A student of modern philosophy is definitely acquianted with Friedrich Nietzsche's declaration that God is dead. Of course, this great philosopher of the 19th century, who was a son of a Lutheran pastor and a devout housewife, was not the first and the last to make such a claim. Actually, to date, Michel Onfry's "Atheist Manifesto" and Christopher Hitchens' "God is not Great" are but two of the books arguing for the obsolescence of religion and the concept of God.
An in-depth study of what prompts these thinkers to arrive to such conclusion would reveal that it was precisely their observation of religion's irrelevance -- in particular to social and individual human existence. Unlike, say, in the Middle Ages, when the Church was the dominating institution, influencing even the processes of pedagogy in the Old World, our current historical moment is a witness to the growth of myriads of disciplines -- formerly merely sub-branch of theology -- into independence; and now they are proving to be more influential in the life of men and women.
For our discussion, I would like to pick a lexical definition of relevance which refers to it as social applicability. It is when something is able to satisfy the needs of its users that we say it is relevant. Obviously, that religion is irrelevant means that religion is no longer sufficient to supply what is needed for human existence.
But, is it really so?
For the sake of argument, I would like to posit a positive response to our subject. And the following are my proofs. I have seen in television, for example, the Bali bombers during their trial; they would bravely proclaim that "Allah is Great!" This seeming mantra of religious fundamentalists is what the suicide bombers would also cry out -- at least, according to news accounts -- before they detonate the bombs strapped in their bodies. Jihad could still mobilize thousands of well-intentioned men (and women) to fight for what Muslims perceive as against their religion.
Gory it definitely appears, but we get the base idea here: what has driven these men to their action is precisely their religious conviction.
I am aware that the proofs I cited above is easily dismissible by "Okay, but they are fundamentalists, and they do not embody the mainstream."
It is for this reason then that I would like to appeal to what happened in the Philippines in 1986 when the Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos was driven out of office after more than two decades in power. The guns and tanks of the military were stopped by the rosary-praying people who were also brandishing religious icons of different kinds and sizes. In the same vain, I would like to draw everyone's attention to what happened in Myanmar just this year when the military government had to initiate a forceful crackdown against the Buddhist monks who took the cudgel for their people and protested against the abusive Burmese government. In Seoul, Korea, too, a couple of weeks ago, monks made their presence felt against the government preference to another religion.
This time, it is the mainstream that is moved by their religious conviction.
The atheists and the theists co-exist on this planet basking in the same sun rays or the moonlight but with different mental speculations as to the source of these heavenly bodies.
Man\'s belief or disbelief in God\'s existence cannot change nor influence the fact that God is present eternally. What a man should pray and seek to understand is the relevance of God\'s eternal domain in relation to his temporary existence.
This is a share of thought from gifted flip with checkered brain.