Religion Bashing

Calling religion ‘bullshit’ because of the actions of those who practice it is somewhat akin to denouncing democracy after taking one look at, for e.g. the Sri Lankan parliament. How many wars have been fought in the name of religion? Quite a few, yes. How many have been fought in the name of country and empire? Lots more. So why don’t we just abolish the existing world governance system and just stop believing it will work? Why don’t we let the world slip into anarchy and see where we end up?

We can’t do that. We won’t do that because in essence, we know, democracy is a good thing. Its fundamental concept, its basic idea, makes sense; The majority gets together and decides who should take care of the tedious job of ruling the land. That’s what it’s supposed to be. But factor in self centered power hungry individuals, vast legal infrastructure that is easily manipulated, unconcerned masses, and years and years of ‘doing the same thing’ and you get the melting pot of world politics that we still believe we can ‘fix’ without calling ‘democracy’ itself ‘stupid’.

We are living in a world where it’s cool to diss religion but for e.g. it is not cool to diss one’s right to an abortion. It is also not cool to diss the government, not very loudly at least, lest you get ‘white-vanned’, but it’s cool to turn a blind eye on hundreds upon hundreds of civilians being killed in the name of ‘fighting terror’. After all it’s the Americans and most of the Western world that are doing it, and they are not fighting in the name of religion are they? They are apparently, fighting in the name of democracy and sovereignty. Look at Vietnam, Iraq, Palestine/ Israel, Panama, Georgia etc. etc. etc the list is endless.

So does that mean we can call ‘democracy’ ‘stupid’? No I believe, and I believe that you believe it’s only certain practitioners of it that make it so and it would be extremely shallow and simply wrong to group everyone who advocates democracy (which includes us voters) and call them stupid too.

‘I’ve always said that God has been the leading cause of human death’ says fellow blogger Dinidu de Alwis. He, to put it simply, is plain wrong or has simply not thought out his statement properly. The leading cause of human death would obviously be natural causes. Hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, old age, disease etc. through the ages of human history. Blame it on lack of technology or knowledge, but to blame it on God would mean accepting He exists, and for a self declared atheist that would be unthinkable.

But in case he was talking simply about conflict. And God being the cause of human death as a result if fuelling religious extremism, then I’d like to have a look at his statistics sheet. For like I said, enough wars have been fought in the name of empire building alone to dwarf any other type of conflict in the history of the human race. World War II/I, The Roman Empire building spree (before Constantinople), Colonialization/ Invasion and I can go on. Sure, religion would have been used as an excuse in certain cases, but to brand these cases under the label of ‘religious warfare’ would be quite erroneous.

The collective human psyche is a complex thing. Wars and conflicts start when people get carried away with generalizations and when reason gives way to fear and anger. War (and as a consequence; death) happens, in most cases, when people stop thinking straight and start becoming, for the lack of a more diplomatic term, ‘Stupid’.