[Advance text of lecture to be given on April 23, 2009 in Chittagong
Predicting the future—an impossible task but heuristically
interesting exercise
The last thing that any responsible historian should do is set himself up as a predictor of the future of so protean a phenomenon as the religious life of humankind for an entire century along the zigzag road of human history. So what am I to do when asked to do just that by a respectable philosopher like our distinguished senior colleague, host and friend, Professor Muin-ud-din Ahmad Khan? Instead of dithering over the assignment, let me propose that, rather than attempting to predict the future of religion with any degree of precision, we look toward the future together, linking what we already know is taking place to whatis more or less likely to develop later in the century in relation to what we do know now. We may not determine just how our posterity will feel and act religiously, but we may gain some idea of the kind of global conditions with which they will have to cope religiously and/or otherwise.
