Life and other weird things

The recent death of the Pope set me thinking – is there any relevance to religion in today’s world? Or rather, has there ever been?

I think it would require a philosopher to answer that one. And I’m no thinker. But that’s not going to stop me from penning down my two cents, is it?

When I think about it, I find that the behavior that leads to believing in religion falls into one of the fundamental characteristic of human beings - that of disagreeing with other members of the species.

Arguably, there is no other concept in the history of humans that has caused so much division among people.

Now the fundamental question – is the concept of religion necessary?
My unequivocal answer would be ‘no’.

The very idea of religion is to abandon all self thought. Organized religion cannot be followed with any creative thinking on part of the individual. From historical times, anyone who has dared to think creatively or critically in a manner that contradicted the doctrines of religious leaders were censured and often persecuted as heretics. When someone of the stature of Galileo is persecuted by religious bodies and hindered by religion, it is clear that there is some fundamental fallacy in the concept of religion.

As soon as a person submits to religion, it is tantamount to the surrender of his logic and reason, not to a higher power, but to another human being like himself.

Sometimes I ask myself, has religion given us anything beneficial in terms of civilization? Sometimes, I am forced to think that it has. I begin to think that most of the beautiful architecture of the world has been a direct effect of religion. Had there been no religion, would we have anything as beautiful as the incomparable Meenakshi temple, the Kailash temple at Ellora, the Sulemanya mosque, the Alhambra, Angkor Vat, Borobodur, the Sistine chapel? Would we have the haunting music of the Sufis? Strangely enough, I think we would. The talent of the people who were responsible for these incredible works of art would still be there, and they would have channeled it for some other means, under other masters. In fact there is enough evidence to show that many of these masters who created works of art in the name of religion did so to retain their favor with the ruling class, or those who held power, not because they were overtly believed in religion themselves.

I also ask myself on many occasions, has religion given us anything to be ashamed of – anything detrimental in the way of civilization? I think the strongest proponent of religion, thinking in an unbiased way, would have to answer with a ‘yes’. But then again, the words ‘logic’ and ‘unbiased’ do not go along too well with the idea of organized religion. All problems in the world, barring a miniscule percentage, are expressly caused by differences in religious beliefs between groups of people. Every major war in the history of mankind has religion as its root cause. Point in case – the First World War started off with the assassination of an Archduke, and the Second had its roots in one man’s fanatic anti Semitism. In India, we need to be constantly reminded of the delicacy of our social condition by incidents like the ones at Babri Masjid and Godhra.
Approximately 300 million people in the Middle East live in hatred because of two groups of people belong to different religious creeds. Any writing on this topic is superfluous.

Next question, has religion done anything to enrich the human spirit? Sometimes, I am tempted to answer in the affirmative. But then I feel, that since the entire teaching of any religion can be summarized as ‘Do good to others and be true to yourself’, we don’t need all the phony institution of religion anyways.

I am amazed at how otherwise sensible people clam up when it comes to religion. Anyone who has tried to have a discussion with them on this topic will eventually hit a brick wall.

I guess it’s high time my generation rejects this idea that has undoubtedly held our species back from as much progress as there is in our potential. Even as I write this, I realize that there can be a lot of argument to my view. I wish I could hear them and help expand my somewhat narrow outlook on the matter.

A few days back I was reading a Satyajit Ray story of aliens from an advanced civilization landing on Earth by way of a navigational error. I couldn’t help imagining that their edge over the human race was obtained by the absence of the concept of religion from their minds.