Oracle of Wisdom Journal of Philosophy and Public Affairs

Man is essentially a rational animal. It is in his rationality that he has created ordered culture that has enhanced living with others in reasonable amity and harmonious coexistence. In everything that man does, he has tried to ensure that co-ordination, equity, orderliness etc are ensured. Religion is one of these cultural institutions by man which sees a wholly other as the essence of the relationship. This wholly other is understandable in varied perspectives namely infinite goodness, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence etc for the enhancement of such relationship. This entails that there is a supernatural being that created or creates all that there is in reality but is not created. However, religion becomes obscure and esoteric when there is no clear channel of relationship between the sacred and the mundane. Unlike science where a molecule of oxygen is same everywhere in the world, there are no such universalizable essence once it comes to religion. This has given rise to the claim that man should give up his rationality to faith as the guiding principle of any religious activity. The consequence of this is that lots of irrationalities have been harboured under the guise of religion including fundamentalism. Religious fundamentalism has become the bane of our modern day societies such that no serious thinking person should blink his eyes without trying a solution to this malaise of our civilization. This paper argues that the source of these crises is in the misapplication of religion to human society. Accordingly, employing the method of philosophical analysis, it argues that unless there is a rationalization of the sacred there may never be peace with humanity. This stems from the view that religious actors tendentiously manipulate religion to serve their whims and caprices allegedly doing the work of the divine. But at the base of their actions is a mixture of human nature and values. In order to stem the tide of fundamentalism, this paper avers that the world ought to borrow what the author calls pragmatic religious value of the African Traditional Religion. This will derive from the African principle of complementarity.

Open Full Text (PDF)