Religion… what is a religion actually? Some say its Rule that we all have to follow or else you will have to answer to God at the end of days. This Rule is also documented as well so that we don’t fall short of it. Some say it’s just a way of life with moral and ethical value, plus some irrational subject which is irrelevant in this 21st Century. I know what you guys are thinking, who the &%$@ is this guy to preach about religion. Well I am no prophet to preach and neither am I a skilled religious individual with permanent head damage (PHD) to lecture about religion. I am after all a common man with questions in his head about the fact of religion not being relevant in this 21st Century. I am going to beat around the bush and jumble up a few topics in here, so just be patient. Allow me to elaborate.
I am a non-religion believer. I find that religion and politics are the world’s 1st enemy. You think not? Check out the war in Palestine. How long has it been going on? I lost track. How about the internal religious affair in India? Hindus and the Muslims I mean. We don’t hear about it much nowadays, but it does happen. Somali Civil War motivated politically, Kosovo War motivated politically, Northern Ireland War motivated religiously rooted by Catholics and Protestants, Bosnian War motivated also by religious differences between Muslims and Catholics, East Timor War between Christians and Muslims, Kashmir War between Hindus and Muslims etc. Oh yeah... the Iraq war as well motivated politically. How could I forget that?
Let’s do a Root Cause Analysis here and I’m going to make it as simple as I can. Politically motivated war is caused by power hungry dictators who are willing to go millions of miles to get the power they have or had. Reason being, with great power comes great responsibility. Yeah right. Correction, with great power come great greed. Power = Fame = Sex = Money = Playing God = Greed and then comes Egoism = Boldness = Angry = Stupid = Downfall and you die.
I would like to touch a little bit of our local Malaysian Politics here. This is the part where I jumble up topicsJ. With the equation above, minus the downfall and die, we could clearly see the head of our largest Malaysian Indian Political Party, MIC. Ever since I got my interest in politics, I always regarded the party irrelevant to the Indians. Simple logic, why do you need a middle person to convey a message of your dissatisfaction to the person who makes the supreme decision? Don’t you know that the message you want to convey will surely be distorted along the way? Gather 5 people. The person at the utmost left start to whisper a sentence to the one beside him and do the same till it reaches the one at the utmost right. When he delivers the message, see what comes out. It’s not the original message anymore. Same applies here in politics. We don’t need a race based party to talk to the Prime Minister, we convey it directly.
Now let’s touch the religion Hinduism. You want something to happen; you go to temple, pray to God but how? You ask the Priest to do a ‘pooja’, which is conveyed in Sanskrit. Does God only understand Sanskrit? And if you want God to hear you, why do you need a Priest? Why do you need a middle person? Call Him out loud and speak to him directly. Once again, don’t you know that the message you want to convey to God would be distorted? And in this case it’s even worse because most of us don’t even know the Sanskrit Language. Who knows what the Priest is saying. You wouldn’t even know if he says, “Dear God, please don’t let me meet these morons (you) every day. They are making me sick… swaaaheee “You see where I’m getting? And Priests!!! For heaven sake, wear a T-shirt or a cloth to cover you body. You are not turning the ladies ON!!
One religion can have so many diverse teaching. In Malaysia, Hindus don’t eat beef or pork. I contradict the pork part of course as it was never stated that pork is a religious animal. Anyway, the Hindus in Indonesia eat pork, beef and even dog. It’s like chicken in Malaysia. Yes my friends, Hindus in Indonesia do eat dog and Hinduism was noted in Indonesia long before it was in Malaysia. So which teaching is right? Christians do eat meat, but they are also those who are vegetarian, why? If you are a vegetarian for health sake, then I understand, but why use religion as a tool to be vegetarian. Christians who are Catholics, Christians who are Protestants, Hindus who are Sai Baba devotee, Hindus who are Hare Rama Hare Krishna devotee, Muslims who are Shia, Muslims who are Sunni and each has got their very similar teachings but different in certain ways. This brings conflicts, wars and eventually millions die and the nation gets buried. So, religion is irrelevant in the 21st Century. It only brings deaths.
I’m not against any particular religion in this issue, what I’m trying to point out is that religion was man made. Indirectly, not perfect. Most Holy Books of most religion is man made. Man wrote these holy books with the inspiration and guidance of the prophet at that time or even God directly and so they say. Some holy books were even written and compiled long after the death of a prophet. This also means that Religion is part of history because it was written and documented in holy books a very long time ago and we are still reading it which means religion believers are actually reading and exercising the content in a holy book that was written by man a very long time ago that actually exists till now. I repeat, a very long time ago. It was written at their time probably a few thousand years back and it was perfectly fine at that time to follow because the situation and issues that arose then was handled with resolution that was coherent with that time. You can’t be using the same resolution that was used a few thousand years back for the problems or issues we face today can we? Its called ‘OUTDATED’
We all know that the History we read now was written by successful men at that time. It was written by those who were still living at that time. Those who won the war. Those who lost the war however did not survive to write any history because they are already dead before they could do so. Even if they had, it wouldn’t be published or rated as religious holy book because they lost!!! They fought for something and they lost. So we actually don’t know what the real story is to behind a religion as there is always 2 parts of a story. We have only heard the winners’ version of the story. The winners’ version could very well be the incorrect or the untrue version. So are you believers following the untrue version of religion? Ask yourself. For example, why are there are so much hype in a murder case that is brought to the courts these days? Why, because we, the people want to know what is the verdict of the court. It’s because we don’t know the whole story of the murder that took place. Only the court will decide and pronounce the verdict. However, this will only happen after the court hears both part of the story and then we accept the courts verdict, although some don’t, but that’s a different episode. When mankind now has the intelligence to hear both part of a story and then decide what is to be done, why mankind now can’t do the same when it comes to religion. Why do mankinds only believe in 1 religion? Why can’t they believe in 2 religions and accept both? Why can’t they just not freaking believe in any religion because it has no strong evidence to prove it? It is irrelevant now; it is irrelevant in this 21st century.
We believe in end of days, we believe in Armageddon, we believe that God himself is to come down to earth and cleanse it. We believe that there is going to be a ‘Great Battle’ when this happens. We believe and believe so blindly that we don’t ask questions. End of days will come, but it will come with WAR. War between men, with different religious understanding. War between men with different political views. End of days will come when the ozone layer is so thin, that the sun’s radiation will hit men directly and we all die. End of days will come, when uncontrolled diseases with high alert epidemic break out and wipe the human population. End of days will come because we don’t care about others’ perspective. We are so selfish that whatever we do, regardless if it hurts others or not, it is the right and the correct thing to do. End of days will come because we grow so egoistic that we never take an instance to put ourselves in others’ shoe and just think a moment, on how he/she feels. We made the world how is it today, and we are to break the world that we see today as well. It’s all human. We make mistakes, but you can try to amend it by just starting to pat the person next to you, smile and spread some warmth. Then again, human are also hypocrites. We say something today, and do the total opposite tomorrow. I am human as well.
