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Whereas in the Middle Ages, common people and
educated classes had a commonality of belief, they spoke
with one tongue and for one goal, today the educated are
worshippers of science and the common people are religious.
This is a reality which in no way is able to be justified, interpreted or commented upon even if it oppose
our temperament and our beliefs. It is because of this that
in Europe, America, Africa, South America and in Iran and
Asian countries, the more the new science and new educated class is extended like in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the more religion is put aside from the top of the cone
and only remains in the base of the cone.
Here religion is weakened to the point where it is
destroyed and science, the worship of science and belief
in the authenticity of science replace it.
If this cone is applied to the new and present era, just
as I said, the common people are still of the Middle Ages.
They are religious all over the world. They have their former religion. To the extent which the new educated grow
closer to the worship of science, which is the religion of
this class, they become alienated from their traditional and
their own national religion and they move away from it.
The statistics of people who studied the sociology of religions in any country in Europe and America, in the East
and in the West reflects this.
But there is one other issue and that is that in addition to these two classes, we must seek out one more group.
As we have seen, there are geniuses in each era and there are
rare people in every age, people who we are obliged to place
in the highest peak of this cone. From the point of view of
education and type of thinking, words prevail in opposition to the current method of thought of the educated
class. The number of this small group increases at the end
of each era. Clearly recognized, they gain power and strength and they formulate the kind of thought of the intellectuals of the future like Kepler, Isaac Newton, Francis
Bacon and Roger Bacon who formed the thoughts of the
people of their era.
These individuals who are now at the peak will form
the educated of the future according to that law of determinism which I mentioned.
Thus, according to this method, we can glance at
tomorrow's history. How? If we recognize who these present geniuses who are at the peak of the cone, and how they
think and if I can introduce those who exist at the peak of
the cone in the present era to you, and show how the
thoughts of these geniuses oppose the methods of thought
of the worship of science of the last three centuries of
the educated, then we can solve the problem which I mentioned. We can clearly foresee and predict how the educated
class of the future will think in the era after the present and
what inclinations, beliefs and feelings they will have.
We are obliged to place geniuses of humanity today
above the educated because, on the one hand, the educated
consider them to be supra-educated and, on the other hand,
we are obliged not to place them among the educated of
today because they think and speak differently from this
group. One is Guenon. His book, Crises of the Modern
World and his journal of religious studies have been published in Europe. He is a great, educated, French genius
who suddenly revolted against science and the worship of
science, went to the East and retreated to Egypt, not
a retreatment in today's sense of the word but rather he
withdrew from society and the way of thinking of today so
that he could answer the great need and thirst of the people
of Europe.
Another was Alexis Carrel. One of his most famous
work is L'homme c'est inconnu, which has been translated
into Persian along with some of his other works. He has
written another book called My Meditation upon the Pilgrimage to Lourdes. Another is Le Count de Louis. He
wrote The Fate of Mankind. It has been printed in Persian
twice. The translation is bad but the text is worthy of study. Then there is Einstein, William James or Basalard, who
is the greatest French scientific-philosopher-thinker and he
is much greater than what the people of the world recognize
in Jean-Paul Sartre and Bertrand Russel. There is also
Max Plank, Georges Gurvitch, Patrick Donitz and Paster-nak, who wrote Dr. Zhivago. These people can never be
put in the class of the new educated but only at the peak
because generally they oppose the worship of science.
They speak against it and the religion of the educated class
of the last three centuries.
Of course it cannot be said that Guenon speaks
exactly like Max Plank and Max Plank repeats the words
of Alexis Carrel. Each has a new opinion. But something
exists in common. That is, if we find a common principle,
we can recognize, with the method I mentioned, that this
common principle is a new tendency to be found in the
world, the commonality to oppose the general tendency of
the worship of science, which is the religion of the
intellectual of today.
This tendency in the future era will be transformed
into the religion of the intellectual of the type of the
future and will replace the worship of science which is the
religion of the educated of the world today. In all of these
people, one idea prevails and that is the religious feelings
and belief in spirituality which they hold in common
without exception (unfortunately there is no time to
quote from each of them).
We can say Einstein had great religious feelings.
But we said that religion is the basis of belief of the common people! Can we say Einstein is among the common
people and is among those who have a high school diploma
or a college degree or is an engineer or Ph. D like myself
and is in the new educated class!! Never. Yet he is religious.
Thus it becomes clear that other than the worship of
science, there is a new thought appearing in the world which
is the greatest wave of thought in the world today. We can
never say that the religion of Einstein or Carrel is of the
same substance as that of the common people. It is a religion which is above the beliefs of intellectuals, above
science.
Thus two religions exist. One is that of those who
lack education and science and it is their religion which
exists at the bottom of the cone. As we move up the level
of religion, we reach a scientific atheism in our own era
and if we move up higher, we attain a meta-religion. This
can clearly be seen in today's world.
Look at the educated. One is educated and religious
but his religion is taken from below and he pulls it along
with him like a spare part. He has become an engineer, a
doctor and he has retained his religion. He took it from the
masses and pulled it up with him. This is abnormal and must
be thrown away. If he lacks religion, in my opinion, he is
closer to a religion of meta-science which is above and
beyond science.
Again we have an educated person who is religious
and we see how he follows a religion which is above science.
It is clear in his writings. This religion can be seen in people,
in universities, in thoughts.
The religion which is less than science is lower than
the educated and the religion which is above science, which
the heights of science have not yet reached, is a religion
which today the great thinkers of the world, ones I mentioned, have and the world recognizes. They are above the
educated. They are the new geniuses.
Many of the words which we have in the Quran or we
have attained by closely following the Quran, we suddenly
hear in a translation or a text from Max Plank or Einstein
or Carrel.
Most of those people I mentioned passed through a time of crises, a time
of atheism and then a time of re-finding, rediscovering a religion above and beyond science.
All of them are among the most outstanding, well-educated
people who opposed and revolted against the worship of
science. Their commonlity is the return to spirituality,
the return to religious feelings and sensitivities. In the last
three centuries, they have been abused and condemned by
the idea that religion is the belief of the common people
and must be put aside.
Thus that which we must believe is that today, as in
the 16th century, when geniuses came into being who
brought the worship of science, geniuses have come who are
not familiar to the present educated class. Their words
have still not become official. They have not filtered into
the university yet they speak above the level of the university. Surely the words and speeches of these people
form the basis of the belief of the educated of the future
who they will form in tomorrow's historical period.
Thus, without doubt, today's religion is a return to a
religion which is above science or approaching a religion
which is above science, that is, the truth of religion. Thus,
with this study, it can be said that we believe that today the
era of the worship of science of the educated class formed
in the 17th century which led to the alienation from religion, is ending. Why? Because today geniuses have come
into being who are above the science of today and who
announce a belief in a great Spirit and Intellect in the
universe and the need for mankind to worship or to have
religious belief.
If he is a physicist like Max Plank, he speaks like
this, "Kepler was a scholar who believed in a total intelligent system, carefully aware and conscious of all of creation." He also gives an example of another scholar and says,
"He did not have such a belief in a total system of the universe as well as an all encompassing intellect which exists
and because of this, he remained at the level of a small, experimental scholar. He remained at this level because he
did not believe in a universal intellect but Kepler believed
in this and because of this he became the creator of a new
physics." He speaks like this.
Einstein, in the same field, says, "Religious feeling
and belief in a great secret in Creation, is a key concept in
great scientific research." A psychologist speaks in another
way. He says, "In the fate of mankind, prayer is necessary,
worship is necessary like the need for food and for air;
it is a genuine need. If we blind the need for worship in
ourselves, we will be destroyed."
A person like Carrel, who was never religious and is
a man who received two Nobel Peace Prizes for research on
the heart of sparrows and their transplantation, says,
"Worship is like breathing, like eating and is a part of the
most genuine physical, neurological, psychological and intellectual needs of ours." He says, "Because of a lack of
strong belief in religion, Rome was destroyed."
These are words of Alexis Carrel, not a priest, not
a religious person at the base of the cone. Alexis Carrel
is the first human being who received two Nobel Peace
Prizes and according to the Larouse dictionary, he is a
great person whose thought has had a deep effect upon the
20th century. He says, "If worship, the prayer to the Beloved Creator, is taken away from society, we have signed
the death certificate of that society."
Did the educated of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries speak like this? The educated of the 17th, 18th and
19th centuries said, "If I cannot see God under the scalpel
knife, I will not believe in Him." The worshippers of science spoke like this. But today, as Gurvitch says, "In the
19th century, sociology developed 198 laws which it
believed in but sociology in the 20th century believes in no
laws."
Schwartz, the greatest French mathematician says,
Physics in the 19th century believed that it could justify
all issues of life, even poetry and today physics believes that
even it cannot come to know what material is."
Why has science in the 20th century become so
humble according to Gurvitch and why has the pride of the
16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries been broken? Because
a new era is beginning in the world. The school of thought
of the educated of the future, as opposed to the educated
of today, will be a religious school of thought a religion
not lower than science, rather one higher than it.
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