The recent news of the Ayodhya verdict have started a spate of debates across all media (from NDTV to Facebook!).
That apart, so many discussions wherein people end up confusing religion and god. I thought it was high time I pen down my thoughts on the difference between the two and whenever such a discussion occurs, I’ll proceed to give the link instead of going into the details of explaining the difference (funda re-use!!).
All religions have been started by men in order to lay down a set of agreed upon rules and norms for their community. This community could be brought together through mutual agreement (pagans, hindus, etc) or by instilling fear. Fear of being a heretic (islam, christianity, etc). The details are irrelevant, since in either case one thing rings true – its a social construct.
A social construct which generally pre-supposes the presence of a superbeing to keep all the community within line of the norms. If you break the norms, your soul will rot in eternal hell/netherworld/underworld/etc. If you follow all the norms like a good little boy, then you have chance to enter heaven/valhalla/olympus/etc. All these created craftily to breed only one type of behavior from the masses –
Compliance.
Now this superbeing, is usually god (sometimes it is the devil), but most of the times; it is god.
You take away all these rules and faff (the stuff I generally call as कर्मकांड), and you are still left with god. So what good is god without religion.
A lot. The idea of god, gives us faith, the faith that even if one fails, by some miracle (and these do happen :)), the intended outcome will be met. God is faith, and that’s precisely why atheists and theists will keep on arguing about God … because each will not let go of their faith.
So for god’s sake don’t waste time on religion, but still keep the faith :)
You don’t have to believe in god to be good.
Did god create man or man create god?
Agreed, but one does need Faith.
Faith in self, faith in other humans. Also, fear-based faith is useless.
It is very difficult to manage a brain dead mob without the rules, you see. Try talking about faith to a recruiter who hires 5000 candidates for companies like TCS, Infy and has to select from 1,00,000,0000…. odd applications. So the rules help. If you (the candidate) fit the set benchmarks, you have a chance to get in.
I know the analogy is crude, but certainly not a stark contrast. It is similar to the teachings in different religions. If every one is allowed to worship whatever god he/she pleases to and in whichever way, there will be no unity one day. The faith will then dissolve in thin air. So some times the religious biases help.
Having said that, I completely oppose taking advantage of the religious boundaries to create a communal divide.
Mayur, I disagree, what a person does (even one who is brain dead) is on his own choice (whether he acknowledges it or not).
I understand that. But don’t you think there is a mob full of god fearing individuals roaming around us? Preach them any thing in the name of god and there is a possibility that they will accept it. I know most of us will not try to preach any thing bad in the name of god. But some body will and then give rise to a ‘Ayodhya’ situation.
In my opinion, fear of god was instilled inside all of us so that we could abide by the rules laid down for dwelling in a harmonious society. It is good as long as it is done in the right spirits. But some guys just took advantage of this fear. :-)
Glad to know that someone else also thinks the same way.
just read this post. :-). I might have developed similar philosophy- thus end up not beliveing in life after death or your good deeds of previous lives bite you in this one. I feel all this has been laid down for people to do good, saying you do good, you rest in peace, but the thought which later evolves from this simple truth is – what extent we abide to these rules to ‘keep doing good’ and right now- we have crossed that limit and i don’t know why we end up restoring to weapons :-|. Its like – God ceased to be personal, a whole mob can fight over a set of rules which finally either ways ask you to be good.
@ Mayur- i cant agree with you. It is not possible to compare few norms set down by our ancestors which were okay to be followed in their times be applied to recruiting policies and traffic rules in these times. i rather believe only those rules are to be followed which cannot be broke. we bend religious rules to our own convenience, so how is it a rule any way ?