A Clash of Pantheisms
How to preserve morality after nature’s re-enchantment
Could the Buddha, Jesus, or Muhammad have imagined that they were founding religions that would flourish for centuries?
Suppose Jesus was an historical person who delivered something like the sermon on the Mount of Olives. When he spoke on that occasion, wouldn’t he had to have been maniacally deluded to have predicted that those words would one day be revered by hundreds of millions of people?
Of course, followers of these religions see no mystery here since they regard the founders as divine beings or as specially inspired by God. But to outsiders, these origin stories seem more like flukes. Even if the founders were spiritual geniuses, there must be other geniuses whose teachings happen to leave no historical impact.
I observe as much only to point out that for decades, since the New Age seekers of the 1960s and the speculations of the Theosophical Society, there have been doubts as to whether the prevailing religions in the West are up to the task set by modern conditions, namely by liberalism, capitalism, democracy, automated industry, and technoscientific progress. There’s talk of the need for new religions that would be more compatible with what we’ve discovered about ourselves and the universe over the last few centuries.
