Skip to main content

What use is religion?


Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers

“Why Blame Religion?” asks Matthew Adukanil in an article of that title published in the Open Page of The Hindu (Oct 13).  [In the online edition of the paper the title is Blame it on politics, not religion.]  The article is a response to an earlier article by Vasant Natarajan, Let’s aim for a post-theistic society.  While Prof Natarajan’s article was a rational and sensible argument why we should strive to create a world without religions, Prof Adukanil’s is sheer trivia fit for catechism classes.

Religion and science “are twins, one imparting wisdom and the other knowledge,” argues Adukanil.  There are many problems with such statements.  For example: Does religion really provide wisdom?  If it does, why is it the cause of so much misery in the world?  Why has it engendered so many crusades, holy wars, jihads, terrorists, and other appalling evils?  What about the numerous atheists and agnostics who were/are wise?  Aren’t they proof that religion is not at all necessary for acquiring wisdom?  How many people, in fact, become wise because of religion?  If we examine wise people who are also religious, we are likely to find that their wisdom is a product of their character rather than their religion, though religion might have played some (minimal, most probably) role in the formation of that character. 

According to Adukanil, the problem lies in mixing religion with politics.  What good is religion if it does not suffuse the entire life of the believer?  “Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is,” said Mahatma Gandhi.  If religion indeed makes people as wise as Adukanil claims, it should be the guiding force behind the entire continuum of an individual’s actions as well as thinking.   That’s why religion was meaningful for people like Gandhi.  The truth is that people like Gandhi would have been eminently good people even without their religion.


And that’s precisely my argument.  Religion is redundant.  It does no good to anyone really.  Good people will be good even without their religion.  Bad people will use their religion for politics and other evils.  So who needs religion?
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 13, 2013 at 3:19 PM

    Indeed religion is redundant and The Bad Ones are always in a Lookout to take advantage of this redundancy and many fools fall for them and create the Chaos which ultimately does harm to everyone...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 13, 2013 at 3:43 PM

      Religion was a mean of amassing power in the olden days. Today it's a business. Politicians use it still for political power, though.

      Delete
  2. SujithOctober 13, 2013 at 9:59 PM

    "Prof Adukanil’s is sheer trivia fit for catechism classes." exactly the same ran into my mind also. that was such a childish argument. Human history is the proof that religion and politics are two sides of the same coin.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 13, 2013 at 10:16 PM

      Adukanil is religious by profession and is used to preaching sermons.

      Delete
  3. UnknownOctober 14, 2013 at 5:58 PM

    I don't like religion at all. It offers nothing but excuses to dominate others.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 14, 2013 at 7:08 PM

      I love the way you bombard me with comments in a series. :)

      Delete
    2. UnknownOctober 15, 2013 at 12:32 PM

      LOL...told you before, I am seasonal rain :P

      Delete
  4. AnonymousOctober 15, 2013 at 10:13 AM

    Very interesting point. Probably one can attribute the presence of religion to induce discipline by fear of something greater. I view it as a tool that was invented to keep a sizeable multitude at bay, for those whose intellect alone might not have sufficed to keep them from vices.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 15, 2013 at 10:24 PM

      Yes, religion was required in the infancy of humanity as a means of controlling the savagery within the species. But now isn't it time to go beyond, time to grow up?

      Delete
  5. Sunil DeepakOctober 15, 2013 at 5:38 PM

    I think that it is the human tendency to go to extremes about their ideas - usually linked to religion, but if religions will not be there, will this tendency go away? Some of "science" persons are also very fanatic about the good their science can do and some of the financial fanatics or development fanatics that are dominating the world, how much harm do theiy create? :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 15, 2013 at 10:27 PM

      It is not as much a question of whether human behaviour will be much different if religion is not there as whether religion performs any meaningful service to humanity.

      Perhaps, human nature will be far better if liberated from the fetters imposed by religion and allowed to see things more rationally.

      Delete
  6. Manav SinghiOctober 19, 2013 at 5:25 AM

    Nice Post, A G+ for Ur Post and Have a nice Day. . .. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...
31 comments
Read more

Helpless Gods

Illustration by Gemini Six decades ago, Kerala’s beloved poet Vayalar Ramavarma sang about gods that don’t open their eyes, don’t know joy or sorrow, but are mere clay idols. The movie that carried the song was a hit in Kerala in the late 1960s. I was only seven when the movie was released. The impact of the song, like many others composed by the same poet, sank into me a little later as I grew up. Our gods are quite useless; they are little more than narcissists who demand fresh and fragrant flowers only to fling them when they wither. Six decades after Kerala’s poet questioned the potency of gods, the Chief Justice of India had a shoe flung at him by a lawyer for the same thing: questioning the worth of gods. The lawyer was demanding the replacement of a damaged idol of god Vishnu and the Chief Justice wondered why gods couldn’t take care of themselves since they are omnipotent. The lawyer flung his shoe at the Chief Justice to prove his devotion to a god. From Vayalar of 196...
10 comments
Read more

Our gods must have died laughing

A friend forwarded a video clip this morning. It is an extract from a speech that celebrated Malayalam movie actor Sreenivasan delivered years ago. In the year 1984, Sreenivasan decided to marry the woman he was in love with. But his career in movies had just started and so he hadn’t made much money. Knowing his financial condition, another actor, Innocent, gave him Rs 400. Innocent wasn’t doing well either in the profession. “Alice’s bangle,” Innocent said. He had pawned or sold his wife’s bangle to get that amount for his friend. Then Sreenivasan went to Mammootty, who eventually became Malayalam’s superstar, to request for help. Mammootty gave him Rs 2000. Citing the goodness of the two men, Sreenivasan said that the wedding necklace ( mangalsutra ) he put ceremoniously around the neck of his Hindu wife was funded by a Christian (Innocent) and a Muslim (Mammootty). “What does religion matter?” Sreenivasan asks in the video. “You either refuse to believe in any or believe in a...
11 comments
Read more