"Profounder things had also passed. It was a completely secular age. Of the faiths that had existed before the coming of the Overlords, only a form of purified Buddhism-perhaps the most austere of all religions-still survived. The creeds that had been based upon miracles and revelations had collapsed utterly. With the rise of education, they had already been slowly dissolving, but for a while the Overlords had taken no sides in the matter. Though Karellen was often asked to express his views on religion, all that he would say was that a man's beliefs were his own affair, so long as they did not interfere with the liberty of others."
Buddhism has always been the only faith in which I have ever placed any stock, and as I grow older it becomes easy to understand why. Many religions have an inherent function that is hierarchical and controlling, a form of coerced social order, and a lack of accessible education promotes the fears that drive the persistence of such faiths. Attempting to live a life free of coercion and violence, as Clarke offers in Childhood's End, I can only think of Buddhism as being compatible, even for those with a more scientific or skeptical disposition.
Being both agnostic and agoristic, Clarke's vision for the future lays out a social change that comes through voluntary interaction and cessation of coercion and violence, with the Overlords merely showing humanity the destructive results of our own actions, intervening only to prevent harm to others.
"Perhaps the old faiths would have lingered for generations yet, had it not been for human curiosity. It was known that the Overlords had access to the past, and more than once historians had appealed to Karellen to settle some ancient controversy. It may have been that he had grown tired of such questions, but it is more likely that he knew perfectly well what the outcome of his generosity would be…" "The instrument he handed over on permanent loan to the World History Foundation was nothing more than a television receiver with an elaborate set of controls for determining coordinates in time and space. It must have been linked somehow to a far more complex machine, operating on principles that no one could imagine, aboard Karellen's ship. One had merely to adjust the controls, and a window into the past was opened up. Almost the whole of human history for the past five thousand years became accessible in an instant. Earlier than that the machine would not go, and there were baffling blanks all down the ages. They might have had some natural cause, or they might be due to deliberate censorship by the Overlords." "Though it had always been obvious to any rational mind that all the world's religious writings could not be true, the shock was nevertheless profound. Here was a revelation which no one could doubt or deny; here, seen by some unknown magic of Overlord science, were the true beginnings of all the world's great faiths. Most of them were noble and inspiring-but that was not enough. Within a few days, all mankind's multitudinous messiahs had lost their divinity. Beneath the fierce and passionless light of truth, faiths that had sustained millions for twice a thousand years vanished like morning dew. All the good and all the evil they had wrought were swept suddenly into the past, and could touch the minds of men no more." "Humanity had lost its ancient gods; now it was old enough to have no need for new ones."
