Religion is not something you believe or not. It's a set of rules to follow for a better living. Unfortunately, most of the known religions are based on the concept of God just to implement the rules effectively. Over the time, people glorified the concept of God with superficial rituals burying the core rules for a better living. Typical core rules of most of the religions are:
1. There is a creator of the universe called God.
2. Don’t kill or hurt anyone.
3. Marriage is a holy bonding and don’t commit adultery.
4. Don’t lie.
5. Help the needy people.
All these core rules makes proper sense for us to have a civilized society (except for the first one). The people who were instrumental in forming these religions were intellectuals with probably good intentions of building a better society. They knew the truth that they needed an imaginary superpower concept called God to make the people follow the rules. Otherwise, people don’t have any incentives to follow these founder’s advice. So, the good intellectuals used the concept of God which was elegant to build a better society in which people doesn’t kill each other for personal benefits.
In comparison, the Constitution of India can be treated as a book of religion for the citizens of India. It's not whether you believe or not in the Constitution of India, you got to follow it if you want to be in India. The Government including Judiciary is the care-taker of the Constitution to preach and enforce it. Similarly, the religions also nominated some people to preach and spread the religion. The Constitution of India which was written 60 years back was a great effort to put the rules together. Nevertheless, it's good to amend (modify) it time to time to tune the rules and make it better. Similarly, religions like Hinduism and Christianity were formed many centuries ago and the intellectuals who are instrumental in forming these set of rules have done a great job. Christianity was formed out of an amendment to the old testament, which is still followed by Jews. Hinduism might have amended a few times in its early times. Later, the people stopped amending them because they lost the clue of how and why they were actually made and strongly believed that they were made by the God and hence should not be amended by people. Somehow, the God which was used as an instrument to implement the religions has become the obstacle of its evolution.
I guess, this dead-end to the evolution of the religions has led to the formation of Constitutions/Governments like Democracy, Socialism and Communism. My comparison of the democratic Constitution of India as a religion is not incidental, that’s how a religion looks like if it’s designed today. The rules of a modern religions say, if you kill people around you, it’s not God but we’ve system in place to punish you. These are evolving unlike the religions. These forms of Constitutions are new age religions and the old age religions are still carried on as a legacy. I think these old age religions are obsolete and hence we should all stop following them.
Why do I say the older religions are obsolete? Don’t you see they are no more a reason for a better living and are often the reason for violence. Also, false concept of God has suppressed the values which were originally intended for. Just because we don’t know how exactly our universe is made and the phenomenal size of it, don’t make false assumptions of superpower called God. And, these religions are not improved/amended for tens of centuries.
People are generally excited about miracles. That's human psychology. The concept of God is an easy way to fulfill those imaginations. It’s easy to tell a kid that there is someone up there watching everything you do, so don’t do anything wrong. It reminds me of a short story. A kid who goes to a school in a neighboring village comes home after evening when it’s pitch dark on his way. He’s naturally is very scared. So, his mom tells him that ask for help of the God to look after you in such situations. Next time around, the kid starts chanting his favorite God’s name asking the God to come with him. Because the kid has diverted his attention to something else and also he’s imagining the God is with him, he’s psychologically secure and walks without fear. This ends the moral story. Here, all that’s God is imaginary, but it works for him. The imagination has helped the kid to come out of fear. But in reality, the things haven’t changed, the kid is still walking alone. The original fear of the kid is, if some thief catches him in the lonely place, he’ll be robbed. The situation hasn’t changed. If a thief finds the kid, he’ll still be robbed. The concept of God helps kids to stop unnecessary fear and also from doing bad things when no else is watching. Ignorance of the kid helps to solve the problem. Ignorance is bliss!
The points I want to stress are
1. The concept of God is imaginary and is entirely in your mind.
2. The religions are rules for a better living, but are not updated with time and hence they are all obsolete. So, stop following the obsolete rules.
3. Use your mind and take the good rules from the Religion and add them to the Constitution of your country so that you are doing your bit to make a better society around you.
Think about it!
Regards,
Channa Bankapur
1. There is a creator of the universe called God.
2. Don’t kill or hurt anyone.
3. Marriage is a holy bonding and don’t commit adultery.
4. Don’t lie.
5. Help the needy people.
All these core rules makes proper sense for us to have a civilized society (except for the first one). The people who were instrumental in forming these religions were intellectuals with probably good intentions of building a better society. They knew the truth that they needed an imaginary superpower concept called God to make the people follow the rules. Otherwise, people don’t have any incentives to follow these founder’s advice. So, the good intellectuals used the concept of God which was elegant to build a better society in which people doesn’t kill each other for personal benefits.
In comparison, the Constitution of India can be treated as a book of religion for the citizens of India. It's not whether you believe or not in the Constitution of India, you got to follow it if you want to be in India. The Government including Judiciary is the care-taker of the Constitution to preach and enforce it. Similarly, the religions also nominated some people to preach and spread the religion. The Constitution of India which was written 60 years back was a great effort to put the rules together. Nevertheless, it's good to amend (modify) it time to time to tune the rules and make it better. Similarly, religions like Hinduism and Christianity were formed many centuries ago and the intellectuals who are instrumental in forming these set of rules have done a great job. Christianity was formed out of an amendment to the old testament, which is still followed by Jews. Hinduism might have amended a few times in its early times. Later, the people stopped amending them because they lost the clue of how and why they were actually made and strongly believed that they were made by the God and hence should not be amended by people. Somehow, the God which was used as an instrument to implement the religions has become the obstacle of its evolution.
I guess, this dead-end to the evolution of the religions has led to the formation of Constitutions/Governments like Democracy, Socialism and Communism. My comparison of the democratic Constitution of India as a religion is not incidental, that’s how a religion looks like if it’s designed today. The rules of a modern religions say, if you kill people around you, it’s not God but we’ve system in place to punish you. These are evolving unlike the religions. These forms of Constitutions are new age religions and the old age religions are still carried on as a legacy. I think these old age religions are obsolete and hence we should all stop following them.
Why do I say the older religions are obsolete? Don’t you see they are no more a reason for a better living and are often the reason for violence. Also, false concept of God has suppressed the values which were originally intended for. Just because we don’t know how exactly our universe is made and the phenomenal size of it, don’t make false assumptions of superpower called God. And, these religions are not improved/amended for tens of centuries.
People are generally excited about miracles. That's human psychology. The concept of God is an easy way to fulfill those imaginations. It’s easy to tell a kid that there is someone up there watching everything you do, so don’t do anything wrong. It reminds me of a short story. A kid who goes to a school in a neighboring village comes home after evening when it’s pitch dark on his way. He’s naturally is very scared. So, his mom tells him that ask for help of the God to look after you in such situations. Next time around, the kid starts chanting his favorite God’s name asking the God to come with him. Because the kid has diverted his attention to something else and also he’s imagining the God is with him, he’s psychologically secure and walks without fear. This ends the moral story. Here, all that’s God is imaginary, but it works for him. The imagination has helped the kid to come out of fear. But in reality, the things haven’t changed, the kid is still walking alone. The original fear of the kid is, if some thief catches him in the lonely place, he’ll be robbed. The situation hasn’t changed. If a thief finds the kid, he’ll still be robbed. The concept of God helps kids to stop unnecessary fear and also from doing bad things when no else is watching. Ignorance of the kid helps to solve the problem. Ignorance is bliss!
The points I want to stress are
1. The concept of God is imaginary and is entirely in your mind.
2. The religions are rules for a better living, but are not updated with time and hence they are all obsolete. So, stop following the obsolete rules.
3. Use your mind and take the good rules from the Religion and add them to the Constitution of your country so that you are doing your bit to make a better society around you.
Think about it!
Regards,
Channa Bankapur
hi channa
ReplyDeleteYes, I accept and I believed from my child hood that religions are made to build a deciplined community.Yes, it should be revised by time but some of the basic ideas like punish from god should not be taken off. This is the mind set of human beings from past so many years which we cannot take it out so easily.
But you should appreciate this concept, which lead so many innovations like temples,ethnic wears,typical culture for every community. These things have to be taken as unity in diversity.
I mean to say here , though we need consitution change time by time, but religion is a strong belief where if you change frequently it will loose its very good idea behind it.
Leave it to the time it will answer everything.Look ourselves how we changed from our child hood days to now. Most of our old beliefs of god,signs,nature has changed. So, wait for more generation to come to a commond platform to talk on this.
cheers
vag
Channa, I appreciate your efforts in putting down your thoughts. But, let me clarify one thing. We never had a concept called religion in our country or any eastern philosophies for that matter. The closest word we have to religion is Dharma which doesn't actually mean religion. Dharma is only your duty towards your nation, parents, guru etc. And dharma is devoid of any kind of theism. God and code of conduct are purely separate concepts in our culture and they in fact took care not to mix them. Please don't compare Hinduism with christianity and all. I suggest you to read or watch videos of swami vivekananda (they are available in youtube) who says how hinduism is not a religion. As you can see Hinduism is conglomeration of various thoughts of gods - advaita, dvaita, vishishtadvaita, bhedaabheda, purnaadvaita, shuddhadvaita, nastika, sankhya, vaisheshika, purva mimamsa, vedanta etc etc. It is endless and none of them are touched by code of conduct. In fact there is no notion of code of conduct even among common public in India. No one will say god has asked you to do something. They only say it is tradition and we follow it because our ancestors have advised to. I am sure even your parents would say the same thing about following some traditions or ethics. They would neither refer to god nor any book especially at this age. And, we don't have any books to follow code of conduct like in western philosophies. It is a pertinent point you made that constitution is equivalent to religion. In olden days it was king's duty to restore dharma and god had no picture in it. Continuing on the same lines, read osho's last testament volume 4 in which he talks well on science and religion and says 'with holistic science, religions have to die'. coming to teaching children, it is very important to inculcate the feelings of god which is good for their own mental health as you say. After all as the saying goes 'nambikeye devaru' it is not bad after all in filling them with belief of god. As you grow up you will anyway realize the world and formulate your own thoughts.
ReplyDeleteone more point i forgot to mention. Communism is equivalent to religion because it doesn't evolve as it is one person's thoughts which are clearly penned down. Where as democracy can evolve. So does hinduism, which is a democratic form of religion. You can see how the values are changing drastically in our society. Would you expect the same in a strong islam or catholic state?
ReplyDeleteThanks Vageesh and Pramod for sharing your thoughts. I'll try and address your comments a little later if I can defeat the procrastination in the next long weekend around Diwali.
ReplyDeleteNice article, I agree on almost all the thoughts mentioned here.
ReplyDeleteThe Google Buzz post of this article is here.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.google.com/buzz/channabankapur/ds5dG9afK98/These-Religions-are-obsolete
You can find a good amount of discussion there which kind of replies to the above comments too.
Its very nice post and definitely thought provoking. I agree with some of the points generally. But here are few things which I think in different way:
ReplyDelete1)Though religions are meant for better living, I don't think that is a basis why religions are formed. My conception is that, religions are formed to address the problems which does not fall under realm of physical/logical sciences as of now. So their purpose is similar to as that of physical sciences but its ways are orthogonal to the ways of science.
Any system (based on beliefs) generally gets corrupt (or evolves in some wrong way) as it gets older, due to misconceptions of the people in that system. Religions are its perfect example. But that does not imply that all the older principles which were laid out by the founders of religions are obsolete and should be removed. Analogous case is of constitution of India, where lot of higher ideals and ideas are mentioned but in reality we see the corruption in all government departments. But this should not make us doubt the ideology or the principles in constitution, but the way these are implemented should be questioned.
2)As for your 3rd point in conclusion,
I think constitutional rules of countries are no replacement for 'rules/guidelines of religions' because these things are incomparable. Constitution of countries, for that matter rules of social conduct, are for maintaining some orderliness in a group of people interacting amongst themselves. Whereas religion is for guiding to understand the nature of one's own self better. Whatever guidelines laid out by religion about the social behavior are more or less for creating the suitable environment for the human being, in order to solve problem of self realization. This problem is tied to the very nature of the human being and is independent of culture, language, country, caste of human being.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Channa,
ReplyDeleteI deleted my earlier reply just to re-phrase it a little better. For me, religion, whichever way I look at it and however back I go in time, appears to be an exploitation tool at worst (as in medieval church and Hindu caste system) and meaningless collection of harmless rituals at best. Whereas the constitutions of democratic countries are certainly egalitarian and there is a very definite effort to keep religion strictly separated from state and governance. There are so many examples such in US. But, never the less, your analogy of religion and constitution (as new book of religion) is an interesting thought!
Interesting thoughts. I think at the fundamental level, it is the primal desire of one individual to have his/her thoughts, beliefs, ideas, dogmas to be followed by everyone else that gives rise to religions. Unfortunately there can probably never be universal consensus on what is the one right way. To that extent, every individual follows his/her own religion!
ReplyDeleteThanks Manjunath and Narasimha:
ReplyDeleteYour thoughts are interesting. The reason of late reply is, I wanted to reply in little detail, but two weekend passed by, and hence this short reply.
Regarding harmless rituals, here's one I faced couple of days back. We planned for taking my pregnant wife to Chitradurga to get ready for the delivery. I said I can drive next Saturday. One of our respected elders suggested us not leave on Saturday for a good cause as Saturday is not auspicious. They also said, daughter-in-law of the house shouldn't leave on Friday for her parents' place, so they recommended me to leave on Thursday. They also have a rule saying daughter of the house shouldn't leave on Tuesday to their husband's place. If I've to follow this meaningless ritual, I've to take-off from work for two days. Obviously, I'm sticking to Saturday as it's convenient weekend for me.
Thanks Kedar, for your comments. I blame it on procrastination for not replying to your comments!
ReplyDelete