Religion is a sort of control mechanism, restricting the followers to blind belief, enhancing prejudice and, essentially, an outdated concept for people who are scared of death; so they choose to invent ideas about: a God, heaven and hell and all other sorts of metaphysical concepts. I, however, believe that religion is outdated for today’s society.
My father always says that if you don’t want to get into an argument, you shouldn’t talk about politics, money or religion at the dinner table. While he is right more often than not, I believe that when people are open enough, any of these topics can be discussed constructively.
Given the importance of faith and religion in political, economic and social developments around the globe, I don’t think we can turn a blind eye on religion, even if it is an uncomfortable topic to discuss.
In today’s globalized world, people are travelling more than ever, taking their faith and beliefs wherever they go. As such, we are becoming a diverse and multi-faith society. While the beauty and richness of people’s religious differences are obvious, these same differences can be the source of clashes between people.
Although it is true that some countries, such as the United Kingdom, may have experienced declines in religiosity in recent years; religion still plays a central role in many other countries such as Pakistan, where 97% of people say they are religious and it is important to them.
With over 4,000 religions, each believing they’re right; it stands to reason that at least 3,999 are wrong in any religious person’s eyes. I simply think that all 4,000 are wrong. There is 0.025% difference between me and the most devout of religious people where beliefs are concerned.
Read:-
Origin and various theories of religion
There is but one God, yet different forms of Islam are fighting for their own version of him
The Conflict Between Religion and Evolution
If You’re a Christian, Muslim or Jew – You are Wrong
I’ve often, out of genuine interest, asked people why they follow the religion that they do. “But why that God?” I ask. “Why not Thor, or Zeus, Valhalla?”. I’m usually met with “Oh don’t be stupid”, which is an incredible response really – what makes their god any more probable? They’ve blindly followed that one god and dismissed thousands of other religions – probably without exploring their ethos or reading their scriptures. That’s hypocritical. It’s myopic. So, yes, billions of people can indeed be wrong. If you’re a follower of any religion at all then you’re literally saying that billions of people are wrong.
There are no direct means to confirm the metaphysical knowledge. In the last analysis, it is a matter of belief or temperament. The modern temper of man is such that it cannot remain satisfied with mere guesswork; it craves positive knowledge which can be scientifically confirmed. The positive or scientific knowledge is based on facts, and these facts are gathered by observation and experience.
The observation and classification of facts are the beginning of the scientific knowledge. From the facts, we generalize and draw conclusions. These conclusions, in turn, are subjected to verification and once verified these become established laws, which can be relied upon in gathering and classifying the facts. The scientific thinking is thoroughly rational and in it, there is no place for any belief in superstition.
Auguste Comte is of the opinion that all human thinking before reaching the stage of positivism must have passed through the two earlier stages of theological and metaphysical thinking. Even in scientific thinking some traces of earlier types are to be usually found.
Already we see areas where the religions such as the Church has relinquished control in favour modern society’s moral perceptions and demands. It is likely that in the years to come, as society progresses further, more and more of ethic values taught in religions today shall become seen as wrong or irrelevant and be forced to change – with homosexuality already a hot topic.
We are living today in a new information age that which our ancestors have never even come close to experiencing. Societal progress over the last hundred years have been at a much faster pace than ever before, and one can only anticipate this trend to accelerate exponentially.
“We must ensure that the people who have been fooled for so long by fictitious belief systems utilized to control humans do not get too angry when they realize that what they believe in is nonsense written by humans utilizing human created language. This could be dangerous for society, so we must either let them carry on believing their fiction or try to somehow support them when they realize the truth,” Dr Sanreso said.
Thank you for reading!