Why Religion Creates Fanatics
Religions are simple to understand. They work on two factors-fear and temptation. The communal politician also acts in the same way. He will first instill fear in the voter's mind about others. Then he will promise a bright future, akin to heaven with rivers of wine and virgins, a place by the side of the sky daddy God or Moksha, once he has elected. The good days are always in the perpetual future. Religion is another way of attaining power. Politics is the religion of power.
Through the ages, humanity has seen deadly combination of religion and politics. By absolving religion from its responsibility of generating terrorist and fanatics, they are contributing to the growth of religious madness. The only thing the terrorist has , is religion. He does not have anything that forms a part of our day today life like art, music, sports, friends, parties, career, ambition and such a mundane thing that make life worth living. He believes in some books written or revealed to someone or some group of people in the past, when human reasoning and science were in their infancy. He is not ready to accept the world has changed and what is written in his holy book might be hallucinations of some poor soul, who imagined sky and clouds speaking to him in a language that is spoken in his vicinity. He is not ready to accept what could have been arguably relevant those days could become irrelevant these days.
Many argue that it is because of the wrong interpretation of religious verses that people turn to fanaticism. Nothing can be further from the truth. Anyone reading any religion's holy book with rational mind can see that they are full of absurdities, prejudices, racial hatred , misogyny and laughably ridiculous scientific knowledge. An elementary school science text is enough to counter most religious arguments about geography, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology. How could holy books that got even the basic facts like whether earth revolves around the sun or vice versa wrong to be revealed by an omniscient God, unless the God wanted to play a prank at the poor souls who were receiving one revelation after another. And how could such books-of any religion-be faultless when they have got even the elementary facts wrong ?
This being the fact , it needs a systematic brain washing for the modern youth to believe that he would swim in the river of wine and have 72 virgins in heaven if he blows himself up and kills a few others who believe in a different, but equally absurd stories. It is the less religious who dares to interpret the verses to suit the modern era. Those who read the verses without trying hard to find some meaning suited for modern living in these verses, would end up being fanatics. There are cow bhakts who roam around the dusty plains of North India are more religious than an average Indian. When they barge into someone's kitchen to check his fridge to see whether he has eaten beef, and then lynch him on mere suspicion, the cow bhakt is being truer to his books and not less so. The medieval European kings who bathed the world of rivers of blood during crusades were more religious than any of us. So were the priests who burned pagans in stakes and conducted brutal inquisitions. They were being truer to their books. It was those who believed in the holy book of Marxism and class struggle, perpetuated violent crimes on humanity. Communism is also a religion and those who read its holy literature tend to be as violent as those who read and believe everything written in the holy books of any other religion. Those who did not allow a huge chunk of their population into their temples, those who poured molten lead into the ears of the downtrodden, those who burned widows as Sati, were truer to the words written in their holy books. It was not by reforming Manu Smriti that India broke free from the clutches of medieval literature of revelations and remembrance. It was by adopting a modern Constitution and the Hindu Code Bill, that the society progressed, at least to some extent.
There is a correlation between how much religious education one gets in childhood and how much fanatic and closed one's mind becomes. The communities that give lesser years of systematic religious education become broader minded and less rigid. How Europe changed after it broke away from compulsory church attendance is a prime example. If we continue to impart religious education to children, we shall hvae fanatics who are ready to die and kill.
Through the ages, humanity has seen deadly combination of religion and politics. By absolving religion from its responsibility of generating terrorist and fanatics, they are contributing to the growth of religious madness. The only thing the terrorist has , is religion. He does not have anything that forms a part of our day today life like art, music, sports, friends, parties, career, ambition and such a mundane thing that make life worth living. He believes in some books written or revealed to someone or some group of people in the past, when human reasoning and science were in their infancy. He is not ready to accept the world has changed and what is written in his holy book might be hallucinations of some poor soul, who imagined sky and clouds speaking to him in a language that is spoken in his vicinity. He is not ready to accept what could have been arguably relevant those days could become irrelevant these days.
Many argue that it is because of the wrong interpretation of religious verses that people turn to fanaticism. Nothing can be further from the truth. Anyone reading any religion's holy book with rational mind can see that they are full of absurdities, prejudices, racial hatred , misogyny and laughably ridiculous scientific knowledge. An elementary school science text is enough to counter most religious arguments about geography, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology. How could holy books that got even the basic facts like whether earth revolves around the sun or vice versa wrong to be revealed by an omniscient God, unless the God wanted to play a prank at the poor souls who were receiving one revelation after another. And how could such books-of any religion-be faultless when they have got even the elementary facts wrong ?
This being the fact , it needs a systematic brain washing for the modern youth to believe that he would swim in the river of wine and have 72 virgins in heaven if he blows himself up and kills a few others who believe in a different, but equally absurd stories. It is the less religious who dares to interpret the verses to suit the modern era. Those who read the verses without trying hard to find some meaning suited for modern living in these verses, would end up being fanatics. There are cow bhakts who roam around the dusty plains of North India are more religious than an average Indian. When they barge into someone's kitchen to check his fridge to see whether he has eaten beef, and then lynch him on mere suspicion, the cow bhakt is being truer to his books and not less so. The medieval European kings who bathed the world of rivers of blood during crusades were more religious than any of us. So were the priests who burned pagans in stakes and conducted brutal inquisitions. They were being truer to their books. It was those who believed in the holy book of Marxism and class struggle, perpetuated violent crimes on humanity. Communism is also a religion and those who read its holy literature tend to be as violent as those who read and believe everything written in the holy books of any other religion. Those who did not allow a huge chunk of their population into their temples, those who poured molten lead into the ears of the downtrodden, those who burned widows as Sati, were truer to the words written in their holy books. It was not by reforming Manu Smriti that India broke free from the clutches of medieval literature of revelations and remembrance. It was by adopting a modern Constitution and the Hindu Code Bill, that the society progressed, at least to some extent.
There is a correlation between how much religious education one gets in childhood and how much fanatic and closed one's mind becomes. The communities that give lesser years of systematic religious education become broader minded and less rigid. How Europe changed after it broke away from compulsory church attendance is a prime example. If we continue to impart religious education to children, we shall hvae fanatics who are ready to die and kill.
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