"Religion is the opium of the people" Karl Marx
Over the past few months, I have been speaking with quite a few people and have come up with a series of inferences of public opinion with regards to religion. I find that on the whole, people tend to have an antagonistic view towards religion, god and spirituality. Upon inquiry, I wondered what could cause such a blatantly negative view on religion and it has dawned to me as the actual behavior of religion itself. Let us take for instance the witch burnings of the medieval era where between 50,000 to 70,000 innocent women were burned alive,hung, or drowned in fear of witchcraft. Great thinkers like Galileo & Copernicus were imprisoned for propagating the truth. Pope Clement V, killed the entire Knights Templar in fear of their influence and power, and this is just in the northern hemisphere.
Moving to India, where in innocent humans were paraded as low cast scoundrels who deserved to live a life of mediocrity and servitude based on birth and cast. Women forced to shave their head and wear white clothes upon widowhood. Wars between the Shaivites and the Vaishnavites, Muslim and Hindus, heavy hatred amongst Hindus and Hindus. One thing seems to pop out, religion a sole cause for the sheer multitude of hatred, envy, fear and misery. Now let us look at today, the enlightenment era, the age of justice, fair go, logic, science, reasoning. Going by this logic, the world should be heaven, correct? There is very little religious influence on most of the decisions of today, yet in the past 50 years:
The underlying problem is quite simple. It is not, and never was religion that caused such untold miseries on mankind. It was none other than man and his ego. Religion was an effective control mechanism for the evil and heavily destructive nature hardwired into human beings. This evil is a combination of Envy, Ego and Sadism. Indeed a recent survey of pornographic films taken by a researcher on The Age, commented that Sadistic Sex had increased dramatically from the year 1975 to the year 2010. Religion, had kept all these intrinsic qualities of hatred within man in check through love, compassion, service, propagation of a future heaven on a different planet, or different plane of existence. This meant that man had a severe fear for the consequences of his actions, which led him to take responsibility for this actions, much unlike the current world today.
So the big question is:
What is the cause for such untold violence when there, according to theists, is supreme being who is overlooking each and every action of man?
There are 2 schools of thought to answering this question.
If man is to get closer to god, how can he then avoid all the deaths & miseries caused by religion?
Yet another simple solution, all the great teachers mentioned that the soul alone is the most perfect guide to the supreme from S. Vivekananda to J. Christ. Christ mentions quite clearly that the Kingdom of heaven is NOT in the Churches and Synagogues but within you. Krishna mentions that no matter who the chosen deity, “I strengthen his faith in that being and help him come to me.” Another genius in religion, S.Vivekananda mentions, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. God is within us. He is the Soul of our souls. See Him in your own soul. That is practical religion. That is freedom.” We can see from the above quotes that, in most, if not all, cases religion had and always has preached equality and love, not hatred and anger. This was caused by evil propagation of religion by man. Therefore in order to avoid these miseries:
Over the past few months, I have been speaking with quite a few people and have come up with a series of inferences of public opinion with regards to religion. I find that on the whole, people tend to have an antagonistic view towards religion, god and spirituality. Upon inquiry, I wondered what could cause such a blatantly negative view on religion and it has dawned to me as the actual behavior of religion itself. Let us take for instance the witch burnings of the medieval era where between 50,000 to 70,000 innocent women were burned alive,hung, or drowned in fear of witchcraft. Great thinkers like Galileo & Copernicus were imprisoned for propagating the truth. Pope Clement V, killed the entire Knights Templar in fear of their influence and power, and this is just in the northern hemisphere.
Moving to India, where in innocent humans were paraded as low cast scoundrels who deserved to live a life of mediocrity and servitude based on birth and cast. Women forced to shave their head and wear white clothes upon widowhood. Wars between the Shaivites and the Vaishnavites, Muslim and Hindus, heavy hatred amongst Hindus and Hindus. One thing seems to pop out, religion a sole cause for the sheer multitude of hatred, envy, fear and misery. Now let us look at today, the enlightenment era, the age of justice, fair go, logic, science, reasoning. Going by this logic, the world should be heaven, correct? There is very little religious influence on most of the decisions of today, yet in the past 50 years:
- Stalin propagates communism, in course massacres thousands of lives for a future 'heaven' (20 Million recorded)
- Khmer rouge, another take on modern ideology of atheism by carl marx which lead to the lives of 1.2 - 2.4 Million innocent Cambodians being executed in a period of just 5 years.
- Sri Lanka’s killing fields, where over 200,000 Tamils of the Lankan island were brutally murdered between the year 2001 – 2009
- China, peoples movement party which ensure another 20,000 deaths
- During the Korean war, sympathiser civilians or prisoners were murdered by the Korean troops which were roughly 100,000 to 1.2 Million
- Zanzibar, following the over throw of the Sultan, thousands of Arabs and Indians were executed (between 8000, 17,000)
- Vietnam war: Fear of communism, America kills thousands of Vietnamese, releases agent orange which causes mutilation of infants even today (Approx 200k).
- The Genocide of hundreds of thousands of Tutsu in Rwanda, Approx .5 Million to 1million
- Idi Amin and the massacres of the Ugandan people
The underlying problem is quite simple. It is not, and never was religion that caused such untold miseries on mankind. It was none other than man and his ego. Religion was an effective control mechanism for the evil and heavily destructive nature hardwired into human beings. This evil is a combination of Envy, Ego and Sadism. Indeed a recent survey of pornographic films taken by a researcher on The Age, commented that Sadistic Sex had increased dramatically from the year 1975 to the year 2010. Religion, had kept all these intrinsic qualities of hatred within man in check through love, compassion, service, propagation of a future heaven on a different planet, or different plane of existence. This meant that man had a severe fear for the consequences of his actions, which led him to take responsibility for this actions, much unlike the current world today.
So the big question is:
What is the cause for such untold violence when there, according to theists, is supreme being who is overlooking each and every action of man?
There are 2 schools of thought to answering this question.
- From a Vedantic, Advaitic, conciousness perspective, Man is clouded by ignorance, thinking that he can obtain a safer, more fruitful and enjoyable life by the destruction and suppression of others around him. This is caused by awkward incorrect thought projection of the mind which wants to secure itself from harm and destruction by destroying others, similar in behaviour to Cancer.
- Another perspective is the belief in demonic beings who influence the action of man by their evil capabilities.
If man is to get closer to god, how can he then avoid all the deaths & miseries caused by religion?
Yet another simple solution, all the great teachers mentioned that the soul alone is the most perfect guide to the supreme from S. Vivekananda to J. Christ. Christ mentions quite clearly that the Kingdom of heaven is NOT in the Churches and Synagogues but within you. Krishna mentions that no matter who the chosen deity, “I strengthen his faith in that being and help him come to me.” Another genius in religion, S.Vivekananda mentions, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. God is within us. He is the Soul of our souls. See Him in your own soul. That is practical religion. That is freedom.” We can see from the above quotes that, in most, if not all, cases religion had and always has preached equality and love, not hatred and anger. This was caused by evil propagation of religion by man. Therefore in order to avoid these miseries:
- Accept that god is not a jealous being, if that were the case, Krishna, Christ and Vivekananda would have never had his blessings as they were all from different religions
- Dont judge the practices of another religion, remember as Christ mentions “Judge not, lest ye be judged”
- Religion tends to have a cultic extremity. If followed ardently, this leads to propagation of one faith more than another at any cost. Every major religion has its own subsects thanks to this. Think freely, dont subjugate yourself to this, the mind is very powerful tool. USE IT! Think outside the box!
- Never FEAR GOD, fear only brings outward hatred as it is a negative emotion. Fear your actions and the instability of the human mind if you must fear something.
- Reject any false claims on religion no matter how great the being, indeed a great acharya (Saint of Hinduism) condemned women from chanting the vedas and forbade their spirituality, as a consequence, the general public villified women and subjugated them. When blind lead the blind, humanity reaches its worst. Therefore, rejection of falsehood is an absolute must if religion is to not dwindle back to the dark ages it started from.
- NEVER GIVE ANY HUMAN A POSITION. The number of massacres by religious leaders, are innumerable. The reason for this is that a fear begins to develop in the mind of the subjugated beings under the 'assumption' of “The leader's” spiritual prowess. The ego of the position holder increases dramatically due to unneeded power.
- Each and every human has the capability to attain enlightenment, regardless of caste, creed, sex or race. Therefore religion must not be restricted for members of any civilasation, race, sex or caste. It is a universal tool for perfection of the mind, body and soul.
- Lastly approaching religion from a humane, compassionate and loving point of view, would ensure that the practiser would NOT go wrong.
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