Skip to main content

Religion is not necessarily idiotic

Pope Francis


Pope Francis has declared that the Big Bang theory and his religion are not in conflict with each other.  The Bible is fiction. 

The Bible is scripture.  It is not meant to teach science.  As Galileo put it beautifully, “The Bible teaches how to go to heaven, science teaches how the heavens go.”

Even the religious fundamentalists are interested in how the heavens go rather than how to go to heaven.  Even they know that there is no heaven.  

All that religions have been doing so far is to manipulate.  So that they have power.  Power.  No exceptions. 

Exceptions became extinct.  Or evolved.  And gained power.  Or are begging/fighting for power.  

When power rules, humanity dies.  Because power belongs to the animals. ‘ Might is right’ is the law of the jungle.

Religion originated as a quest.  A search for the beyond.  What could not be understood was labelled as god or demon. 

Do we need that sort of search anymore?  Don’t we have a better tool in science?

Science has its drawbacks and limitations.  Yet isn’t it the best tool that we today have?

Can’t we keep our scriptures and epics in our libraries and become human?

Religion need not be necessarily idiotic.  I love Pope Francis for saying that.  Of course, I have paraphrased him.  He will forgive me, I know.  He is not an idiot.
Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers




Labels:

Comments

  1. DMR SekharOctober 29, 2014 at 8:18 PM

    Yet we may need religion ... In small doses .......... a soft one without hatred ....... as tranquilizer …….

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 29, 2014 at 8:39 PM

      I agree, DMR. That's why I've posted this.

      And thanks for being here after a long time.

      Delete
    2. UnknownOctober 29, 2014 at 9:49 PM

      "Religion originated as a quest. A search for the beyond. What could not be understood was labelled as god or demon. " I agree with you sir. But if we realize that God is nothing more than that,do we still need religion.Will there be really a chaos without God or religion? I too sometimes feel the need of a superpower who denotes goodness and with whom I can talk to,but I don't believe that there is such a power. Even if I start believing in him it will be after transcending all the religions. Do you think that religion is necessary to get to know about God?

      Delete
    3. UnknownOctober 29, 2014 at 11:57 PM

      The search for knowledge and truth has been the human endeavour from time immemorial.Conciousness evolves through honest intellectual search.One's life is the quest for discovery of consciousness evolving into deeper knowlege and understanding this is truth.

      Delete
    4. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 30, 2014 at 6:33 AM

      Amitach, religion has been more a hindrance than a support in the path towards truth. It blinds the believer with given truths. The search for spiritual truths is a highly personal one. Religion can help provided the seeker knows how to use it instead of being used by it. Most of the time people are not seeking any truth; they are seeking community - hence communalism.

      Delete
    5. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 30, 2014 at 6:38 AM

      Babychetta, it is the honest intellectual pursuit that I'm defending. Has the Church ever defended it? Hasn't it actually prevented any such search? Hans Kung, the theologian himself, said in an interview to Frontline a few years ago how many theologians were persecuted by the Church because they wanted it to be more truthful... I think we should welcome and support the Pope's initiative to make the Church relevant to the contemporary world.

      Delete
  2. Fascinating QuestOctober 30, 2014 at 12:21 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fascinating QuestOctober 30, 2014 at 12:27 AM

    A lot of what religion is perceived to be depends on its interpretation.
    Usually when it comes across as 'idiotic', it is the idiots construing it who should be blamed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 30, 2014 at 6:30 AM

      Religion has been highly regressive, Nimi. It always pulls back to the past. It refuses to accept the new and the different. The theory of evolution was questioned all the time by the Christians and heir churches. So the present statement by the Pope is a revolution in the Church.

      Delete
  4. Shesha ChaturvediOctober 30, 2014 at 10:36 AM

    I don't understand why science and religion can't co-exist!!! Why one has to oppose the other? Science aims at world-development while religion is for moral development. Though excess of both can ruin the things! isn't it? Religion happened to encourage people towards good Karmas, to define better ways to live, which later on was misused by authorities for their selfish interests. While christanity has been quite orthodox about science, many scientific theories and ideas are presented in our ancient Hindu texts (Vedas). I believe in both soul and cell, evolution and God, probably that suits me best!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 30, 2014 at 2:09 PM

      Your last sentence says it all. Ultimately, religion is a mere personal need and nothing more. For any spiritual quest or moral development, religion is not required at all. In fact, religion distorts one's spirituality and morality. Look at the number of crimes, riots, wars, and so on perpetrated in the name of religion. Religion has been, perhaps, the biggest cause of pain among men.

      Delete
  5. Online JournalistOctober 30, 2014 at 10:40 AM

    I can't agree .... that "the Holy Bible is fiction"
    I am greatly worried...
    Because the Holy Bible says ... all these things and things greater than these are bound to happen..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 30, 2014 at 2:10 PM

      Pope Francis was not the first to say this. Many Biblical scholars said long ago that the first 11 chapters of the Bible are mere myth not to be taken literally.

      And don't ever delude yourself that what the Bible says will surely happen. Poetry and fiction can be interpreted differently.

      Delete
  6. Kokila guptaOctober 30, 2014 at 12:12 PM

    I agree . with you and Galileo :) It sums up all :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 30, 2014 at 2:11 PM

      True, Kokila, two different purposes and they don't necessarily meet.

      Delete
  7. Roohi BhatnagarOctober 30, 2014 at 1:56 PM

    Good post.. Religion came into being to teach civilizations a way of life.. It was meant to explain the laws of nature (in short science :)) to common man in layman terms.. Now it has diminished to just rules and controversies.. Like any entity it has got adulterated with time.. Now there is need to undo all the evolved religious beliefs that has divided the mankind in various sects and write a new, fresh scripture that can connect all.. once again..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 30, 2014 at 2:12 PM

      A new, fresh scripture ... or at least interpret the existing one meaningfully. I think the Pope wants to do that. But his cardinals won't let him go too far, I assure you. The Church is a very powerful organisation rooted in obscurantism.

      Delete
  8. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 31, 2014 at 9:25 AM

    It is not at all about carefulness, Ashwini, it is all about enlightening people. I am fabulously delighted that a man of no lesser stature than the Pope has come out to state that his religion was able to accept science. It is a great beginning.

    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

Shooting an Elephant

George Orwell [1903-1950] We had an anthology of classical essays as part of our undergrad English course. Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell was one of the essays. The horror of political hegemony is the core theme of the essay. Orwell was a subdivisional police officer of the British Empire in Burma (today Myanmar) when he was forced to shoot an elephant. The elephant had gone musth (an Urdu term for the temporary insanity of male elephants when they are in need of a female) and Orwell was asked to control the commotion created by the giant creature. By the time Orwell reached with his gun, the elephant had become normal. Yet Orwell shot it. The first bullet stunned the animal, the second made him waver, and Orwell had to empty the entire magazine into the elephant’s body in order to put an end to its mammoth suffering. “He was dying,” writes Orwell, “very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further…. It seeme...
12 comments
Read more

Urban Naxal

Fiction “We have to guard against the urban Naxals who are the biggest threat to the nation’s unity today,” the Prime Minister was saying on the TV. He was addressing an audience that stood a hundred metres away for security reasons. It was the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel which the Prime Minister had sanctified as National Unity Day. “In order to usurp the Sardar from the Congress,” Mathew said. The clarification was meant for Alice, his niece who had landed from London a couple of days back.    Mathew had retired a few months back as a lecturer in sociology from the University of Kerala. He was known for his radical leftist views. He would be what the PM calls an urban Naxal. Alice knew that. Her mother, Mathew’s sister, had told her all about her learned uncle’s “leftist perversions.” “Your uncle thinks that he is a Messiah of the masses,” Alice’s mother had warned her before she left for India on a short holiday. “Don’t let him infiltrate your brai...
14 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Bihar Election

Satish Acharya's Cartoon on how votes were bought in Bihar My wife has been stripped of her voting rights in the revised electoral roll. She has always been a conscientious voter unlike me. I refused to vote in the last Lok Sabha election though I stood outside the polling booth for Maggie to perform what she claimed was her duty as a citizen. The irony now is that she, the dutiful citizen, has been stripped of the right, while I, the ostensible renegade gets the right that I don’t care for. Since the Booth Level Officer [BLO] was my neighbour, he went out of his way to ring up some higher officer, sitting in my house, to enquire about Maggie’s exclusion. As a result, I was given the assurance that he, the BLO, would do whatever was in his power to get my wife her voting right. More than the voting right, what really bothered me was whether the Modi government was going to strip my wife of her Indian citizenship. Anything is possible in Modi’s India: Modi hai to Mumkin hai .   ...
10 comments
Read more