Confusion About Religion
Note: This post is not to malign any religion but to share my confusion about the role of religion in humanity’s advancement. So many thoughts have been racing through my head about the many aspects of religion. These thoughts have grown to become huge questions needing answers. So let me walk you through them. On ‘The True God’: There are over 4300 religions in the world, with Christianity, Islam, Nonreligious (which in itself is a religion), Hinduism, Chinese Traditional religion and Buddhism as the six most popular; in that order. Each of these 4000 plus religions believes that their god – or plethora of gods – is the ‘true god’. Monotheists like Muslims, Christians, Jews and others swear that their god is the truth; even though Muslims don’t believe Christianity is a monotheistic religion. Is Allah the true god and Mohammad his last messenger? Is Jehovah the true god, manifesting himself in human form as Jesus and remaining with people as the Holy Spirit? Is the true god Buddha, Ahura Mazda, Haile Selassie, Shango, Aganju, Amadioha, Aleku, Bumba or the other (very many) gods of Africa and the world? Thing is, each religious adherent believes that their own god is the only true one. Why is that? Where do people get off believing that their chosen paths have to be the right one? And even though none of these gods has been proven to exist, adherents of these religions believe that their way has to be the right path. Yes, none of the existence of these gods have been disproved either but that still leaves us in a lurch. If only one religion is the right path, then at least 4299 religions have to be ‘wrong’. This brings me to the next thought. On ‘Destiny’: Most religious people, regardless of their faith and beliefs, believe that our lives were predestined before we were born and we are just living an already prepared script. This script is supposedly written by the one true god who basically dictates our lives from the moment we are conceived to the moment we die. This has always set me on edge. If this is to be believed, then this one true god deliberately writes that some people WOULD NOT WORSHIP HIM so that he can punish them. This has to be the logical conclusion because, of the 7 billion people on earth, only 2.1 billion are Christians and 1.3 billion, Muslims. Even if we ignore the 1.1 billion who are nonreligious (atheist, agnostics, secular), we still have a whopping 2.5 billion who do not believe in either of these most popular religions. So if Allah is the right god, has he deliberately written that 5.7 billion people go to hell? Or if Jehovah is the true god, has he destined 4.9 billion people to eternal condemnation? Someone once told me that while our lives are destined, we have to choose to walk in our destiny and choosing otherwise is what gets us thrown to hell. Isn’t this a contradiction in itself? If my life has been scripted out, doesn’t that mean that I am destinedto be for or against god? Even if I CHOOSEthat path? And whether we like it or not, there are some people who will never hear about any of these religions. So does that mean that god deliberately doesn’t give them the chance to choose him or their destiny? You can see why this has me in a fix. On ‘Holy Books’: The most popular ‘Holy Books’ are the Bible and Qur’an. These books are said to be the ‘incorruptible word of god’ by those who believe in them. As similar as these book are in terms of morality and storytelling, these books are widely different. Most people will tell you their god is the real deal because their ‘Holy Books’ tell them so. Christians and Jews say that the Bible and Torah (respectively) are the holy words of god because it was written by lots of people who were inspired by god and the stories are in tandem, all leading to Christ or Yahweh. The Muslim says that very reason is why the Bible/Torah is unreliable as the Qur’an was written by only one person. While Christians and Jews do not recognize the Qur’an as a holy book, Muslims accept bits of the Bible that are similar in teaching to the Qur’an. Also, where many scholars may read the books that are contradictory to their faith, many religious faithful do not. So we have the Bible saying that Jehovah is god and the Qur’an saying that Allah is god. The Vedas, Ramayana, Mahabharata and Puranas tell the Hindu that his way is the truth and the Buddhist swears by the Triptaka, Mahayana Sutras and the Tibetan book of the dead. Each of these books proclaims a true god and denounces others as false. So how can one book be right and all others wrong? And better still, which one of them is right?! Quite honestly, apart from our ‘faith’ in whatever ‘word of god’ we pick, do we really have any proof that these words are right and true? Here is the thing; I can find god in the Harry Potter series and even a way of life in them. Does that make it a holy book? And why is okay to assume other books are wrong when most of us never even bother to read them? I guess what I am asking is what gives us the certainty that the books that tell us how to live our lives are the ‘infallible word of god’? On ‘Blessings’: Each of these religions teaches that god only blesses those who follow the tenets written in their holy books. It goes further to imply that people can only be successful when they follow these books to the smallest tittle. We have seen that this is absolutely false. If anything, it seems that people are the ones who make their own blessings.
