Skip to main content

What makes religions meaningful?

Illustration by Copilot Designer


Personally, I’m not much concerned about whether the gods are real simply because, for me, they aren’t. I can accept the mysterious nature of the cosmos, the realms that science hasn’t fathomed yet and may never, and the awe that some of it inspires in a lot of people including me. But I won’t ever find myself imagining a god that looks like a man or woman, as is the case with most of our divine entities. What will a god do with a gender, in the first place? Forget the cumbersome physical masses of their bodies which will have to obey Newton’s laws of motion in the ethereal spaces.

That is why I was amused when Facebook decided to enlighten me with a booklet titled Is the Bible True? You can download it free of charge from the site Life, Hope & Truth. It being a Sunday when life is a lot relaxed for me, I decided to explore the material which Facebook seemed to thrust into the core of my being after censoring two of my recent posts for “going against community standards.”

I have no issues with the arguments and documents provided in the booklet which try to prove the existence of Jesus and the authenticity of the Bible as a sacred book by providing certain historical evidence. For example, it quotes eminent personalities of the first century CE, such as Publius Cornelius Tacitus and Flavius Josephs both of whom have mentioned Jesus who claimed to be the Christ or was projected as such by later followers. I particularly enjoyed reading the chapter on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

My problem is not with evidence, historical or scientific, when it comes to religions. My problem is the impact religions make on the world. Does the religion make the world a better place? If it does, I can go with it. It doesn’t matter whether the foundations of some of the dogmas and credos are myth. After all, we all need some myths, don’t we?

I stand with Joseph Campbell when it comes to myths. Myths are essential, Campbell said. They help us make sense of life, navigate challenges, and connect to deeper truths. He argued that myths provide a framework for understanding the human experience, offer guidance on how to live meaningfully and harmoniously within oneself, society, and the universe.

I will defend with all my might any religion that performs those tasks: help its followers/believers/worshippers to make sense of life, navigate challenges, and connect to deeper truths.

What do we see instead? Strife, wars, terrorism. On a more tolerable scale are the hate speeches, blatant hypocrisy, and plain exploitation of the ignorant and the innocent.

At any time, if you come across a religious believer who claims that his religion is the only true religion, or makes any similar claims (ancient history, etc), and also considers all others as inferior or untrue or whatever, be sure that the person hasn’t understood even the elementary meaning of religion.

What use is a religion if it doesn’t teach one to be compassionate, at the very least? Just imagine a religion which claims to be the eternal law, Sanatan Dharma, and then goes on to kill fellow human beings in order to protect cows which are then left to die on the streets? I’m just taking a very common example from my own country. There are countless such examples from all over the world, which prompt me to keep a safe distance from religions.

I judge religion by what they do to make the world a better place. Not by their historical antiquity or scientific evidence or whatever.

 

Labels:

Comments

  1. DawnanddewDecember 9, 2024 at 11:47 AM

    Well expressed, sir! Religion according to me is a culture of a people to relate with this world and life in a meaningful way with due respect for all peoples and their cultures. It should have reason behind its activities to lead a healthy life both physically and mentally. It should essentially be educative rather than being a coercion. It should essentially lead people to live a spiritually disciplined life, not a life buried in hypocrisy and blind superstitions. I agree with the non human aspect of God. It is only nature's law that is supreme and divine.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 9, 2024 at 2:18 PM

      In reality, religions are doing the opposite of all that they should be doing.

      Delete
    2. DawnanddewDecember 9, 2024 at 8:08 PM

      Yes. It is because several religions started the practice of conversion through persuasion or coercion through violence.

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 9, 2024 at 8:12 PM

      Religious conversion is a complex topic. Apart from violence, a lot of other factors come into play. I can show you thousands of people in our country alone who gave up their original religion willingly for getting basic human dignity.

      Delete
    4. DawnanddewDecember 14, 2024 at 1:22 PM

      Basic human dignity - I very much go for this. My perception of religion is only bent towards it. According to me, religion is for those people who cannot educate themselves. That's where I stop. We do need religion or name it with any ism. We need some system for the traffic to be in order. The traffic rules are not applicable for people with common sense.

      Delete
  2. sathishDecember 29, 2024 at 3:32 PM

    Agreed with you Sir... "What use is a religion if it doesn’t teach one to be compassionate"
    My belief is, sir, Religion is not an organization that control it is actually the people and the dogmas for the well being. The problem come when we forget that and make it as an Institution or as an organization!!!

    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

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 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

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
19 comments
Read more

Truths of various colours

You have your truth and I have mine. There shouldn’t be a problem – until someone lies. Unfortunately, lying has been elevated as a virtue in present India. There are all sorts of truths, some of which are irrefutable. As a friend said the other day with a little frustration, the eternal truth is this: No matter how many times you check, the Wi-Fi will always run fastest when you don’t actually need it – and collapse the moment you’re about to hit Submit . Philosophers call it irony. Engineers call it Murphy’s Law. The rest of us just call it life. Life is impossible without countless such truths. Consider the following; ·       Change is inevitable. ·       Mortality is universal. ·       Actions have consequences. [Even if you may seem invincible, your karma will catch up, just wait.] ·       Water boils at 100 o C under normal atmospheric pressure. ·    ...
11 comments
Read more