Answer: Faith in God and devotion to Him are important needs of in all societies and at all times. Forces favourable to it and forces antagonistic to it have also existed everywhere and at all times. Anti-devotional forces are not a speciality of our times as some people believe. There is however an element of truth in this assumption. Intellectual sophistication has a tendency to make some men skeptical. But more than intellect, it is man’s intense attraction for the life of the senses that misdirects the intellect into skeptical channels. Otherwise the intellect is neutral in regard to faith in God. It may question and demolish many of the crude and superstitious ideas and practices that have developed in the name of faith and that type of cobweb-cleaning is a very necessary process. The intellect is aware of its own blindness about the ultimate nature of things. This position is confirmed by modern philosophers of science too.
To the extent that devotional life is eliminated from the life of men, they will find themselves meaningless creatures in this mighty cosmos, and their daily life too will lose all moral significance. A human society without any sanction for moral code is worse than animal society. For, as far as animals are concerned, they have in-built irrevocable checks to regulate their instinctive life, whereas man’s regulative forces are largely voluntary and under the control of his thought-life. Unless some ultimate meaning is given to life, man’s thought becomes weak and chaotic and his life is reduced to the condition of a rudderless boat. So faith in God and a devotional ideal are quite necessary even for man’s happiness in life and they are more necessary today than at any former period in human history; for without them man will become increasingly corrupt and unhappy which we are experiencing at this juncture.