History of Zoroastrianism/Chapter 55

The modern world is divided between Modernism and Traditionalism. Religions rest on divine revelation. This revealed knowledge is static. Secular knowledge progresses with time and, by continuous research and discovery in the realm of the physics of nature and the laws of life, creates new knowledge. It knows no end and is ever new. It adapts itself to the times and satisfies the cravings of the thinking minds. From the earliest times, religion spoke with authority on matters relating to the spirit. But there were physical problems for which the inquisitive mind always demanded solution. Science claimed to make new discoveries in the realm of physical researches. Religion adopted science as its handmaid and incorporated the discoveries of the scientists and the physicists and proclaimed them as the further divine revelation to mankind to explain physical questions. The crude cosmologies and cosmogonies of the times when science was in its infancy were thus made integral parts of the religions of the world. The researches of modern science have rendered them untenable in the light of advanced knowledge. The doctrine of evolution has revolutionized man's outlook upon life throughout the world. Modern science has changed the attitude of the thinking people everywhere. The intellectual ferment and spiritual unrest have stirred the whole world. The enlightened youths are driven to disbelief. They are not happy in the state of disbelief. They are anxious to believe and secure peace of mind but they cannot honestly subscribe to the beliefs in which they are brought up. They are disbelievers despite themselves. This state of disbelief is produced by honest doubt.

Orthodoxy is obstinacy to forget anything old and learn anything new. Orthodoxy has always and everywhere professed that the doctrines, dogmas, rituals, and the established views of life that a people has inherited are fixed and right. All those that dissent from them are heterodox, other than right, not right, ​that is, wrong. Orthodoxy has always numbers on its side, for the average man is temperamentally timid and conservative and is unwilling to be disturbed in the thoughts and views he has inherited with his birth. He seeks refuge in tradition and is content to live secure in the dead past. All that is handed down from remote times and forms the tradition of the people is sacred. Orthodoxy is jealous of the views it holds and resents all opposition to them. It aims at making people religious in its own way. It moves about with prying eyes and spies on its neighbour's conscience and struggles to read his thoughts. Whenever it is powerful enough to inflict its will upon others, it clips the wings of thought, gags speech, and cripples action. The collective orthodox mind controls the thinking of the individual and drives the dissenters to secrete their thoughts in the lowest depths of their souls. Orthodoxy makes free thinking taboo and fails to see that high thinking is impossible without free thinking. Orthodoxy is impervious to the influence of the times.