(Part 1) By H. Singh

ALL the theistic religions of the world fall under two broad categories, viz., the natural ‘and the revealed Here the classification is based on the fact as to whether a religion is arrived at as a result of observation and study of the phenomena of nature, or whether it came into being as a consequence of DISCLOSURE BY GOD to some special person known as a prophet or a messenger.

A NATURAL RELIGION

A thinker starts with the facts of nature. He carefully examines the attributes of earth, water, fire and air. He diligently studies. The functions and behaviors of planets, trees, insects, animals and humans. He comes to the conclusion that at the back of all these natural phenomena there does. Exist an invisible being called God. At this stage we have what is known as a natural religion.

Anaxagoras, the Greek philosopher and scientist of the 5th century B.C., was impressed by the design and purpose that he observed in worldly objects and events. He says one notices beauty, harmony, order and purpose in the universe. The design, order and purpose in the universe are due to some higher mind or intelligence operating on the material elements. The world process which is a fine example of harmony and order cannot be a product of blind mechanical forces as Atomists conceive it. The mechanical forces can produce motion one doubt, but they cannot account forth facts of purpose and design which are so evident in nature.

Our world is apparently a rationally governed world. It moves towards definite ends, Nature shows plentiful examples of the e adaptations of means to ends. There appears to be a plan in the universe which leads one to suppose that there is a Universal Mind or Intelligence, behind the whole process which fashions and shapes it.

Anaxagoras argues that we must believe in the reality of world controlling and world fashioning Mind, otherwise design and purpose which are so clearly evident in nature remain unexplained and unaccounted for.

Anaxagoras laid the foundations of natural religion. The other Greek thinkers like Socrates (470401 B.C), Plato (427348 B.C.) and Aristotle (384322 B.C) that followed him gave the world much more developed and advanced forms of natural religion.

Rene Descartes (15961650 A.D.) of France, Benedict Spinoza (16321677 A.D.) of Holland, Got tied Leibniz (16461716 A.D.) of Germany and Immanuel Kant (17241804 A.D.) also of Germany, are some of the modern thinkers who offered their version of natural religion to the world.

It should be noted that natural religion is strictly based upon study and examination of the facts of nature; its doctrines are arrived at through the processes of thinking and reasoning. There is no place in it for the prophets and messengers of God.

In our treatment of natural religion in the above paragraphs, we have drawn exclusively on the views of Western thinkers, this does not imply, however, and that natural religion is peculiar only to the West. We have examples of natural religion in the East, as well.

In India the human inquiry to understand the world started as early as the time of Vedic poets. These poets were wonderstruck to behold the phenomena of nature and endeavored to unlock their mysteries, in their quest to understand the natural world around them, like their Western counterparts, they used reason as their only tools. Radhakrishnan observes: “In the Rg-Veda we have the impassioned utterances of primitive but poetic souls which seek some refuge from the obstinate questing’s of sense and outward things. The hymns are philosophical to the extent that they attempt to explain the mysteries of the world not by means of any superhuman insight or extraordinary revelation, but by the light of unaided reason”, (Indian Phil. Vol. 1., P. 71).

However, in one important way, the Vedic religion differs from the one we find in the West, In addition to being a natural religion, it also happens to be a religion of “Nature Worship”, Referring to the poets of Vedic hymns S, Radhakrishnan writes: “To them nature was a living presence with which they could hold communication, Some glorious aspects of nature became the windows of heaven, through which the divine looked down upon the godless ‘earth. The moon and the stars, the sea and the sky, the dawn and the nightfall were regarded as divine. The worship of nature as such is the earliest form of Vedic religion”, (Indian, Phil. Vol. p. 73).

A REVEALED RELIGION

In contrast to natural religion, we have a revealed religion; Judaism Christianity and Islam are good instances of revealed religions. The contents of a revealed religion are made known by God to people, usually through His special messengers and servants. There are two different ways in which God conveys the contents of religious doctrine to his people:

1, Prophet is summoned to God’s Presence: In order to communicate religious doctrine, God calls a prophet to His presence. It was in this manner that God imparted to Moses at Mount Sinai His Laws and Commandments. ‘The Jewish prophet later conveyed the same to the people of Israel.

2, Mere Communication of the Word: In this situation, God does not call His messenger ‘to His presence, and yet, He conveys His Word to a chosen human being in some mystical manner. It was in this way that Prophet Mohammad continued to receive messages from God for an intermittent period of twenty-two years between 610 and 632, A.D. All these messages were recorded, at a later date, in a holy book called Quran.

The two forms of religion dis cussed above, the natural and the revealed, have two points in common, these are:

  1. A firm belief in the existence of God (or multiplicity of gods as in the case of the Vedic religion).
  2. A belief that human beings get rewarded and punished for their g00d and evil deeds.

There are, however, some significant points which distinguish and separate these two kinds of religion from each other. The distinguishing features of tow religion are as below:

  1. The content of religion is regarded as a case of “disclosure” on the part of God in a revealed religion. In contrast, in a natural religion, the content of religion is thought to be a “discovery” made ‘by a human being himself.
  2. Reason or Mind is thought to be a human faculty fully capable of knowing God and all the secrets of the phenomenal world in a natural religion. On the contrary, a revealed religion, conceives Reason as too inadequate a tool, either to know God or to unravel the deep mysteries of the world.
  3. The concepts of “prophets” and “messengers” are valid only in a revealed religion. In a natural religion, the place of special envoys of God is taken by poets,

Philosophers and men of learning.

  1. A revealed religion does in no way admit of any kind of encroachment in or alteration in its original subject matter. On the other hand, the content of natural religion is always in a state of flux. It at the mercy of constant processes of alterations and modifications.
  2. A revealed religion takes for Branded the existence of God, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad ever used any logical argument to Prove God is, On the contrary, a natural religion employs all sorts Of reasoning to establish that God exists, In the course of time it has come to develop long line of such arguments, The argument from Cause (the Casual argument), the argument from purpose or end (the Teleological argument), the argument from perfection (the Ontological argument), the argument from knowledge, (the Epistemological argument) are some of the arguments often employed by the ‘men of learning to prove the existence of God.

ORIGINAL & SELECTIVE RELIGION

Above, we have classified different religions into two categories, viz., the natural and the re~ veiled. There is yet another way religions can be categorized: 1. An Original Religion: We will attempt to illustrate this form of religion by taking the case of a revealed religion. An original religion is defined as “one which is primary in its source and pure in its content”.

A revealed religion is primary in its origin if it can be established it was given to mankind by a prophet (or a group of prophets) who “directly” received it from God, ‘And, a religion is considered as pure if it can be shown its content is passed on to making by a prophet (or a group of prophets) in exactly the same form as it was received by him (them) from, without adding any matter into it.

A Selective Religion: A selective, more commonly known as an elective religion, is just the opposite of the original one. We will call that religion selective which is secondary in its source and adulterated in its content. .

Before we label any religion as “selective”, we must establish: that it is not directly received from God by an individual who propagates it.

’. That its content is an admixture ‘of doctrines that are picked up by an individual from here and there.

If a person selects a few doctrines from the New Testament, and takes some others from the Holy Quran and gives these two sets of doctrines a new arrangement and a new name, this will be a perfect case of a selective religion. We will call such a religion selective in nature, for the following two reasons:

  1. The person who offers to mankind this brand of religion did not receive its content directly from God. He got it from a second source.

2, the totality of the content of such a religion was not given by God in the fashion it was being presented to mankind. In other words, the content is lacking in the attributes of purity, it is a mixture of doctrines gathered from two or more original religions.

It should also be noted by the reader here that a person who offers this sort of religion to mankind is not a genuine prophet or messenger of God. He is a hypocrite and charlatan, to say the least.

To say that a particular religion is selective or elective in nature, is also to suggest that it is too trivial and insignificant to deserve any consideration from the scholars.

It is alleged by some people that Sikhism is not an original religion, elective in its content, it is said that Guru Nanak picking up pieces instructions from here and there combined them into one whole and termed it “Sikhism”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Article extracted from this publication >>  December 11, 1987