendent vision to the physical so that the scientist can use the experience of the senses, not as an end in itself but as an occasion for the spirit to witness the grand panorama of creation from a platform of faith. Such a view does not negate the processes of science. But it changes the perspective in a profound way.
Every moment Divine grace displays itself in nature, and it does so with majesty. In it there are Signs for perceptive minds. The study of nature thus becomes mandatory for humankind so that it becomes witness to these Signs, uses them as occasions to celebrate Divine grace and create Divine patterns in the world
In summary, the predicament of modern man and his dissociation from the self offers an opportunity for the secular domain to extend its reach, not as anti-religion but as the transcendent aspect of overlapping and intersecting spiritual traditions. Secularism need not negate religion. On the contrary, it must elevate and propel religion to transcendental heights, into the shared space of all humankind, which is the essence of true religion. In this transcendental dimension there is universal justice, righteous action, love, mutual support, rights and responsibilities of men and women, and the vision of a shared destiny for a nation and for humankind. Would it not be a beautiful world if a Muslim becomes the keeper of a Hindu, a Hindu the keeper of a Christian, a Christian of a Jew and a Jew of a Muslim?
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