ARGUMENTS AGAINST GOD AND RELIGION — Part III Argument from History

Analysis Scholars, who study religion in the context of history or the social sciences suffer from the fundamental drawback of not looking at religion via the correct perspective. In doing so, their views become thoroughly distorted. They are like people, who stand in a crooked position in order to look at a square, and, viewing it from an acute angle, decide it is rectangular. The square is still a square, it is just that the viewers’ standpoint is wrong, or merely irrelevant. It was from just such a skewed angle that T.R. Miles asserted that ‘The religion is the product of a certain type of interaction between man and his environment.’ The basic mistake these scholars make is to study religion as an objective issue, that is, they collect indiscriminately all the historical material that goes under the name of religion, and then form an opinion about religion in the light of whatever material has come their way. Thus they take up a wrong position at the very outset. Miles’ summing up is that ‘Religion’ like any other subject, can be treated as an objective problem, and studied by the method of science. The first step is to make a list of the ideas and practices associated with different religions—gods and demons, sacrifice, prayer, belief in a future life, taboos and moral rules in life. It is like making a collection of animals and plants. Science always begins in this manner, but it cannot stop at this level; it inevitably seeks to penetrate deeper to make an analysis. The concept of God began with Monotheism. This analysis may go further in two directions. It may seek a further understanding of religion as it now exists, or it may adopt the historical method and search for an explanation of the present in the past. With regard to the historical approach, it is clear that religion, like other social activities, evolves. Further, its evolution is determined by momentum, its inner logic and the influence of the material and social conditions of the period. As an example of the first, take the tendency from polytheism towards monotheism: granted the theistic premise, this tendency seems almost inevitably to declare itself in the course of time. On one hand religion, consequently, comes to be regarded as a mere social process, rather than as a revelation of reality. That which is a revelation of reality is an ideal in itself, and its history with all its