– MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS.
Protagoras of Abdera (l.c. 485-415 BCE)
– WHAT IF NOT?
The project derives from the question on the reason behind our ambiguous attitude towards religion: on the one hand, religion is insignificant for our daily life, even if most of us are Christians; on the other hand, the religious topic seems appealing to everyone. The proof for the phenomenon could be a delicate, magnificent, yet empty church in the city.
The investigation of the situation mentioned above leads to a grand topic, the triangle relationship among religion, humanism and dataism. Before the Renaissance, God (or other supreme power) provides with facts and moral rules for society. In modern times, humanism takes over the role of God. Man becomes the measure of all things. Now with the development of technology, data is expropriating human rights. Algorithm, eg. Facebook, or TikTok, is calculating our interest and behaviour, and feed us on what we are supposed to like. We are gradually losing control of our privacy, basic rights and even ourselves.
The internal belief in human is somehow starting to collapse. Our ambiguity towards religion can be regarded as our departure from humanism. However, we do not exactly know where we are heading for. Then religion acts as a substitution for dataism due to their similarity that both of them are external superpower instead of internal value based upon humanism.
This proposal is not an answer to the phenomenon, but rather an expression of the sophisticated situation.