The future of religion | Iván Petrella | TEDxPuntaDelEste

Iván Petrella is the academic director of Fundación Pensar and a professor at Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

The future of humanity depends
on the future of religion.

As you can see,

I'm not a priest, I'm not a rabbi.

But I'll say it again:

The future of humanity depends
on the future of religion.

And that's coming from an agnostic -
someone who doesn't believe in God.

I don't even like spirituality that much.

The fact is that at least a century ago,

many great thinkers were saying
that religion would disappear.

So much so that in 1966,

'Time' magazine had the question
'Is God Dead?' on its front page.

The answer was that, if he wasn't dead,

he was surely on death's door
and didn't have much time left.

But something happened.

'Time' magazine and all those
thinkers were all wrong

because religion is alive.

It's alive in the millions of people
who go on pilgrimage,

in the millions who bathe
in a sacred river to purify themselves,

in the thousands of devout
people who go to see the pope.

Religion is alive in the 84%,

the 84% of the world population
who say they have a religious life.

Of every 10 people in the world,
over eight have a religious identity.

But it's not just that.
Religion is now in the public domain.

It's public when terrorists sacrifice
themselves flying into the Twin Towers.

It's public when a president
speaks about religion,

or when a pope talks
about homosexuality or abortion.

Religion is back.

There's a reason that the editors
of 'The Economist'

titled their latest book: 'God is Back'.

And everything suggests that God
is here to stay for a while yet.

That's when I get concerned,
scared almost,

because I don't think
we're prepared or educated

or ready to live in a religious world.

How many of us know, for example,
where most of the world's Muslims live?

It's not the Middle East.

How many of us have read The Quran?

How many of us have studied the Gospels?

Have really studied them, critically,
not like you would in catechism?

The truth is that religion
is one of the few areas of knowledge

that we're seemingly allowed
to be ignorant of.

Imagine you completed primary school,
high school, and university,

and you never had to read
a couple pages of Shakespeare

or Galeano or Onetti or Borges.

Someone might say: 'I think
something went wrong in your education.'

But if you didn't read
the Quran, no problem.

It's a bit odd.

Nobody bases their life
on 'The Aleph' by Borges.

I'm sure nobody does.

But thousands of millions of people
do base their life on the Quran.

Thousands of millions of people do believe

that the Gospels tell us
about the son of God

who died for our sins.

I teach at two universities
in Buenos Aires.

And in both universities,
students must take a core module

called 'Introduction to Philosophy'.

Now, I love philosophy,

but there's no core module
in 'Introduction to World Religions'.

And in the streets,

you probably won't run into Hegelians,

Nietzscheans or Kantians,

but you will run into Jews,
Muslims, and Buddhists.

You'll surely run into someone,
a neighbour, who is religious.

So my fear is that we're not prepared,

and because of that,
there will be repercussions.

There is lasting conflict.

There are people who die.

We reinforce fundamentalist beliefs

and we essentially limit our humanity.

So lasting conflict.

A couple years ago,

a woman known as a tough negotiator,

Clinton's Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright,

published a book which caused a stir
in diplomatic and political circles:

'The Mighty and the Almighty'.

There she argues that high officials,
just as they have advisers

for geographical, political
and economic issues,

need to also have advisers
for religious issues,

and that the strategy of removing religion

from international conflict doesn't work,

so we need to try another solution.

She even says that negotiations
in the Middle East,

which she worked on, failed,

not because Clinton was laughing
with Arafat and Israel's prime minister,

but rather because they realised

that those political leaders
didn't have the religious legitimacy

required to be able
to negotiate over sacred places.

So what they should have done

was include religious leaders
at the beginning of negotiations

to prepare the religious ground
for a political solution,

and get the religious communities
on board with it later.

Now, what does preparing
the religious ground mean?

It means undertaking work
that is principally theological in nature:

highlighting the tremendously rich history

shared by Judaism and Islam.

Not only do they have a history
of peaceful, productive coexistence,

they also share virtually
the same revelation,

prophets in common, territory in common.

They essentially worship the same God.

Nowadays we speak
of Judeo-Christian civilisations

as though this were self-evident.

But it's a very recent idea.

The idea that a Judeo-Christian
civilisation was a good thing

emerged after the Holocaust

as a response to the horror
of the Holocaust.

If you look at the interaction
and history of Judaism and Christianity,

it's not one of coexistence.

It's a history of massacre,
of expulsion, of persecution.

John Paul II became the first pope
to visit a synagogue in 1986.

What common history are we talking about?

If we were able to do theological
and intellectual work

for Judaism and Christianity,

we can do it for Judaism and Islam.

As I said, 'People die'.

Some of you will say:

'Religion complicates things;
it's an obstacle'.

But what if because you
can't speak the language of religion,

you can't communicate with the other side?

Picture this:

It's 1993, in Waco, Texas.

We're inside a Davidian compound
belonging to the Branch Davidians,

led by David Koresh, a prophet.

On one side, the Davidians with Koresh.

On the other side, the FBI.

What's going on?

They were accused of having
weapons, so the FBI burst in.

There are shootings:
four dead agents, six Davidians.

The place is under siege for weeks.

They negotiate, but the negotiations fail.

They burst in again.

The place is set on fire.

70 dead, including 20 children.

Now, the interesting question for me,

for all of us, I hope:

Why did the conflict go the way it did?

First, calling the Davidians
a sect played a role.

We usually think of a sect

as a group led by someone
who doesn't believe the ideas they preach

but uses them to control their followers.

But the truth is that the Davidians

are part of a religion
that's deeply rooted in the USA,

the Seventh-day Adventist Church,
you may have heard of it,

who, among other things, believe in
persecution by the government.

On the other hand, they were speaking
two different languages.

For the FBI, it was
a hostage and rescue situation.

The Davidians thought
that was very strange -

they were staying there
because they wanted to.

Nobody forced them to.

So, when the Davidians
were told to surrender,

when the FBI told them to surrender,
the Davidians thought: 'What for?'

On top of that, Koresh and the Davidians
understood the situation differently.

Koresh understood it through
the Book of Revelation in the Bible,

which describes the opening
of the fifth seal.

It explains that first
there are the deaths of a few believers,

which had already happened,

then some time passes,

followed by the massacre of the rest.

And on top of that, the FBI said:

'We won't allow you to negotiate
while babbling Biblical delusions',

which left Koresh speechless.

On the other hand, on a radio show,

a religious studies teacher
tried to resolve the conflict

by interpreting Koresh's text differently.

The Davidians asked for a recording,
and they listened to it.

Koresh announced he needed a few days
to write his interpretation of the text,

after which he'd deliver it.

The FBI didn't wait,
leading to what we all know about.

What happened?

The FBI couldn't even see
that Koresh was actually negotiating;

he didn't ask for anything
that they could understand.

He wasn't asking for an escape helicopter
or silver to get to Mexico.

He wanted to interpret the text.

They were incapable
of understanding or listening to him.

And because of that,
they perfectly acted out

the script for the apocalypse
that the Davidians had been expecting.

We reinforce fundamentalist beliefs.

Maybe you'll remember that, in 2005,

a Danish newspaper had caricatures
of Muhammad in one of its publications,

which caused a stir.

There were protests in the Arabic world,
in parts of the Muslim world,

even some deaths.

They published 12; I'll show you two.

Here's one of them,
clearly designed to be provocative:

Muhammad is wearing a bomb-shaped turban.

Another of the caricatures:
Muhammad simply depicted as a shepherd.

Now, what were the reactions

from outside the Muslim world,
so to speak, from the West?

On one hand, some people said:

'Muslims are crazy, they don't understand
the separation of church and state,

they don't understand
freedom of expression,

they're backward'.

On the other hand, the progressive,
more politically correct position

said: "No, in Islam that's forbidden;
images of Muhammad are forbidden.

Let's respect that;
let's respect their culture."

Now, I tell you the second point of view
is worse than the first.

The second one is worse than the first.

How so?

In the second point of view, you
are reinforcing a fundamentalist belief.

It's not true that in Islam
images are forbidden.

It's not true.

It's not mentioned in the Quran,
in Sufi or Shia Islam culture,

or in South-East Asia, where most
of the world's Muslims live.

Their art is full of images of Muhammad:

Muhammad.

Muhammad.

Muhammad, top-right.

Muhammad.

Muhammad.

So when you say:
'Let's respect the culture',

deep down you're taking a position
in a theological debate

which exists inside Islam itself.

And you're taking the wrong position,
the position of the fundamentalists

who assume that they represent Islam,

instead of taking the more open,
more pluralistic position.

Finally, we limit our humanity.

As I said, I don't believe
in God. I'm agnostic.

In case you don't know, believers believe,

atheists reject,

and agnostics, speaking for myself,
are weak and undecided.

Maybe agnostics have more faith
when things get rocky and uncertain,

but in general, when things
are going fine, I'm strictly weak.

Now, there's something believers
and atheists share:

they live in somewhat closed worlds,

whereas agnostics are open,
looking to get involved with others,

looking, to some extent,
to get out of their bubble.

So I want to end with a suggestion
about what our relationship

with religion in the 21st century
could or should be.

One option is tolerance,
which I don't like.

To me, tolerance comes across
as arrogant and condescending:

'You're wrong, you're insane,
but I'll tolerate you'.

Another option is respect.

Respect is better,
but I don't like it either.

Because respect
implies keeping a distance.

'Those are your beliefs, I respect them'.

But I take a step back.
I respect them.

The position I like we could call
'spiritual humility':

an openness to the world's religions,

a desire to learn from them,

and even to try them out in our lives.

We generally think of religions

as countries with soldiers
proudly protecting their borders

so that nobody can get in or out.

You feel like a traitor
if you change your religious beliefs,

or if you incorporate aspects
of other faiths into your life.

Gandhi said that he, as an Indian,

clearly had a special,
close connection to Hinduism,

but that, as a human being,
all the religions belonged to him

because they are part
of what we have collectively inherited,

and he had the same right to use
them and learn from them as any follower

who was born into them out of chance.

Now, Gandhi's point of view,
which might seem utopian,

now, in the 21st century,
is less and less so.

Whereas before, we lived
in homogeneous communities,

now more and more people
live in huge cities,

and cities are places

where you're inevitably around people
who think very differently from you.

Urbanism, Internet, emigration,
immigration, television, radio -

all of these lead to a phenomenon

which sociologists of knowledge
call 'cognitive contamination'.

Cognitive contamination.

The idea is simple: when you talk,
have a face-to-face dialog with someone,

it's more difficult to think
of them as a sinner, a weirdo,

or someone who is going
to hell for what they believe.

Cognitive contamination.

And because of that, more and more,
religion isn't just something we inherit,

it's something we construct.

It becomes an individual's decision.

You're Buddhist, Jewish, or Muslim
not because of your birthplace,

but because you choose to be.

And because of that,
more and more people

go to communion
but also do Zen meditation,

or they eat Kosher but also do yoga,
an old Hindu practice,

or they go to confession but read
Sufi poets from Islamic mysticism.

We can start aspiring, not only
as countries to have multiple religions,

but also as people
to follow many religions.

People who tear down

and topple the walls that make
fundamentalist beliefs possible.

People who in their lives and bodies
portray a new religiousness.

We generally think that the history
of religion has already been written,

that there are no new prophecies
or revelations to come.

But perhaps from that, from that reality,

we can start building the foundation
for a new revelation.

I started this talk off by saying

that the future of humanity
depends on the future of religion.

I'll end it by adding something.

Yes, the future of humanity
depends on the future of religion,

but the future of religion ...

that depends on what we do.

Thank you very much.

(Applause) (Cheers)