fears and hopes. Jung, for instance, explains religion as a biological
device for safeguarding the human self and his social fabric against
the forces of disintegration. It is obvious that such a view relegates
religion to the position of a private affair of the individual,
something which has only a fictitious value to him, and assumes a
role hardly distinguishable from the fantasies of self-willed
individuals. Religious activity will thus appear only to be primitive,
irrational or prelogical, and completely out of touch with the real
world.
The scientist’s approach to religion, on the other hand, is
empirical and historical. He treats religion as a natural phenomenon
and hopes to understand it by tracing it back to its origin in primitive
society and taking note of the changes it underwent in the course of
history. His stress is chiefly on the social function of religion. He
thinks that religion comes into being and survives because it
promotes social cohesion and group solidarity: but he fails to grasp
the essence of religion as practised in primitive society, because
there it is enveloped in bizarre notions and grotesque superstitions.
Lacking the (so-called) spiritual insight, he is led to regard the whole
mass as religion, and takes its superficial aspects as constituting the
core of religion itself. Auguste Comte was the pioneer in this type of
investigation. He believed that human thought, in the course of its
development, has passed through three well-defined stages –
theological, metaphysical and, finally, scientific. Religion thus
represents the earliest phase of mental evolution. In this stage,
man’s approach to Reality was emotional and irrational – in short,
only mystical, while in the metaphysical stage, he relied more upon
reason to lead him to the heart of Reality. In the last stage, that is, the
scientific, he realised the importance of the observational data for
gaining some knowledge of the world itself in which he lived. If we
accept Comte’s view, it will mean that religion has no relevance to
the modern world, and its image will thus have to be regarded as a
mere relic of the past, with no place in the scheme of modern
knowledge and no bearing on the present-day life, deserving to be
consigned to the limbo of obsolete ideas.
Another empirically oriented theory gives a better reasoned
account of the origin and development of religion. It points out
that primitive man lived in constant fear of the forces of nature.
Islam: A Challenge to Religion 42