Religion
Religion has percolated almost all aspects of life of most
of the human beings on this earth. At personal, family, social and several
other levels it has tremendous influence. This essay has been aimed to make the
readers to understand what a religion is per se and how to delineate
truth from false things in and about religion whatever might be. The reason for
this writing is the result of the effect of religion on mankind so far and to
make the readers to have a clear and comprehensive idea on this issue. Currently,
there are three groups – 1. Those who cling to religion and spend huge amount
of money, energy on it. 2. Those who try to eradicate religion (either a single
religion or all) from the whole world in view of its bitter effects 3. Those who
interpret religious teachings for their own benefit and most importantly colour
the dogmas and myths with science!
There are many religions all over the world, some has
huge number of followers and some has only a handful of believers. There are
more similarities than differences across all religions. Essentially a religion
has two primary characters: 1. Belief in God, the belief may be a faith or just
yet another “flexible” belief. 2. Rules and rituals, here lies most of the
differences and of course the sources of criticisms. Almost all religions have
the following secondary characters: 1. Other beliefs, like belief in devil or
ghost; believing that diseases are caused by the wrath of God etc. 2. Customs and
cultural aspects, they are not as direct and as rigid as rules mentioned above.
Analysis of religion without a clear understanding of its
backbone beliefs is neither possible nor useful. Hence first we analyse the
characters which form the backbone from logical and scientific point of view. Belief
in God is the most fundamental aspect of every religion whether it is followed
legitimately or not. There are several concepts and opinions about God. Almost all
agree that there exists a “super-power” which has given rise to this universe
and manage all the events. Such “thing” is single and everything else is the
product or manifestation of the “super-power”. This concept is logical and of
course can be worked along with scientific lines to discover such “super-power”
like the discovery of electricity!
But this is not the only concept. There are several concepts
which are illogical and utterly non-sense. Some of them are listed and their irrationality
has been teased out. I curtail examples to avoid tangential fights and
interested readers can find the examples elsewhere. God is a power who listens to our prayers –
several studies have shown that prayer has limited effects especially in terms
of “subjective satisfaction” and “in raising the threshold for pain and
suffering”. But simply by prayer one can’t change the course of events and to
make a phenomenon to happen (or not to happen!). These kinds of “magical ideas”
will do more harm than good as evidenced by history and common sense.
God is not a slave to our orders whether it is a silent
mass prayer or offerings in the form of visits to places considered as sacred,
money, hair etc. Just praying either for personal benefit like highly paid job
or a beautiful spouse or for getting cured of an incurable illness- never
works. It is pathetic to notice millions of people waste their money, time and
energy in such useless activities. After all the basic idea behind such prayer
is the “issue of control” over the events. We don’t pray if we can do the
things in which we have full control. It is the things in which we have either
partial or no control at all, we try to overcome the shortage and try to gain
control. One of them is prayer and offering as mentioned above. The logical way would be trying to get the
control by intelligent, yet ethical means and learning to adapt for things
which are not in our hands. For example, even if I pray a million times
wholeheartedly to make every human being to read this essay and understand, it
will be a dream forever since I have no control over all. As an offshoot, it is
the hidden agenda to control the entire humanity in the name of religion and to
control them by a handful of people who project the authority of religion.
God has an image, mostly depicted as a human in Hinduism.
It is impossible to imagine the whole Universe; hence describing a “super-power”
is possible either in abstract terms or using symbols only. As long as it
remains as a symbol things are fine but unfortunately the idol worship has done
more harm than good. People have been made into believe that the “stones” are
God and it is a common sight to see how much money, time and energy getting wasted
because of this belief. The worst is the loss of life because of the clash of
religions over the space which is considered as holy and the seat of worship or
the idol. If the entire universe is God and the God is sacred then, every place
is sacred, isn’t it? It doesn’t make sense to say that God is residing at only
in this place or saying that here only God’s power is greater than anywhere else.
Since God, being a super-power, the manager of Nature, such concepts never
apply. Even giving the sex suffix like him and her would not apply since God is
not reproducing sexually!
God has a name though we call it different all are same. If
this core idea is true there should be no clash. Suppose, I say I call God by Krishna,
and you call God by Allah, there should be no problem when both of us mean the
same thing. But in the history we see the opposite thing- those who believe God
in the name of Allah do not accept that Krishna and Allah means the same God. In
spite of repeated words from the wise, most of the people do not understand and
remain deluded.
- to be continued..
