Why is religion criticised?
Why do humanitarian and
rational thinkers tend to heavily criticise religion? They do so because
criticism must be made where criticism is due. And there is nothing in this
word which does not warrant a different opinion, be it economics or a newly
discovered theory in chemistry and by extension, however sacred or divine a
verse from Allah may be. On the whole the entire foundation of religious belief
has been erected on a bundle of lies. Religion today refers to unscientific
thinking, a collection of narrow minded superstitions and their constituencies
which have degraded, failing to survive the test of time. Another reason why
religion comes under such intense scrutiny is because of the violence portrayed
in religious books. These books are nothing like rich literary works such as
the Gitanjali or Shonchoyita which we can read in our leisure and then prop
them up on bookshelves and then just forget about them! No, instead these books
are followed to the letter by enthusiasts looking to appease ‘God’, and then
implement them on to the society in general. Take the case of ‘Satidaha’ for
example, an abhorrent Hindu ritual where if the husband of a woman dies, the
woman gets burned to death alive to join her husband in the afterlife. In
between 1815 to 1826 alone, 8126 women fell prey to the ‘Satidaha’ system. And
who can forget the recent burning of Rup Kanoa, a girl burned alive in
Rajasthan 1987, with raucous slogans of “Sati ma ki jai!” (All hail the Sati
Ma/widow!). The whole village watched as the girl burned to death and didn’t
even flinch. And why should they? They’re faith will become tainted if they try
anything! It is said that you’ll be cleansed of all your sins if you read the
Mahabharat and also if you watch girls like Rup Kanoa, burn to death vis-à-vis
are live spectators to Satidaha. In truth, these ‘moderate Hindus’ can’t be
bothered to even read their own religious books properly. Many Hindus don’t
even know that there are clear instructions for widows to burn themselves alive
in the very pyre their husbands are cremated on, after death that is. For
example, on the 10th mondol of the Rigvedas, no 18/7 clearly states
:
The verse roughly translates
to –
“Let these women, whose
husbands are worthy and are living, enter the house with ghee (applied) as
collyrium (to their eyes). Let these wives first step into the pyre, tearless
without any affliction and well adorned.”
On the Orthoved there lies
the verse :
“We’ve seen living widows
practice how to become brides for the dead. (18/2/1,3).”
On the Porashor Shanghita, I
found :
“The human body is roughly
coated in of 3 million strands of hair. If a woman follows her husband into the
afterlife after his death, she shall have 33 years with him in heaven. (4:28)”.
Verse no. 4/18-19 of the Dokyho Shonghita states, “Those Sati women who
willingly embrace the flames, will be worshipped in heaven”. Immediately after
that in the in the Dokhyo Shonghita, is verse no. (5:160), “Those women who
chose to burn in their husbands’ pyres, will cleanse the hopuse of their
inlawas as well as her own.”
Satidaha actually is yet
another by-product of the Hindu religious books, even though everyone
vehemently denies the fact today. Satidaha is a prime example of how viciously
enchanting religion can be for people. Perhaps that is why Pascal was heard
saying “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from
religious conviction”. How true these words are. Think about it for a second –
an alive and healthy woman struggling against her binds, desperate to escape
the flames. She is forcefully kept at bay, fed opium like substances to keep
under control, poked with sharp sticks to climb the pyre where she will be
roasted alive, what a magnificent example of humanity! Every day I see
newspapers littered with articles of countless Safias and Aminas who lose their
lives falling victim to the rules of the “Shariya”. And yet incurably
infatuated with religion and religious books, ‘moderate’ devotees of religion
still desperately seek to extract peace, ‘progression’ and tolerance from it.
But it is undeniable that
there are reasonably approvable verses present amongst these religious
publications (I am sure no one including me has any qualms with them): the
believers base their pride on these clusters of good verses and perceive them
as key moral compasses. But if we analyse them from the vantage points of
someone slightly more sceptic – we’ll discover that those verses of love, peace
and tolerance that are attached like ad labels on religious books and their
promoters, are nothing new and certainly aren’t something new or unheard of
before. Take Leviticas for example, who said “Love your neighbours the way you
love yourself”. His words came 500 years before Jesus Christ was even born.
Scriptures in the Quran and the Bible which teach patience for example have
already been covered by Confucius (that too 500 years before Christs’s Birth),
“Do not exhibit the kind of behaviour with others, you yourself would find
inacceptable”. Isocrates said (375 years before the birth of Christ) “Do not
seek to exhibit the type of behaviour that angers you, in front of others”.
There are instruction to be caring towards you enemies even in Taoism and in
Buddhism, and all that before the inception of Christ and Muhammad.
As such, these moral and
ethical values taught in religion, that the believers champion and refer to as
gifts passed down to them by their forefathers, are nothing but unprecedented
results of the evolution of socio economic structures throughout the ages. To
maintain a certain degree of order in society, human kind has always
endeavoured to adopt and implement a handful of moral traits and values.
Because society would have collapsed dramatically otherwise. Infamous
anthropologist Soloman Ash has said –
“I am yet to see a society
where bravery is derided upon, and cowardice is respected: I am also yet to see
kindness interpreted as a sin and ungratefulness accepted as a virtue”.
The sad truth is we also do
not know if a society like that exists or not, because we wouldn’t last two
days in a place like that. Now one obviously doesn’t need heavenly intervention
to be convinced that stealing is a crime against society. But if a society sees
stealing as glamorous act as opposed to a crime that society, we can agree, is
doomed to collapse. As such we can probably compare and differentiate with the
alternative i.e. if lying is encouraged instead of advocating for the truth, it
will be next to impossible to maintain a satisfactory link between one human
and the other. And believe me you don’t need religious dictums to comprehend
the gravity of these matter. Of course there are countless examples of
campaigns against century old customs and rituals, at times to either change
them or stop them completely. In most cases these changes where brought about
by men and women who did it for humanitarian reasons, not paying heed at all to
what religion has to in the matter. The abolition of slavery is an appropriate
example. It is to be noted that no religious book in the world supports or for that
matter mentions anything about the dissolution of slavery. The Old Testament or
the New Testament of the Bible, the Quran, the Veda, the Uponishod or the
Munshinghota - none speak about the rescission of slavery in fact, some
instruct to preserve it. But eventually it was up to mankind to take matters
into their own hands and for humanitarian reasons abolish slavery, just as the
Hindus had to stop the Satidaha system and the Christians had to stop burning
‘witches’. There have been rapid changes in the world in the last few decades
alone, in opinions on issues such as the abolition of the Satidaha system,
homosexuality or the right to abortion. A lot of these changes did not win a
seal of approval from religion or its constituencies.
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