The Garden of Earthly Delights”– This was a painting made by a Dutch painter, Hieronymus Bosch in 1495–1505. It was a depiction of his imagination of a world without God or religion. Picturing obscenity and vulgarity, the painting shows the face of this world when God is absent and everybody acts according to his free will, driven by his temptations to indulge in pleasure-seeking activities.
However, there are people like Frans de Waal, the Dutch primatologist and ethologist, who remark the following in reference to the painting by Bosch– "Some people find the painting morbid or horrifying, and that's because he showed Hellish scenes. But actually The Garden of Earthly Delights– most of that painting is delightful." He endorses the scenes in the painting where people are involved in immoral lifestyle characterised by sensuality and calls it an adventure where all frolic around! And, finally he says: “So Bosch sort of depicts, for me, a visualisation of the moralisation that may come about if you're not necessarily religious… Personally I think we can be moral without religion...” To justify his perspective, he mentions about an experiment done in northern Europe, where the majority of people don't believe in God and religion. But they have a moral society.
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… Is Waal's perception about the possibility of existence of morality without religion actually true? To know this in toto, read the complete article in Sept’20 edition of English Akhand Gyan Monthly Magazine.
