Skip to main content

Good and Evil

“There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it.” 
― J.K. RowlingHarry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Examine history and we will be amazed by enormity of the evil that man has inflicted upon his fellow creatures mostly in the name of gods and creeds.  A lot of good people perished being labelled as heretics and witches.  Thousands of innocent people have died and continue to do so to please the gods of fanatics and radicals.

The Pope has apologised for his Church's inhuman attitude towards homosexuals.  Pope John Paul II had made quite a number of apologies.  Most religions will have infinite sins to atone for if they are willing to undertake an honest introspection.

And yet religion is about goodness, compassion, and what not?  That's what we have been told at least.

The plain truth is that religion, like most other man-made institutions, is about power. If you have power, what you do is right and good!  Rather, it's not about good and evil; it's about who wants to be the boss.


Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. Yes. Manay religious organisations are becoming power centric in stead of propagating human values.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This reminds me of Grand Inquisitor in Brother Karamazov who reprimands even Jesus of depriving church of its full power.But that's just fiction and the truth is much more harsh, I guess

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dostoyevsky was a genuinely spiritual person who was tormented by the problem of evil. Ivan Karamazov's quest is spiritual though he is an atheist. Real spiritual seekers are tormented souls who will not run after power. Yes, truth is much more harsh...

      Delete
  3. The examples of the brutality you speak of are numerous. It's always good to remind ourselves of these evils. Makes us want to change things.

    Nice write up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The atrocities still go on. The common people are helpless, powerless.

      Delete
  4. Very well said.

    Religion might have been born to unite people under the fear of god. But now it is causing division. Its time to evolve to humanity.

    ReplyDelete
  5. well, rightly said, religion is nothing but just a glorified and fancy name to hide the dirty game of power and politics.
    Very much like terrorism, religion also every year kills large amount of people, but no-one bothers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You gave it the right name: "a glorified and fancy name to hide the dirty game of power and politics."

      Delete
  6. Now this reminds me of a quote by Gibran, which I mention:
    Your daily life is your temple and your religion.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If only the religionists understood that, Chaitali!

      Delete
  7. That is the crux of the matter, my friend.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Religion did not start as a way to grab power but it has become a short cut to it now.

    ReplyDelete
  9. You have rightly threw a light Sir but question in my mind is the religion is wrong or the humans who involved in it are ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The problem is wit people. Give any system to them and they will pervert it.

      Delete
  10. Some people are using religion to remain in power......

    Natureram

    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

Two Nuns and two questions

The nuns kept in custody  Two Catholic nuns were arrested on 25 July 2025 at Durg railway station for allegedly trafficking tribal women from Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh to Agra in UP. Today’s newspapers in Kerala have expressed their contempt of the act more vehemently than I had expected. It seems secularism has hope yet in this country. For those who are not aware of the incident, two nuns were arrested because some criminals of a depraved organisation called Bajrang Dal in Chhattisgarh chose to conclude that the nuns were committing the crime of human-trafficking. Since that charge wouldn’t stick, because the women confessed that they were going voluntarily to take up jobs with the help of the nuns in order to raise their families from miserable poverty in a country that claims to be a $5-tillion-economy, another charge was fabricated that the nuns had indulged in religious conversion. Now let us look at certain facts. Though I keep questioning the Christian churches for...

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...

Capital Punishment is not Revenge

Govindachamy when Kerala High Court confirmed his death sentence The Bible suggests that it is better for one man to die if that death helps others to live better [ John 11: 50 ]. Forgive me for applying that to a criminal today, though Jesus made that statement in a benign theological context. A notorious and hardcore criminal has escaped prison in Kerala. Fourteen years ago he assaulted a young girl who was travelling all alone in a late evening train, going back home from her workplace. The girl jumped out of the running train to save herself from this beast. But he jumped after her and raped her. The postmortem report suggested that he raped her twice, the second being when she had already fallen unconscious. And then he killed her hitting her head with a stone. Do you think that creature is human? I wrote about this back then: A Drop of Tear For You, Soumya . The people of Kerala demanded capital punishment for this creature, the brute called Govindachamy. He is inhu...

Gods, Guns and Missionaries

Book Review Title: Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity Author: Manu S Pillai Publisher: Penguin Random House India, 2024 Pages: 564 (about half of which consists of Notes) There never was any monolithic religion called Hinduism. Different parts of India practised Hinduism in its own ways, with its own gods and rituals and festivals. Some of these were even mutually opposed. For example, Vamana who is a revered incarnation of Vishnu in North India becomes a villain in Kerala’s Onam legends. What has become of this protean religion of infinite variety and diversity today in the hands of its ‘missionary’ political leaders? Manu S Pillai’s book ends with V D Savarkar’s contributions to the religion with a subtle hint that it is his legacy that is driving the present version of the religion in the name of Hindutva. The last lines of the book, leaving aside the Epilogue titled ‘What is Hinduism?’, are telltale. “Life did not give Savarkar all he...