My issue with organized religion is that you have to allow someone else telling you what you can eat,and when, or even how much! This is the 21st century, we have to accept that one can easily decide for himself/herself if he/she chooses to or not chooses to believe in , he/she doesn't have to fast or pray or read ancient text, or offer milk or sweets to a stone idol,or whatever else organized religious traditions and customs dictate you do. Especially the biggest common part of religion, the part where obedience to the rules set by the ancient text and its interpretation will be rewarding in the next birth, or if not rebirth then entry ticket to heaven, well it all sounds like a possible thing, except we don't have one confirmed proof of any such reward at the end of it, now I am not arguing that "absence of evidence is evidence of absence", no, I am simply saying that at least the reward part is not confirmed yet and that a better bet is to focus on your one life that you are experiencing currently,The cold harsh truth is that nobody who ever lived has come back from the dead to confirm or deny any of this stuff anyways, for all we know we may just have one shot at this, let's focus on getting this right.
Lets talk about inconsistencies among religion, I cant understand why nobody talks about this and acknowledges this as serious problem for believers,
for example Judaism and Christianity teaches that there is one God in the universe and as for Muslims, they take it very seriously, it is the single most important belief in Islam, and arguably the central theme of the religion, is that there is only one God. The name of God is Allah, which is simply Arabic for "the (al) God (Ilah). Now obviously Hinduism on the other hand is an oddball here polytheism and monotheism coexist , if you ask how, well it depends who you ask, it's complicated, but the summary is, they sort of organise in a wheel like structure with a hierarchy, its sort of based on how you interpret it, but my point should be clear, you have now some popular religions who widely contradict each other on basic tenets and beliefs, they have inconsistent teachings with each other, what does this mean, who is right, are all wrong ? how can they be considered seriously if they are not compatible , well if you try doing everything one book says, you will definitely violate the other, and so on, infact its so absurd, there are major contradictions within a single religion, let me elaborate in the next section.
To a very few minority who actively want to spread the good word of god, if you want to yell jesus loves you to convince others, well how about you explain the numerously well documented contradictions in the bible [1] , if you are trying to yell "allah 'akbar", translated as god is great, well how about you read the holy book and explain the following verse in the Quran
"Quran (2:191-193) - And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief or unrest] is worse than killing...," [2] don't see how a god who wants you to kill folks who don't believe in him is great,
or if you are a hindu, read the gita and explain some of krishnas contradictory advice to arjun or his ambiguity of karma and krishnas ability to render punishment or reward at the same time gita also shows karma to be self governing [3] , I could go on, if you want other books, there are similar issues everywhere, seriously go try looking.
Some background from where I see religion came from and why its no longer relevant,
Early Man didn't really understand the stars and the planets and the sun or the moon, so they were made gods, slowly our understanding improved, and now we have these machines that let us communicate ideas and learn about our world and our place in the universe , the information is available, all you have to do is search for it and read. The same early man wrote all that stuff in all those pages in all those ancient religious texts, sure some of the text might come from scholars who were master astronomers and sure some of the text comes from the philosophers and might hold value in our current life as guidelines to follow, so astronomy and astrology were the same science back in the day when farmers relied on astrologers for rain forecast, now-a-days we don't need an old guy sitting under a tree telling the farmers when it will rain, farmers have access to weather forecast coming from meteorologists. The point is the farmers don't rely on complicated traditions and superstitions and god to sow their seeds on time or plough their fields or whatever, they rely on newer and newer tech to improve their yields, just like that we can choose to use newer tech to improve our understanding of the world and stop believing in preachings of these organized religions. We must allow everyone to think critically, we must not be allowed to just accept and obey. Heres a nice reading that discusses more on the origins of how religion evolved. [4]
I have this to conclude my rant with :
Your belief in a
supernatural
omnipresent
omnipotent
god is your own personal business, the said god may or may not be REAL and it would be great to not bully everyone who is vulnerable without giving them the opportunity to decide for themselves.
#yolo #saturdaymorningrant #longpost #blogentry