Skip to main content

Religion and Intolerance


The book which I am now reading is God is not great: How religion poisons everything by Christopher Hitchens.  In the very first chapter the author says: “Religious faith is, precisely because we are still-evolving creatures, ineradicable.  It will never die out, or at least not until we get over our fear of death, and of the dark, and of the unknown, and of each other.  For this reason, I would not prohibit it even if I thought I could.” [emphasis in original]

The author is an atheist.  His book is a serious philosophical critique of religion.  Yet he is generous enough to let religions be.  That is the spirit of all genuine atheists.  All genuine atheists I have come across so far display similar generosity and tolerance.  By genuine, I mean atheism chosen by an individual after due consideration, reflection and understanding. 

Hitchens goes on to ask a question: But will the religious grant me the same indulgence?”  A few lines later, he says that religion is incapable of leaving others alone.  Religious people, he says, are always “in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments... Religion poisons everything.”

The attack on a publication in Paris is yet another tragic proof of what Hitchens is saying.  Religions are by their very nature intolerant.  We are witnessing the rise of such intolerance in India too. 

I fail to understand, however much I think about it, why religious people can’t leave others alone.  What makes the religious people think that their truth is the sole truth, absolute truth, nothing but the truth, when there are so many ways of disproving most of their claims?  I would be thrilled if any religious person can answer this one question to my satisfaction.

PS: I admit that there are religious people who are very tolerant.  A few of my close friends are very religious and they never question my lack of religious faith.  May their tribe increase!



Comments

  1. I really resonate with your blog post. I've written about the over zealousness of religions. I'll link this blog post to my latest one. Cheers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Kalpanaa. I had a rapid glance at your blog and will return to it more diligently soon.

      Delete
  2. Replies
    1. Thank you. I'm soon following it up with another post titled 'Hindu students in Muslim madrasa'.

      Delete
  3. Very nice post! Religion should lead us to the path of humanity but unfortunately from most recent 9/11 to most recent Charlie Hebdo massacre prove it otherwise. too much of everything is very bad...even religious faith!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The media highlight such conflicts and problems. I came across a very interesting report in today's 'Hindu' and am writing a post on that.

      Delete
  4. Religious people believe in god, When I ask them why they believe in god. They said its our belief. You dont understand.

    And I got my answer, they do not have ability to think before believe in something. While an atheist people think if their mind give them approval after that they believe in it.
    Bottom Line: I am not sure nut atheist are wise than Theist, all have different views..

    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

The Veiled Women

One of the controversies that has been raging in Kerala for quite some time now is about a girl student’s decision to wear the hijab to school. The school run by Christian nuns did not appreciate the girl’s choice of religious identity over the school uniform and punished her by making her stand outside the classroom. The matter was taken up immediately by a fundamentalist Muslim organisation (SDPI) which created the usual sound and fury on the campus as well as outside. Kerala is a liberal state in which Hindus (55%), Muslims (27%), and Christians (18%) have been living in fair though superficial harmony even after Modi’s BJP with its cantankerous exclusivism assumed power in Delhi. Maybe, Modi created much insecurity feeling among the Muslims in Kerala too resulting in some reactionary moves like the hijab mentioned above. The school could have handled it diplomatically given the general nature of Muslims which is not quite amenable to sense and sensibility. From the time I shi...

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...

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...

Nazneen’s Fate

N azneen is the protagonist of Monica Ali’s debut novel Brick Lane (2003). Born in Bangla Desh, Nazneen is married at the age of 18 to 40-year-old Chanu Ahmed who lives in London. Fate plays a big role in Nazneen’s life. Rather, she allows fate to play a big role. What is the role of fate in our life? Let us examine the question with Nazneen as our example. Nazneen was born two months before time. Later on she will tell her daughters that she was “stillborn.” Her mother refused to seek medical help though the infant’s condition was critical. “We must not stand in the way of Fate,” the mother said. “Whatever happens, I accept it. And my child must not waste any energy fighting against Fate.” The child does survive as if Fate had a plan for her. And she becomes as much a fatalist as her mother. She too leaves everything to Fate which is not quite different from God if you’re a believer like Nazneen and her mother. When a man from another continent, who is more than double her age,...