Introduction
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enhance the human future within its integral relations to other forms of life, natural and divine. That is the challenge and possibility of religion and the human future.
It is often said that people now live during a clash of civilizations. Consider the fact that there is no shared cultural or religious framework within which Struggle for the Future
to interpret, understand, and evaluate what might seem to be rather obvious facts. What appears like an act of terrorism to some is hailed as martyrdom in obedience to God by others. Basic human rights for many are perceived by others to be foreign values wrongly imposed on their culture. Beliefs
about women’s dignity and freedom in some nations and cultures are bemoaned elsewhere as an affront to traditional values. The clash between economic development and ecological sustainability plays itself out around the world. While some people place hope in the promise of technology to
rid human life of disease and deformity, others fear that the promise conceals an inhuman future and violates the limits on human existence by trying to play God. These conflicts are well known and deeply felt. They fill news-papers and the global media. Little wonder there is anxiety and dispute about
the meaning and purpose of being human and the shape a human future should take.The idea is too simple because “civilizations” are not block-like entities that In fact, the idea of a global “clash” is too simple and it is also too optimistic. 3
somehow can “clash” with each other. The global sphere is a complex reality of interacting dynamics, only a few of which we explore in Part II. The idea of a clash of civilizations is also too optimistic. It fails to grasp the struggle within cultures and within religions, a struggle, we insist, that is at root within
the human heart and mind. The clash that is now raging around the world originates and spreads within people’s souls. It is a clash between, on the one side, the desire for unconstrained freedom and power, and, on the other side, the longing for some ultimate, spiritual authority to save one from the burden
of freedom. People are indeed in the midst of a global religious, moral, and spiritual struggle in which individuals and communities must decide whether or not to orient our lives freely by the demands of responsibility for the integrity of life.
religious or not, humanists have always understood that the real “war” of human existence is the constant and unending battle to live by our greatest The idea of spiritual struggle is not a strange one for a humanist. Whether