There are erudite and highly
learned Critics who consider religion to be outdated and harmful to the
individual. Let me reproduce their main arguments for your perusal. You can discard
or reject them outright. If you have a free mind, please give it a thought
before you do so. I do not want to mention their most common argument that religions
have promoted facts and histories that are contradicted by science;after all believers
never think scientifically.
Religious believers
brain wash children to believe what
they want and take away their intellectual freedom to think freely and come to their
own conclusions later.. They start thinking as per the software which is
implanted through the early years of ideological brainwashing. Without
this brainwashing how many would believe hat they do today? In his 1976 book ‘The Selfish
Gene’, Richard Dawkins coined
the term memes to describe informational units that can be transmitted
culturally, like genes. Dawkins argues that religious ideologies are a set of
ideas and concepts working to ensure the perpetuation and proliferation of the
religion. One of the precepts of any religion is to raise one's children in one's faith. They make children act irrationally and misallocate their energies. A child
is conditioned to feel guilt, fear, and other negative emotions harmful to his self fearing gods, Satan, spirits, torments of hell, and so forth.
The magical ceremonies (religious
rituals, processions, body postures) they witness from childhood obstruct their
logical thinking of cause and effect. Genital mutilation of female children
take away the joy in living as a woman. The frenzied sounds, howling, and
mesmerizing postures, done in the name of faith
healing is simply absurd and misleading.
Everyone agrees that religions have caused all wars in history. It proves beyond any reasonable doubt that various faiths have compartmentalized people who later forget they are brothers and sisters. A lot of terrorism has their roots in religious fundamentalism. The roots of Communal strife, riots and caste atrocities can all be traced to religions
.
The resources of man is wastefully
earmarked for places of worship, halls, palaces, dwellings, and others. The paraphernalia
for religious rituals is another source of human resource waste. The thought that it
is the afterlife that matters hampers human progress as it makes people more
accommodative and submissive to whatever happens in life. They accept failure
and set-backs as god-sent and they do not challenge or try to overcome them. They
suffer poverty, wants, illness, misery, commit terror and die in the hope of a heavenly
life. Karl Marx feels that, religion is a tool whereby the masses are made to endure
their suffering. The religious leaders
instill a conviction that the current suffering
will lead to eventual happiness and in that hope they endure every ill.
.
Critics such as Richard Dawkins argue that
religious belief often involves delusional behavior. Sam Harris, author
of The End of Faith and Letter to a
Christian Nation compares
religion to a mental illness, saying it "allows otherwise normal human
beings to behave like people with mental problems doing meaningless rituals and ceremonies.
Every religion discriminates
against women who are treated like slaves. Girls are not free
like boys to get educated, fend for themselves and decide their life. Nearly half
of the population of the underdeveloped countries (where religions control everything)
are backward, uneducated and depend on their men folk to live. Their lives are
not productive and the same has partly precipitated the underdevelopment of the said
nations.
Lack of scientific knowledge,self confidence and financial background lead them to religious believes and blind believes.After all religion always push them to believe and trapped them.Our political leaders also want such ignorant people.So that they can control them easily.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, Kumarpradeeksha.
ReplyDeleteMay All people on the Earth become Scientific .and fine with virtues .
ReplyDeleteII Om Namah SHivaaya II