Saturday, May 5, 2012

The dichotomy of God and Religion



God had been a puzzling figure for me since I have started to understand my surroundings. I have always been opposed to those rituals, religious beliefs which seem to me the creation of human mind. It is really hard to believe that how a man is judged for his deeds which he has performed during his mortal sojourn on immortal earth and subsequently would be sent either to hell or heaven accordingly. Is heaven the ultimate fate of human soul? Does this life a judgment time? Is there exist any dichotomy between heaven (or hell) and life? These questions, along with numerous others, need to be answered.

Astonishingly, all the religions of the worlds talk of their glorious past and none have any optimistic plan for futures. According to them, our golden time has already passed out and hence our future seems bleak and consequently there is no hope for coming generations too. How can an analytical and logical mind accept the very existence of god on these very religious foundations?  Hence it is quite a natural that a curious mind would be popped up with a question that is there any god? Or is it just another beautiful creation of human mind? He is very confused. He does not have any answer, based on some scientific notion.

Actually, religion has been made such an essential part of our life that an already over occupied human mind hardly invest any time and pain in understanding these nuances of religion and god. In Modern society it has become fashion to disown the God for the fear that they would be branded as religious fundamentalist or orthodox or backward that too without realizing the dichotomy of God and Religion

 It should be clearly understood that God and religion is two different entities. While god is truth and real, religion is perhaps the strongest and most influential creation of human mind and had been established to identify, interpret the very existence of God. God is truly more than rituals, beliefs and religions. Religions are nothing but the interpretation of god in their own ways and terms which itself depends on values, culture and society of the place where these religions were evolved. And that is why there is difference among various interpretation of god and his stories.

Hinduism is born in a country which is richly endowed with water, fertile land and a society which was essentially an agrarian guild and hence preference for vegetarianism was enforced over non vegetarianism. Bull was needed to cultivate the land. Cow dung was needed as fuel (in the absence of modern energy resources) and as manure. In those primitive societies cow, the mother of bull was essentially considered as an asset and consequently was accorded the status and dignity of a mother.

Similarly, Islam was born in a rough terrain, a god forsaken part of the world where nothing was in abundance except the crude oil. These societies were not richly endowed with fertile land and abundant water and hence agriculture was not their main occupation. Their life entirely depended on herding and animal rearing and hence non vegetarianism has become the part of their culture and belief.

Similarly other religions were also the product of the circumstances that prevailed over the area or region of their origin. Astonishingly they still bear this baggage as a heritage in spite of their development in space and time that too without realizing that religion is the product of local culture and physical attributes of respective local climate.

It should be clearly understood that whenever we fight for Ram or Allah or Jesus or some other god propagated by some religion or other, it is not actually the fight for God but for their religion. In fact there is a race amongst all these humanly religion to assert their dominance on each other. It is really unfortunate that they all fail to understand the very  purpose of god and his role. While God is a true and real entity which created everything including human mind, religion is essentially the product of intellectual and curious human mind and is now being protected by their so called religious saints.

 It is not necessary to follow any particular religion for worshipping and interpreting the existence of god. This all can be achieved without following any existing religion. God is more than religion. But it is really unfortunate that while worshipping god we are more interested in religious rituals, beliefs etc. and hence in the process we have started worshipping the religion and consequently forgotten the god itself. We are now attaching more importance to religion and have made god the subservient of a religion. Suddenly religion has become larger than life institution threatening the very concept of god.  No religion is great enough to define the god. God is in law of gravitation, in your heart and giving it energy all the time, is in the law of nature etc. He is omnipresent and omniscient. God is everywhere. God is itself sufficient to define himself. There is absolutely no need of human interference to define the creator of the universe that too in the guise of religion. He is beyond the scope of any religious text book.

So while making it very clear that there is a huge difference between god with religion we should try to respect the individual difference prevailing amongst various religions and create an atmosphere where those who are sponsoring these religions, should not be allowed to plan and execute any bloodbath in the name of almighty.We should also realize that time has come when we should start attaching more importance to god and make religion subsidiary of almighty GOD

1 comment: