Skip to main content

How to end religious terror – one suggestion


Yahweh by Michelangelo
Recently I stumbled upon a quote from Robert G Ingersoll’s book, Some Mistakes of Moses.  The quote which puts the Jewish God on a dissection table is reproduced below:

It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable, hateful, and arrogant being, than the Jewish god. He is without a redeeming feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He, only, is never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain. Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music, beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain, and revengeful, false in promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, infamous and hideous:—such is the God of the Pentateuch.

There are people who believe in such a heartless, mirthless, starkly absurd God too.  It is then that I fell on the contemplation whether most gods aren’t similar one way or another.  They make inhuman demands.  They do things which many of us human beings will find atrocious and brutal, absurd and hilarious, or plainly stupid.

One challenge which I am tempted to hurl at believers is this: how many of them have actually studied their religion and its god(s) - both scriptures and history - systematically?  I’m sure there won’t be very many who will raise the hand.  If they really study their religion systematically, most of them won’t find the god(s) worthy of devotion.  And all religious terror will come to an end.


Indian Bloggers

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Anita SabatOctober 18, 2016 at 2:14 PM

    Reminds me of a poem by Harivansh Rai Bachchan that has a line that says that without religion things would have been better.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 18, 2016 at 2:30 PM

      Sadly there has been no civilisation so far without a concomitant religion. So mine is only wishful thinking. But dreams are free...

      Delete
  2. sunaina sharmaOctober 18, 2016 at 7:55 PM

    There was a time I used to pray...but then things changed....Now after having become a mother, I am charged by many as to why I am not letting my kids become religious. Not that I tell them that there is no God, since I don't know about that too, but the moment I think of telling them these 'stories' about Gods, I am stuck and struck by the 'terror' in these stories - birth of Ganesh - the wrathful Shiva, the helpless elephant - is one such example....so I keep telling them only one thing - that be kind, try not to hurt anyone, but if you do, accept your mistake....and other stuff like that....Looking at the way 'religious' people are behaving, I feel so numb when it comes to praying and other related stuff.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 18, 2016 at 8:14 PM

      I now live in a village which is apparently very peaceful and almost idyllic. But I wake up at 5.30 am to religious songs played from the Christian church and the Hindu temple both of which are equidistant from my home. Neither songs are clear because they seem to be competing with each other with the volume levels.

      When I mentioned this to a villager I was told that the competition takes place at many levels. The church has Sunday catechism classes and so various Hindu organisations have started the same. The Christians started organised community-home prayers and it was soon emulated by the Hindus. So religion is a kind of competition. What are children going to learn, I wonder.

      Delete
  3. CifarOctober 20, 2016 at 3:02 PM

    world without religion is impossible in today's world as it is used by rulers to rule their people, if people started questioning god they will question them which they didn't want

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 20, 2016 at 4:00 PM

      Yes. Religion and politics have always gone hand in hand making use of each other.

      Delete
  4. UnknownNovember 28, 2016 at 5:42 PM

    नोटबंदी के बाद डिजिटल पेमेंट पर जोर, जानें क्या है डिजिटल पेमेंट
    Readmore Todaynews18.com https://goo.gl/BgzxC9

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
16 comments
Read more

The Call of Islamic State

A year ago, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT) reported that about 4000 people from the West left their homes and countries to join the Islamic State (IS).  Many of them are women.  The reporters had made a special study of the women who joined the terrorist outfit and found that it was difficult to categorise which type of women were particularly drawn to IS. “While most of the girls are young, some as young as fifteen,” says the report,  “there are also mothers with young children who make the trip. Some of the girls have difficulties in school and are said to have an IQ below average,  but there are also women who are highly educated. It also appears that even though a relatively large portion of the girls had (or still have) a troubled childhood, there are some who come from families with no known problems with the authorities. Most of the girls come from religiously moderate Muslim families,  yet some converted to Islam a...
33 comments
Read more

The Plague

When the world today is struggling with the pandemic of Covid-19, Albert Camus’s novel The Plague can offer some stimulating lessons. When a plague breaks out in the city of Oran, initially the political authorities fail to deal with it as a serious problem. The ordinary people also don’t view it as an epidemic that requires public action rather than as individual annoyances. The people of Oran are obsessed with their personal sufferings and inconveniences. Finally the authorities are forced to put Oran in quarantine. Father Paneloux, a Jesuit priest, delivers a sermon declaring the epidemic as God’s punishment for Oran’s sins. Months of suffering make people rise above their selfish notions and obsessions and join anti-plague efforts being carried out by people like Dr Rieux. Dr Rieux is an atheist but committed to service of humanity. He questions Father Paneloux’s religious views when a small boy is killed by the epidemic. The priest delivers another sermon on the necess...
28 comments
Read more

Farewell to a Friend

This is a season of farewells for me.  I have lost count of the persons who have already left or are being hauled up before the firing line by the Orwellian Big Brother in the last quarter of the year.  The person, to whom we bid farewell today, however, had chosen to leave on his own.  He is going as the Principal of R K International School , Sarkaghat, Himachal Pradesh. Mr S K Sharma was a colleague and friend.  He belongs to the species of human beings whose company enriches you and whose departure creates a vacuum, notwithstanding the fact that Nature which abhors vacuum will fill it in its own unique ways.  Administration is an art for Mr Sharma, though he calls it a skill.  Management lessons, strategies and heuristics are only guidelines.  No one can manage people merely with the help of these guidelines.  People are not machines which can be controlled mechanically.  Machines work according to rules.  People do not d...
31 comments
Read more

Jatayu: The Winged Warrior

Image by Gemini AI Jatayu is a vulture in Valmiki Ramayana. The choice of a vulture for a very noble mission on behalf of Rama is powerful poetic and moral decision. Vultures are scavengers, associated with death and decay. Yet Valmiki assigns to it one of the noblest tasks of sacrificing itself in defence of Sita. Your true worth lies in what you do, in your character, and not in your caste or even species. [In some versions, Jatayu is an eagle.] Jatayu is given a noble funeral after his death. Rama treats Jatayu like a noble kshatriya who sacrificed his life fighting for dharma against an evil force like Ravana. “You are blessed, O Jatayu!” Rama tells the dying bird. “Even in your last moments, you upheld dharma. You fought to save a woman in distress. Your sacrifice will not go in vain.” Jatayu sacrificed himself to save Sita from Ravana. He flew up into the clouds to stop Ravana’s flight with Sita. Jatayu was a friend of Dasharatha, Rama’s father. Now Rama calls him equal to ...
15 comments
Read more