ASSAULT ON RELIGION FROM MODERN BEHAVIOURAL AND NATURAL SCIENCES
Keywords:
ReligionAbstract
The two great challenges religions had to face, and are still facing, in modern times are the challenges posed by the existence of a plurality of religions and the implications of the new discoveries in the behavioural and natural sciences. Religious pluralism has been identified in the past as a major stumbling block in realizing the ideal of the oneness of all humanity and the forming of a world community. In the past, religions and religion-based civilizations have fought each other or at least hated each other because each one held one’s own religion as the only one true faith, denouncing all other religions as false and corrupt. Accordingly, outside one’s own religion there was no salvation. But humans have now found a way to overcome this once-thought-insurmountable problem. Through a sympathetic study of other religions and through the dialogue between religions humans have now learned to co-exist peacefully in the midst of cultural and religious plurality. The shift from inter-religious hostility to inter-religious dialogue and mutual acceptance, therefore, must be seen as a Copernican Revolution in the field of the growth and development of religions.
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