Pukar Dhital
To begin with, the writer of this article has no clue why he has chosen this subject to write about! Well, upon deeper introspection it could be a concoction of a lot of things. The writer being born and brought up in a religious family like most of the Nepalese–presumably, his countless hours of listening and reading Osho, Alan Watts, Jiddu Krishnamurti and several other agnostic authors—but this happened much later in his life. Initially, for instance, he would blurt out ‘A devil in disguise’ upon hearing only a few of Osho’s statements, as the writer loved to be religious at one point! Things changed later, hopefully for good, when the author chose to be a bit rational. Not much–a bit! The writer to say the least would not be surprised to hear people losing their sanity if they choose to be gullible on what they read particularly in religious books! The author earnestly has no idea why his fingers are dancing on the keyboard and his mind committed to work on this topic. Must be a miracle from God! (Don’t worry I am just trying to be humorous here!) It is nothing of the sort, except the writer’s willingness to write and shed some light on the matter.
Twenty first century! Literally, we’ve come a long way. Think of it like this: The last Ice age was 15,000 years ago. 10,000 years ago with the beginning of domestication and agriculture, people apparently began to settle in specific locations leaving aside their nomad culture. 6000 thousand years back finally the civilization took shape with a prominent written history. Sumerian culture took the lead followed by many other great civilizations. We have not even come to the Greeks or the Romans almost 2000 years back, the latter ending in 476 AD. Just try to internalize this timeline! If your introspection is deep enough you might question, ‘Hey what was my great great Super Great Grandpa or Grandma like back then?’ But that doesn’t matter. Really! What matters is you are here and you can thank them that they mated! Well, if you are an optimist that is! Anyway go through this timeline again; it’s a long-long time! Everything has changed during this period—the terrain, people, countries, governments, Emperors, regimes, language, culture, the rivers must have changed its course, innumerable forests chopped down to give rise to cluttered houses in the name of civilization and uncountable civilizations swiped away either by oceans or reclaimed by forests or annihilated by some barbaric uncouth army or by some unfortunate wars. Things change, had changed but one thing remained prominent since the dawn of human civilization—Religion! Yes, no doubt gods changed to God or perhaps God to gods but what remained was religion. This institution miraculously has survived through ages and still seems prominent; its foundation deeper than that of Mount Everest! Going through all these changes and timeline this writer in today’s context has the simplest and the most rudimentary question, ‘Why do humanity need a religion in the first place?’
No doubt, we needed it, perhaps! Well, back then when the sun was a wheel of a chariot, when water fell off the earth into no one knows where? When the moon and the sun were lovers—their stories more tragic than that of Romeo and Juliet! Yes, we needed it back then when God was an easy answer to every question humanity could raise! But then poor God could not help himself (feminist might raise a question why he and this novice writer has no answer except probably because the write is a proud ‘he’. The writer has no objection if you read as she or you write one as she!) as he is divided into hundreds of gods by hundreds of different clans. So when the powerful clans slaughtered the weaker ones; women, children, infants, pregnant women, everyone—butchered, the God(s) of the victorious clans was the proven one. God–the mighty God—the one true God! It continued from clans to civilizations to countries to continents! Wars after wars—myriad of holy wars! It’s a wonder how these evolved bipedal somehow saved themselves from self-initiated extinction in the name of holy wars! Had it been so, every living and non-living creature or entity including plants, trees, rivers, oceans, air and land would have remained unscathed, undisturbed by human affairs and particularly those wandering calamitous souls of the human-triggered extinct species would have cherished it to great extent! However, that is unlikely, as it seems, revenge is something, which only humans have known how to foster! It is interesting to note that no matter the severity of genocide, mass homicide or a holocaust, no God(s) ever came in assistance to save their favorites but yet the stories of war are full of it. People long dead with astounded, scary, horrid, tortured faces yet their lineage proud that their ancestors have received the best place in the heaven. Proud and alive for a few more decades to the most, and before long, one day every lineage and to be lineage will have one of the aforementioned faces and dead as a door nail like Charles Dickens or Shakespeare would put it!
We are back to 21st century. Why do we need religion now? With every sort of painful experiences we have had with religion, what is it still doing on planet earth? What is it that it actually teaches us? Is it morality? Has it then nothing to do with ethics? If it teaches ethics then what do people have in the depth of their conscience (the writer has the pain of being through the experience of people misusing the word conscience beyond he could comprehend) but anyway, if religion teaches us to be in peace and be unprejudiced then what good are our rational thoughts and education? If religion teaches us love, forgiveness, charity, compassion, redemption and empathy then what do we have in the abyss of our heart or in the wisdom of a man alone? Are not these innate human qualities? If religion teaches us to be close to God then why is a child in almost every culture considered someone close to God? Someone who bears God’s innocence, love and smile? But sadly, before he could express and comprehend the world, he is laden with whatever faith he is born into! If religion is a doorway to meet God then which religious leader can solemnly stand today and tell what God is like, except reciting verses from whatever Holy Books he adores in the same blind faith in which he had rotted with complete acceptance and without any question— these being the very criteria to represent his faith. Sigmund Freud puts it, “Religion, necessary to help us restrain violent impulses earlier in the development of civilization, can now be set aside in favor of reason and science.” Now that we are at an epitome of reason and science, where Science is making giant leaps every year and we have rational reasons to argue on everything that happens on earth, what is ungrateful religion doing on this grateful earth?
Richard Dawkins, British evolutionary biologist, ethologist and a revolting author of, ‘The God Delusion’, the copy of which is still banned in many countries puts it “When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.” Sadly, today, it’s a grim reality that the whole world still is in the grasp of this vile delusion named religion. For ages, this single entity has been above all countries, above all rationalities, above all kings and visionaries, above all citizens of the countries and interestingly above all those wise men who have seen this as a well-manipulated tool of mass destruction and mass division among humanity. Innumerable wars have been fought in the name of religion; whether it’s the eight major Crusades, Protestants vs Catholics in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, the execution of hundreds of Christians in seventeenth-century Japan, the holocaust of the Second World War, or the communal violence of the Hindus and the Muslims during the partition of India, just to name a few! And not that the world is free of religious supremacy now! It turns out it still is ongoing! Though the term ‘religious war’ is deliberately rephrased to communal violence or is usually covered up by some political means. Those who gave flesh and blood to these inanimate religions left no stone unturned to make sure that those who opposed religion and its beliefs were ripped apart, their voices declared as blasphemy, and their soul orally flung to a permanent residence in everlasting hell. The notion of blasphemy, heaven and hell hit people hard right into the core of their heart. The seed of everlasting hell planted in the mind of the gullible mass and also the greed of eternal heaven where angels are! People seem to love this delusion. Why wouldn’t they? This delusion craters their greed and a hope, a promise that somewhere there is a land or may be a planet or the author wonders what exactly? But every religion promises there is something in heaven that shall fulfill every greed a man desires and surprisingly it’s always voluptuous virgin angels with long hair and luscious lips, shapely melons, intoxicating eyes, curvaceous fair body, aromatic pink pearl waiting for the deceased to make love to them! And yes to fulfill the energy and calories required for the task food is in abundance including liquors of course! Many a man has gone through stakes for this fervent endeavor and perhaps have blown themselves off into thousand pieces. Belief sometimes can be so fatal that in pursuit of heaven one first creates hell, experiences it, lives through it and dies in it! But in spite of all, people need religion! Osho or Acharya Rajneesh, with his sharp tongue and straight yet outrageous thinking, revolting teachings, fearless lectures, mesmerizing anecdotes and silvery voice quotes “Religion has fulfilled the egos of Jews, of Christians, of Hindus, of Mohammedans – of everybody. It has created so many wars. It has killed millions of people, burned thousands of people alive, and all in the name of God. For your own sake you are being burned alive! Religion is one of the most criminal phenomena that have existed in the world. It is time that we declare it dead.”
Likewise, Bertrand Russell wrote “Religion is based primarily and mainly upon fear.” Fear has been the reason why people flock into some kind of religious beliefs. Fear that something beyond their power, intellect can ruin their life should they not pay a homage to their in-born faith. Fear of God, or gods and much important fear of everlasting hell. The writer can’t help wondering, what nature of God (if there is!) would throw someone into an everlasting flame for any heinous crimes he commits? Should there be no other remedies to equal the balance sheet of one’s gravest deeds? In this case, any rational mind should consider statement of Robert Green Ingersoll, “If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesn’t pay Smith.” Wise would be to make our laws so effective that people fear the law first before they fear hell; they fear their life after the crime rather than the unseen pseudo beliefs after death. However, laws and its inadequacies and limitations allow people to play an unfair game behind its back! Irony!
Mankind falls for religion because of their inherent belief that there is something beyond they could comprehend. We have a natural desire to achieve everything that there is! Through religion, humankind attempt a vain pursuit of the unknown. People are curious of this unknown because of some historical characters in different eras who have talked of the unknown! They never seem worn out speaking of this unknown! Overtime, their teachings were shrouded in religion—with rules and regulations and confusions creating the great division among mankind. In the end, the essence got lost but the rules remained! Today, the unknown is coined in English as, ‘God’ and ironically, no one knows how to purse God? Alternatively, there is also a big question, if there is anything called God or the unknown in the first place? One of the intriguing historical characters that this author finds rational is Gautama the Buddha, whose message to the world was simple. He was agnostic and as long as he was alive, he forbade people to believe anything imposed on them until it came to their experience. All the while, people sought the unknown outward, he taught them to look inward into their thoughts and emotions, into their body and what this author acknowledges is he never mentioned any God in his teachings. “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” This quote by him defines his teachings! He perhaps was the first teacher who taught people to look inward into one’s thoughts and emotions. And he preached greatly on cause and effect ‘As you sow, so you reap.’ His teachings made people wary of their actions and thoughts. He taught people to be aware of their thoughts, emotions and actions and to know themselves first. Just what an eminent Indian philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “The beginning of self-knowledge is the beginning of the religious mind and not the knowledge of the supreme self; because that will again be belief in authority; and authority makes us imitate, and dictates; and we have to learn to free ourselves from this.” Yes, this is high time humankind must free themselves from the addiction of religion, from their blind faiths and prejudices, from their false egos. It is high time they come out of religion and pledge to change their actions and thought processes. It is high time mankind realizes the problems of the world were never outward but within our thoughts which have been materializing like a demon ready to engulf all of humanity. Much important, it is high time people come out of God and instead believe in their action, for their action alone can change the world, bring peace on earth and create a brotherhood among mankind like never before. Perhaps when the whole of humanity is at peace and in harmony it is then people refer to it as, ‘Kingdom of heaven’ , which mankind alone can create here on Earth and for which people don’t have to wait for their death!
It is high time humanity liberate themselves from thousands of years of religious enslavement and embrace one’s life full of conscious actions and start to plunge within themselves to see if that unknown really resides within! It is now in the 21st century that humanity should come out of all sorts of religious entanglement and liberate themselves from fear and greed that comes with religion. It is now that people should believe man is the architect of his own future and collectively humanity can reshape the fate of this beautiful planet with peace and harmony not just among mankind, but also with nature and every species, that shares this common planet. It’s the right time to come out of irrational authority. As Alan Watts has said, ‘When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique.” With this paradigm shift in religious views, humanity would certainly give a way to reach to the precipice of modern civilization, which shall thrive in peace, where, reason, science, logic, compassion and empathy shall reign people’s mind. If we succeed in this promising endeavor, the future generation will forever express their gratitude to us for unburdening them from religion, particularly when they will read about its atrocities in the world history!
[Pukar Dhital is a High School English Language Arts teacher, who profoundly adheres to the principle of independent, self, and lifelong learner.]