The best or most influential minds happen to transcendsimplistic construction and politicized framing of the tussle between the two.Key mutual misgivings need to be addressed.
If religions seem to divide mankind, mythologies,artistic/mystical/wisdom traditions and metaphysics underlying them thatsecular thinking better engage unite. Famous new atheists like Dawkins andHarris don’t fail to register their love for certain images of the Sacred. Infact Harris proposed something like Unitarian advaitic spirituality for secularworshippers. Worship we must anyway. Russell’s “Free Man’s Worship” orSpinoza’s intellectual love of God or Heidegger’s paean to Being or Derrida’scommitment to Justice and Levinas’s to the Other all succeed to preserve anessential aspect of spiritual life. It was Whitehead who noted that “theessence of education is it be religious.” Buddha didn’t propose anything thatfights shy of any rational or empirical inquiry. Islam proposes only surrenderto what is the case (Al-Haqq/The Truth-the Real). One might have problems withloaded terms such as God but very few will have problems with alternative orapproximating notions like Truth-Reality/transtheistic Absolute/That WhichIs/Suchness/Silence/Emptiness/Sacred. Sages/sage-poets are a common inheritanceand we do have a language that both secular and religious would share. Worldreligions and secular constitutions have agreement in essentials – man is not ameans but an end and every individual/local identity deserves consideration andwe work for beauty, uprooting causes of injustice and seeking welfare of alland the sundry. They would agree in banning what harms intelligence,trivializes relationships or harms environment. They would work towardsminimizing suffering and inequalities of all kinds. When it comes to concreteissues of governance, one sees that a point or two in gender relations and hereor there certain gulf in symbols/practices is all that practically dividebelievers and their secular critics.
Transcendence that constitutes the promise and heart ofreligions is available, to a significant extent, through variety of windowsincluding those of aesthetics and ethics to all of us. Special moments ofillumination when the higher world unveils without our seeking are bestowed onall. God can’t fail to catch prey – the net of beauty captures all – that wehappen to be. Poetry and music can lift anyone to the higher world. Beingseizes us all with its sinews and curls. Revelation understood as that whichremains after conceptual linguistic cobwebs are bracketed addresses all innature, in silence and other special modes and we can participate in itsgraces. The feast/theophany that is nature is free for everyone. Angels greetall of us though we are often absent to return the same. One who knowssomething of love and is attracted to the moral beauty or ideal knows God to anextent. We know the world is divided into believers and non-believers, theistsand atheists but few care to note that this is largely a linguistic issue and thatthere is little disagreement regarding our love for Truth (which is thedenotative name of God), our primordial and ineradicable conviction that thereis an “I” or witnessing self/spirit within us and need to honour theomorphicintelligence grounding dignity, our acknowledgment of attraction for theGoodness, Beauty and Justice, our adoring of Compassion, Love and Mercy and ourparticipation, by virtue of our very being, in the holiness/mystery/joy ofBeing. All keep seeking or desiring the serenity of witnessing self.
The secular as such means the worldly and thus may wellpreserve, if not extolled as an exclusive ideology of secularism that dismissesreligion, affirmative transcendence characterizing many world religions.Secular thought currents have helped fulfill, partly, long standing commitmentsof religions to brotherhood of man and transcendence of creedal differenceswhen it comes to respecting human dignity and freedom. Secular constitutionsare fundamentally committed to values originally representing aspirations ofreligions for justice and care of the marginalized and better access to welfarefor all. Secular countries of Europe are for many religious people, includinggood number of Muslims, first choice to live. In many respects we are headingtowards a world that respects religion and suspects politicized religion or useof religion as ideology but appropriates religion’s concern for religiousfreedom of minorities and struggle against injustice/exploitation and forfreedom of religion (objectives of holy war/jihad) or more general welfarework.
So far and yet so near
Although usually construed as opposites religious andsecular attitudes often, in practice, interpenetrate. There is no such thing aspurely religious/sacral or purely secular/profane – Islam, for instance inparticular and Semitic religions in general emphasize this point – and to behuman and religious is to participate in the secular in a certain way that isto a significant extent shared/appreciated by secular people as well. Religionis consecrating life and action or we can say attention to the wonder and joyand sublimity and beauty of all that is or one does, an ideal that secularoutlook would, in its own way, try to appropriate. Let us not erase – but notoveremphasize – the differences between religious and secular attitudes tolife. “A religious outlook—with its emotions of faith, trust, devotion,reverence for the other, and self-transcendence—orients one toward love asunbelief does not.” However, “let us not equate secular with unbelief either.”Secular means this-worldly and that needn’t be at the cost of otherworldlynecessarily. There is no such thing as unbelief understood as utter or blandnegation of what belief stands for as understood by sages and lived by masses.
The following explication of certain key belief statementsby a traditionally revered religious figure C. S. Lewis may be considered themeasure against which contrary assertions of unbelief/secular reason orattitude are to be seen for cognizing differences. Lewis noted that “There isbut one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and badwhen it turns from Him.” “When you are arguing against God you are arguingagainst the very power that makes you able to argue at all.” “Godcannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is notthere. There is no such thing.” “Nothing you have not given away will everreally be yours.” “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us inour conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deafworld.” “No good work is done anywhere without aid from the Father ofLights.” “Of all the bad men,religious bad men are the worst.” “Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy talesagain.” “If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in mylife, where should I be now?” “The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughingtogether over a meal.” One may also recall another influential figure KarlRahner here: “A good laugh is a sign of love; it may be said to give us aglimpse of, or a first lesson in, the love that God bears for every one of us.”Rumi revered in Islamic tradition and beyond had gone further when he said thatlaughter reaches the heart of divinity/Essence/Zat.
All these points imply that secular institutions andpursuits, love, joys, creativity, shared spaces, laughter, tears, NGOs workingfor welfare all are fuelled by our pursuit of God even if they may presume toexclude/bypass/deny Him. It is the shining face of God that lights up the worldfor all and sustains us in the difficult odyssey of life.
Polarized opinions between religious and secular camps ongender relations and dress code that often surface up in courts or mediashouldn’t mislead us to conclude that there is indeed sharp polarization.Generally speaking, secular and religious people both treasure modesty thoughmay perceive or interpret what constitutes modesty differently in a givensetting. Both revere the head (intelligence) – symbolized by turban – over thefeet. Both value pursuing things in a style or with an eye on beauty. Both arepropelled by hope that overcomes impulse to despair or suicide or violence.Both value the element of worship/sanctifying potential in art while differ ininterpreting what constitutes trivial amusement or distraction. Both believe inwiping tears and healing the sick. But, in their own ways, swear by a sort ofidealism and talk about transforming the world that puts God or theomorphic manand intelligence/Other/Equilibrium/Peace/Love first.
Although moral judgments concerning different concreteissues differ across cultures/ages, the commitment to the Absolute embodied inseeking Justice/orientation towards the Good remains underlying unifying andredeeming element in all genuine ethical action. It is hard to spot a personwho never thinks of death or accountability of some sort here or elsewhere orwho pursues only personal gain at the cost of family/neighbor/friend or who isimpenetrable to love. Seeking moral perfection or becoming saint with orwithout popular belief in personal God remains the quest for all. Who wouldn’tgrant that “God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personaldeity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steadyradiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond allreason”? It is hard to find pagan philosophers not in support of moral andspiritual heritage of mankind in ancient or modern times. The mystical is seensomehow lurking behind and informing work if not life of almost every greatsecular writer. All yearn for great art which is believed to be something”which adds to the permanent richness of the soul’s self-attainment.” Indeed”Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today wekneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.”
To conclude, we see both secular and religious modes ofbeing take heed of revelation in nature and relationships, in mystery andbeauty, in joy and fulfilling work and in that which we seek in the stars andbeyond. It is in these fruits of spirit that mankind is united. The so-calledsecular and the so-called religious have come a long way to appreciateunsuspected mutual harmony in higher aspirations and deeper motivations.