INSPIRATION
REVIEW
The Future of God:
A Practical Approach to Spirituality for Our Times
By Deepak Chopra
Finding God and Faith in Modern Times
Deepak Chopra writes in “The Future of God”, “Faith
must be saved for everyone’s sake. From faith springs a
passion for the eternal, which is even stronger than love.
Many of us have lost that passion or have never known
it.” Chopra’s “The Future of God” is a soulful, brilliantly
researched, eloquently written response to proponents
of material realism and militant atheism.
I
love the way Deepak explains in pure, simple terms, “You are whatever your faith is.”
Chopra explains that skepticism is a good
first step to exploring and finding our faith,
as he points out the important differences
between bad faith--which we can identify by the way it opposes spiritual growth.
Faith can be either a guide to spiritual growth, or
an obstacle. It is possible to consider oneself an
atheist and have faith, and it can be possible to
have good faith--that improves one’s experience of
life, or bad faith--which can be recognized by the
effect it has in the world. Faith exists in us as the
core ideas and beliefs we live by, and these inner
beliefs direct and inspire our every thought, word,
and action. When we come to know that we ARE
our faith, as Deepak points out, “It then becomes
vitally important to know good faith from bad.”
Every generation faces questions of “Who are we?”
and “Where did we come from?” In modern times,
we find ‘postmodern’ themes questioning our
identity in popular culture and movies, which invite us to more deeply question the connection be-
8 | NEW CONSCIOUSNESS REVIEW
tween who we think we are and what we think we
know of reality. Many are struggling with what they
consider to be an absence of faith, without noticing
that atheism can be viewed as a particular kind of
faith. Non-spiritual scientists can be as faith-based
as religious believers, to the point that they can
suppress thinking and research in directions that
don’t conform to conventional guidelines. When
scientists become close-minded in their beliefs,
they can often unknowingly become believers in a
faith of scientism--the belief that one day the scientific method will solve all problems. Proponents
of scientism can be every bit as arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic and intolerant as religious fundamentalists, which are indicators alerting us to the
presence of bad faith.
Chopra points out that while proponents of material realism and militant atheism such as Richard
Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christoph Hitchens and
Sam Harris profess to be voices of logic and reason,
their prejudice in discrediting religions and spirituality is evident in their use of such derogatory
terms as: ‘superstition,’ ‘false consolation,’ ‘mind-