The end of the world as we know it: changing geographies of ignorance and knowledge, hope and faith

Abstract

Here I wish to report on developments on three fronts concerning ‘religion’ in expanding global debates about the ‘the end of the world’ and ‘the ways we know it’, concerning: (1) the word ‘religion’ itself, as half of the religion-science binary, and its marginalization–or complete absence–in the construction of the modern scholarly disciplines and university departments, and influencing of ‘modern’ culture and politics; (2) proliferating doubts about the positivist (and secularist) epistemology of modern ‘science’; and (3) the growing sense that we are caught up in epochal transitions, in which we are significant actors, and that, far beyond what we can know ‘scientifically’, our responses involve leaps of hope and faith which contribute to tipping the balance among divergent possible futures.