Where might we find a universal horizon of experience? Two or three decades ago, such a horizon was only visible to the far-sighted. Now it rushes to meet us. In the present century, the global mean temperature will rise by between 1.5°C and 5.5°C, with several models finishing somewhere near 2.7°C. The temperature only rose by half a degree between 1900 and 1990, yet, by 2025, after only another half a degree rise, it is predicted that five billion people, some two-thirds of the world's population, will live in water-stressed countries. This is a matter of some import to the philosophy of religion. For while such scientific predictions may be culturally-specific, Hurricane Mitch was not [nor was Hurricane Katrina, nor the unnamed tsunamis]. Neither will the heat waves be, nor rising sea levels, droughts, floods, hurricanes, cyclones, soil erosion, desertification, forest fires and deforestation that will affect us all in very different ways. The disturbances that are likely to follow from such a destabilization of the global environment, including pollution, poor health, depletion of resources including agricultural land and ground water, droughts and famines of an unheard of scale, collapse of infrastructure, collapse of ecosystems, loss of over 50 per cent of plant and animal species, mass migrations, wars and the collapse in the credibility of national and international institutions and boundaries, will bring all cultures into a direct relation with the exterior. Whether or not religion originated from fear of the forces of nature, it will have to respond to them. An encounter with the exterior - a nature that can never be reduced to a culture - is the universal horizon that limits human experience.

Directing attention to the past, to tradition, to identity, to an eternal essence, unless it enhances one’s ability to experience and to respond to the future, is quite simply irrational, a disproportionate distribution of attention.