We can deal
dearly with all religions to ensure peace and social harmony, but how and why?
1.
I
always believe that one can never defy or deny the importance of anything or
anyone but must deal with it/ her/ him dearly based on the inherent
merits/attributes and modify it/her/him as per the imminent requirement of the
present situation.
2. Tolerance of others’ views and ways
of life, compassion and non violence must be made a compulsory part of any or
all religious indoctrinations. While all religions preach love they do not actively
ensure practicing and indoctrinating the important components of love namely care
and compassion, attitude of adjustment, temperament of tolerance, worthy wisdom
of a willingness to learn from any source and accept changes.
3.
Human race, especially
those in political power, in educational activities, in corporate world, in media
etc can help towards achieving this through stopping
publicizing the craze for claiming head counts i.e. number of
adherents/followers of any faith and also stop all tall claims or taking credit
that a particular religion or religious dispensation created or contributed to
many great truths to humanity, introduced a specific great human activity etc.
4.
As these sort of
endeavors will indirectly stop too much of money spend on unproductive
activities in the name of religious identity advertisements, stop political
leaders from misusing religious denominations as vote bank, will make available
lot of money, time and energy for many productive activities for human
development.
5.
What
at present every human being, every society, every nation contributes to the
betterment of life of humanity and environment will take precedence over
religious identity promotional activities.
6.
All
employment and admissions to any institute or corporate house must do away with
requirement of column for religion.
7.
People
at personal level must stop financing or funding or sponsoring any activity
that directly or indirectly promotes to increase only head counts in a religion.
8. Religion
can never be ignored because of the sheer ancientness or antiquity, enormous
literature, vast cultural activities, various socially binding and highly
revered traditions, myriads of sacred ceremonies and rituals, elaborate
customs, banks of beliefs, fountains of faith and the halo of holiness and
sanctity surrounding everything that is religious etc
9. Besides
these, obviously there are millions of vested interest groups who draw their
very identity, survival and sustenance out of religion and the beneficiaries of
unquantified financial and commercial interests etc make religion a very strong
force which can never be done away with.
10. Every religion has its own beauty, beliefs,
benefits and banalities.
11. While
all other domains of life or activities connected and involved with human life
like science, technology, biology, philosophy, psychology, laws of physics, sociology
etc have subjected themselves to scrutiny by or through reason, contextual
relevance and compatibility with the evolution and growth of civilization which
involved modifications, acceptance of change, accommodation of ideas and
suggestions from new and hitherto unknown and unexplored sources etc and hence
the negative impact of these domains are comparatively less and positive
contributions , acceptance and utility are more.
12. Whereas
in the case of religion some or most of these factors mentioned above, have not
taken place. We are not going to sit on judgment as to whether it is correct or
wrong for the following reasons:-
13.
Religions have pre-dated most other domains of human activity or at least they
included in their purview many aspects of human life, knowledge of cosmos,
various theories of evolution etc much before other sciences evolved and are
therefore time-tested tools of exploring and understanding life.
14.
Religions, especially their doctrines and edicts, have had a very great
influence, immense impacts, dominance, authority and control over human beings
for a very long time and much before the advent of other subjects of human
knowledge systems.
15.
Naturally, therefore, religions were not merely a part and parcel of human life
playing a limited role but they permeated into almost all aspects of life at
once giving explanations to cosmos, evolution, laws of nature, types of social
laws that a group must follow the duties of individual, moral obligations,
ideas of social ethics, the customs, traditions, rituals to be followed,
rewards to be given and punishments to be meted out, codes of conduct etc
16. So, all
religions, in terms of their influence have almost became a second nature for
human beings, no one can either ignore their role much less question their relevance.
Even kings and dictators had to bow down to religious authority. There was no
need for vindicating anything in religion, but, only veneration, unquestioned
faith, total surrender etc and you can find these elements in all religions in
some form or other.
17. I am
neither a scientist nor a religious person nor a spiritually enlightened person
nor a philosopher. So my entire observation is to make an unbiased journey into
and through all these in general without any specifics to understand all these
and learn as to why they [religions] are like what they are now.
So I have
taken the only path known to me or at least I am comfortable with i.e. to
plough through loads of existing material in all these domains.
18.
Gradually as human beings, at least some of them, emboldened through intellectual
reasoning and through knowledge of other domains which helped them decipher
many aspects of life as good as religious doctrines or in many cases much
better than religious edicts, slowly started questioning certain practices
prescribed by religion, the relevance of some doctrines to understand life and
cosmos etc.
19. Most of
these initial conflicts and confrontations came through philosophical inquiry,
spiritual enlightenment and then sciences etc. So religions, religious
authorities, institutions etc tried their level best to initially destroy, then
suppress but having failed they continue to view these domains with uneasy
lurking suspicion and simmering discontent. That’s why we have the never ending
debates on Science versus Religion, Philosophy versus Religion, and
Spirituality versus Religion etc
20. I have
always wondered why and how come religions wielded such a great influence for
such a long time and continue to do so. For, even now it occupies a predominant
position among people involved in or experts in various other domains of human
life.
21. I felt
that we cannot brush aside their influence and impact as a mere result of blind beliefs, fettered faiths, enforced
authority, traditional pressures etc
22.
Religions must have had or do have something inherently valuable and/or
important or it must be including aspects of life which are not tangible,
visible, obvious, material etc or appealing to something beyond the realm of
reason etc
23. When
viewed from the above perspective, I have found that they have initially played
lot of roles, many of which are better addressed to by other domains of
knowledge to such an extent and with greater clarity and efficiency that the
role of religion can be dispensed with totally in these domains. But still
human mind and heart have a weakness for atavistic tendencies and derive
pleasure in repetition.
24. However,
because of the multiple roles initially played by religions. They continue to be the unquestioned and
unquestionable final judges in almost all domains.
25. Most
importantly, basically what differentiated human beings from other species, is
their conscious awareness and the ability to gain knowledge through this
faculty [other than or even beyond the mere physical senses, sensations] and to
store this knowledge in memory as a thought or idea and retrieve and reuse it.
26. The
greatest advantage of this faculty is that human beings need not have to
rethink and work hard to redo most things very often because the knowledge
gained already and stored as thoughts is available as a readymade template to
tackle most of the situations and therefore most actions become more of a
mechanical routine or repetition. This process of operation includes even some
very complicated activities.
27. It was
this great advantage which allowed human beings to evolve from hunting tribes
running around nakedly with spears and arrows to hunt down other creatures to feed themselves and merely survive into lead
life as civilized beings using the most advanced knowledge, sciences, technologies
to deal not only with life on earth but also probe other planets.
28. I feel
religion in its avid stride and acute curiosity to find explanations or
pronounce its version of what a thing is? And why something is so etc took
interest in this faculty, namely conscious awareness of human beings.
29. It
grabbled with a find that remained unexplored, unexplained and unauthenticated
by science and other domains of human knowledge streams and started exploring
and explaining that human beings had something beyond body and mind and labeled
it in many ways as soul, spirit, divine energy, universal energy etc and fed
lot of literature [either imagined or perceived spiritually or mere conjectures
and in some cases, very recently, experimentally attempted to be proven by
certain scientific methods too] and along with it, perhaps, also enhanced the
much needed greater dignity to human life and filled the void and much needed
consolation to human mortality saying that this soul/spirit outlives the
physical life and it is the manifestation of divinity in human being and all
the concomitant literature and proof for after life or reincarnation etc.
30. It also
provided an easy means to explain away situations, problems etc encountered by
human beings which are beyond the realm of reason or sometimes devoid of any
reason, in short all things that are
unknown, mysterious and remain unexplained convincingly by any human reasoning.
31. Of
course, we cannot totally deny the fact that there are many such situations in
everyone’s life, which defy rational explanation.
32.
Religious authorities being past masters at dominating used these exceptional
situations/cases to question the very validity of assigning the role of
ultimate authenticity or authority or arbiter to rational thinking or
scientific reasoning.
33. Thus
ensure that religions remained the ultimate adjudicator in all aspects of human
life starting from individual life to social systems.
34. However,
in many societies, where people prefer to be grounded and rely more on the
faculties with which they lead their day to day life, namely, the rational mode
of living which cater well to major aspects of their life especially physical
wellbeing, intellectual understanding, aesthetic appreciation, mental calmness,
human happiness, environmental care, compassion towards all forms of life,
social peace and harmony etc
35. In such
regions science, political systems, legal systems, philosophical reasoning,
spiritual wisdom [that the kingdom of God is within] etc have reduced or
replaced the greater reliance on religion and all its concomitant demands,
commands, rituals, traditions etc.
36. “Perhaps
we even need to look behind consciousness itself, to find what is the
foundation of reality” -Frederik Kerling.
37. We can
slowly but surely make human race realize that religion need not be the only
factor or most predominant factor in life.
38. I found
this wonderful passage in http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/depression-it-s-not-your-serotonin?page=2
“There are times in our evolution as a
cultural species when we need to unlearn what we think we know. We have to move
out of the comfort of certainty and into the freeing light of uncertainty. It
is from this space of acknowledged unknowing that we can truly grow. From my
vantage point, this growth will encompass a sense of wonder”.
39. If we
bothered to observe the socio- political systems that have made massive strides
in economic development and dominated the political map of the world of
improved human life. Then such thing has happened in countries which have given
priority to promote scientific research, technologic development, industrial
growth, commerce activity, promotion of trade and servicers, empowerment and
education of the maximum number especially women, exploring new frontiers of
knowledge rather than being obsessed with parading and prioritizing their
scriptural ancient wisdom [which was one among the many professions carried on
as business activity]. It is this aspect of history that we all must learn from
which will explain how and why USA, Russia, China and Europe are economically
prosperous.
“History has many cunning passages,
contrived corridors,"
wrote TS Eliot in Gerontion. If truth is to be the soul of history and if history has
to serve as our guiding star for walking on the right
path in the present as well as in the future, we have to
look at it with clinical precision and objectivity.
Passions, prejudices and predilections have no place in
authentic and instructive history. Knowledge gained from study of obvious facts and impacts of historical events must be correct, critical, with clinical precision and comprehensive.
wrote TS Eliot in Gerontion. If truth is to be the soul of history and if history has
to serve as our guiding star for walking on the right
path in the present as well as in the future, we have to
look at it with clinical precision and objectivity.
Passions, prejudices and predilections have no place in
authentic and instructive history. Knowledge gained from study of obvious facts and impacts of historical events must be correct, critical, with clinical precision and comprehensive.
40.If for a
group of people observing religious edicts as per the literal word of any
scripture alone can ensure everything, then, such extremely religious people
must be not go to hospital for health care, must not attend any entertainment event,
must not study anything, must not go for any employment for earning, must not
do any business to earn money, must not seek legal remedy for any dispute, most
importantly must not vote, must not take any doles from any government
organization, must not use any technological gadgets because they were never
mentioned in any religious script and so on because sitting and praying can provide them
with everything and take care of everything.
41. Every
must realize the simple fact that life as human species is mortal whatever you
may try to do and therefore must make the experience of living happy, enjoyable
and peaceful for oneself and others with a sense of caring and sharing irrespective
of any religious identity and also have space and time to attempt to get enlightened
beyond the realms of reason, if possible. Nature’s bounty and nature’s calamity,
diseases and damages all these act on human species irrespective of any
religious identity.
42. If we
can without bias quantify the money, time and energy spent on all religious
activities of all religions on earth and look at their reciprocal benefit to
human race we all will know their correct estimation. If we had put in all
these together we could have occupied three more planets by this time or at
least provided all basic needs for all human beings across the globe.
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