Religion

Why has religion been such a source of violence and strife in the world of late? All religions, after all, accept some variation of the Golden Rule which at its simplest means that we shouldn’t bomb our brother’s country lest he turn around and bomb ours.

Usually the genesis of this violence doesn’t arise among the rational educated classes but can be traced to fundamentalists long on faith but of limited intellectual means. Taking a literalist approach to a written work with as many inconsistencies as the Bible or Koran is a recipe for temporal as well as spiritual disaster. And yet those that wave their holy books the highest are often the ones firing up the people to commit violent acts in the name of defending their way of life (be it economic or religious) and consolidating their own power. Religion is used by many people in many different ways; politicians use religion to win elections and to cover their irreligious acts with the veneer of faith, radicals use religion to consolidate their power and to motivate populations to action. Individuals like Gandhi used religion as an effective tool to advance a positive political and social agenda. With the recent rise of radical fundamentalist Christianity and Islam, it behooves us to take a critical look at the effect these religions have had on the level of violence around the world and examine the more peaceful philosophies and belief systems which may be pressed into service to temper the effects of their radical brethren.

The question of what place religion should occupy in a rational, modern scientifically advanced world is one that has occupied my thinking for a long time. During the last several years I have gone back and forth on the question of whether society would be better off without religion at all; I have wrestled with the idea that monotheistic religion is a dangerous hindrance to human development and a vestige of our superstitious past which should be consigned to the dustbin of history along with Newtonian physics and the pseudo-science of alchemy. This seems to be the more intelligent view considering that religion has little utilitarian purpose; the time and energy spent at church related activities could be better spent building houses or feeding the poor. Yet religion occupies such a huge place in the human psyche that to ignore it would be as ill-advised as to embrace it. Over the next few weeks I’ll have a bit more to say on this issue. Politics is starting to wear on my nerves.