Let’s start off with one of my favorite jokes about God:
“Man and God meet each other for the first time. Both exclaim ‘My creator!’”
Religion. I have thought about it several times, over and over, and whenever I have, I always go back to the concept of what God is. I say “what” instead of “who,” because I never considered God to be a person. If He’s “omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent” according to theists, then why does it need a form or personification? And why are there so many Gods? It’s kind of like the Samsung models, the Galaxy, the Note, the J3, R2D2, the B-2 stealth bomber, Ed Sheeran, the Avengers, it’s super confusing. So many opinions on the properties of an ideal God that it kind of misses the point of the concept of a single supreme power, don’t you think?
If we focus on the Ideal God part, why fuss over stuff like “follow my God or die?” It’s debatable that the Holy books told anyone to murder people. No one in their right mind would write such world-ending nonsense in Holy books, which were written by humans by the way; I mean, “word of God”? Really? Being the skeptic I am, I refuse to believe that someone heard a voice from the heavens or a disembodied voice talking about what constitutes morality, justice etc., and immediately started penning down all its words and published it right away for the world to read and follow like blind sheep. God is the greatest invention made by man, which can simultaneously give false hopes for the powerless, and power to the devious.
And yeah, one might now bring out the age-old debate of “Who, then is the creator of this universe? What’s beyond us?” Firstly, why should anything have to be created? Wait, let me rephrase that. Why are you, the reader, so fixated on the idea that someone should be responsible for the creation of the universe? Is it not possible that we created the idea of a creator to remain sane, and that there has to be some logical explanation for everything? Why don’t you want to accept the idea that things just happen? We need reason, explanation and logic for everything to avoid clinical dementia. What’s beyond the universe? What is existence? What is the meaning of life? Why do we feel what we feel? These questions need not be answered, but since, ironically, an empty mind is a devil’s workshop, we overthink things, desperately obsess over some glorified “greater meaning of life and what’s beyond” phenomena, lose our minds until someone says “God! He is the answer to everything.” It would seem at this point that being a nihilist is easier than believing in some saintly looking figure with a beard and some archaic vocabulary.
If you thought all this makes me sound like a misotheistic heathen and a satan incarnate, you’re 101% wrong. I believe in God and have an immense respect for the concept. With that in mind, let’s move on to religion. I am pretty sure that the world’s perception of several religions seems terribly misinformed and downright pathetic to say the least because we did a marvelous job of distorting religion into an even worse shape than the concept of God. Islam, for example, isn’t what the world thinks it is; I think we can consider the possibility that even Islamists can’t fully comprehend it. The same goes for Hindus, Christians, Zoroastrians, Buddhists or any religion for that matter; people may not understand why they’re following some ideology which they’re assigned to before they’re born, but they seem to be okay with it. And that’s totally fine. You want to know about religion, go ahead, study literature, read books and learn new things. Comparing one religion with another, however, is idiotic – to put it mildly – and forcing it on people is not just nonsensical, but even toxic in every sense of the word.
People seem to have a bad opinion on Islam for obvious reasons. I can only shake my head in disappointment at the mass misattribution on religion as a whole. At this point, it is vital to stress on the basic logic: people. People do this, not religion. There are so many bad, violent, gun-toting, powerful idiots; there are misinterpretations and misunderstandings; people who want to watch the world burn; who are total anarchists, murderers, killers and terrorists; and people who don’t care about human life as long as their brainwashed ideology of inciting fear and panic is achieved. There is no such thing as bad religion. Why is Islam associated with terrorism again? Maybe because there are 1.6 billion Muslims, and while most of them are genuine in their faith and are good people, there are those who are murderers or led astray by them. Christianity did it as well, but the history of violence was washed out by colonialism and holy water under the bridge. All this hate comes from how we interpret it, not how it is.
And because of the aforementioned bigots, people have been starting to associate every terrorist attack with Islam. Wait, that’s not fair. America started to associate every terrorist attack with Islam, and that spread out. Some psychotic mass murderer slaughtered 50 gay people in a club? Guess what? Fox News immediately started focusing on his association with ISIS rather than his homophobic remarks and clinical depression. Some African-American Muslim kid built a homemade alarm for his school project? The police detained him because he’s a Muslim and black, so obviously, he makes bombs for a living! Correlation and causation. It’s similar to the asinine “video games and violence” argument. The media loves making headlines such as “Perpetrator of Sandy Hook school shooting linked to excessive indulgence in violent games like GTA and Call of duty” rather than “Perpetrator of Sandy Hook school shooting linked to excessive indulgence in Coca-Cola before buying AR-15’s at Ammu-nation.” Why go after organizations such as the NRA when you can berate an industry that makes money off of people sitting on their couches and mashing a few buttons on a joystick, correct?
Ultimately, I would like to conclude with this: Let people believe whatever they want to. But I strongly recommend the use of common sense and inquiry. Stop following and imposing blind rules; there’s a fine line between faith and fanaticism. One step over the boundary and there’ll be nothing but chaos and carnage. Don’t bother people over made up constraints like a power existing “up there” that doesn’t care about poor African kids dying, but is suddenly bothered by what two people do in bed. That’s something that exists only in your head. The moment the illusion is shattered among people—that God helps those who help themselves; that ultimately, it’s us who have the Godly power to end what ails us; and that God gave us, the people, the power to think and solve problems that plague humanity—is when the world wouldn’t need to depend on religion.
