Religion, Postmodernity and an Unbelievable Universal Conspiracy

With postmodernity’s often heralded ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’  gaining a firm foothold in intellectual circles, its intrusion into the conventional mindsets of people,religionists included, via their university education and popular media, has become but a sure thing. Hence, the question that remains in many thinking people’s minds is this, ‘will religion survive the postmodern age?’.

As a seminary philosophy junior professor and an avowed believer in the Christian faith, I am naturally inclined to say that religion will outlive even the most sagacious of the postmodern soothsayers. Then again, I may simply be speaking as a believer, and may be doing so as  a knee-jerk reaction devoid of any rational grounding.  As such, for the time being I’d like to don on a new cap, that of a skeptic. I’d leave it to my readers to evaluate whether this would-be skeptic is following the paths taken either by Descartes or Hume and even that of Nietzsche.

So here goes. You be the judge.

The basic premise of every atheistic postmodern thinker is that all religions, as a matter of fact, every theistic claim, are merely socially constructed or culturally invented. Thus, for varying reasons of expedience, the ruling classes of all known civilizations have taken upon themselves the role of intellectual midwives, foisting the idea of a supreme being into the unknowing and hapless masses.  In doing so, they were consequently able to to firm their grasp on power and consequently condemned the huge mass of humanity to live in perpetual fear of earning the divine’s ire. In the process, they have been languishing too long in a sea of superstition.

On a sidebar: hmm. sounds familiar? try the screenplay of a Hollywood movie.  Interposed with the American predilection for visual spectacles and 10000 B.C.  comes to mind.

However, I’d like to look at it this way. All known human civilizations from the Mesopotamians to the Sumerians and to the Greeks and Romans, all the way to the Chinese and Indians, Mayans and Incas; have something in common, that is, a form of a religionist faith. Hence, organized religion is a universal phenomenon common among known civilizations.

A question is once more begging to be asked, and let me ask it now. If organized religion is a universal phenomenon then does it mean that all human civilizations have been victims of a universal conspiracy thrown upon them by their leaders? If religionist ideas and theism are merely social constructions then the logical answer points to the affirmative.

It is on this ground that I find the entire postmodern thesis falling flat and outright incredulous. To be honest,I’ve never been the type who swallows conspiracy theories hook, line and sinker. It’s simply plain difficult to believe that some people will go the great lengths to create elaborate plans to fool other people. Besides, the sheer size of a conspiracy such as the one postmodernists would have us believe is simply too astounding. It would mean that a large number of people have been party to this elaborate conspiracy. Worse, it would have to transcend both time and space. Time because if this conspiracy is true then it must have started early on in human history. In fact, it should have started from the very beginning when men started coming together as a cohesive unit.

Worse, a conspiracy of that magnitude denigrates the thinking capacity of the entire human race, minus the conspirators. We would have to be moronic to fall prey to such an obvious ruse.

Given the universal scope of this supposed conspiracy, I would have to say that the principle of sufficient reason comes into play, that is, something or someone has to be responsible for this universal conspiracy or idea. Better still, this conspiratorial idea must have emanated from some place. A cause is responsible for everything. No such thing as instantaneous  generation. Inasmuch as civilizations barely knew the existence of other groups apart from those in their proximity, I would have to hazard a guess by saying that they did not have the means to communicate with each other and agree on foisting this ‘divine conspiracy’ on all of their subjects.

If the ‘reason’ does not point to a human construction, divine perhaps?

You be the judge.