Religion for Humanity

What is the necessity for a belief system in life such as religion? Foreword to a few essays.

Have you been frustrated and angered by organized religion, politics, social taboos, and cultural evils committed against humanity by religious extremists? There exists enough evidence all around us of how some religious people fuel hatred, violence, and discrimination along sectarian lines.

But somehow, all of that disappears from my mind for a second when I see my grandma praying to God. In that instant, when I see her eyes closed, hands joined in devotion, muttering prayers under her breath with a sincere expression on her face, I just get why she is religious. And when I see people of very different religions, classes, ethnicities, nationalities, and any other identities pray, I see the universal appeal of religions to humans.

I was brought up in a household that approached religion with one leg in and one leg out of it. My grandfather was a man whose defining qualities were his piety, morality, and integrity. People around him had unfaltering adoration for him because it was evident that his piety brought the best out of him - compassion that decimated sectarian lines, selfless service for communities, an unflinching moral compass for himself, and intense spirituality and ‘bhakti’ showing up in his way of life and poetry. He raised my father as a deeply religious child, imparting wisdom on rituals and spiritual concepts, but my father slowly grew out of it with a preference for reason and objectivity.

So I grew up with a healthy mix of both worlds. I was objective and scientific in my worldview and I had room for things I could not be objective about. I learned prayers and classical music for several years. And Hindu mythology was my favorite genre of stories, Amar Chitra Katha comics being my addictive source.

But at the heart of it, I didn’t have a connection to any ‘God’. I was never forced to pray or do rituals. In fact, my father constantly questioned the existence of a God but exposed me to the meaning and significance of rituals, prayers, and religious literature. And he used to point out that most people who are religious, ritualistic, or superstitious, have empty foundations. To say it in terms of a Tamil idiom - சாறை விட்டுட்டு சக்கைய பிடிக்கிறது - they let go of the juice in the fruit and hold on to the useless fibers. Since I did not pray or have devotion to any ‘God’, I considered myself an atheist. But now, my reasons and stance have changed in interesting ways I will write about soon.

The original motivation to do this was my reaction to the current state of social affairs in India and the world. While religious extremism has always been around, now I see two major forces shaping politics in several countries including India -

1. the rise of right-wing authoritarian forms of government in democratic countries, riding on the sentiments of majoritarian beliefs including those of dominant religious groups that are conservative, and

2. the liberal left-wing rhetoric that aims to displace oppressive systems in society and in that vein, questions and (sometimes grossly) devalues the significance of religions due to the sectarian rifts it creates in the cultural landscape.

Now I’ve noticed that each force attributes its identity, origin, and relevance to the existence of the other force. What is appalling to me, is my discovery that the power struggle has made each force dependent on the other. It is now a tug-of-war, where the pull of one side depends on how hard the other side pulls, and the grounding ideas of each side are being compromised to tackle the threat of irrelevance.

It is my opinion that this has been amplified in this new age of the internet and social media. The ability to influence people and win political power has grown tremendously in the last decade due to the volatile nature of handling issues on the internet. The ability for political groups to easily draw unsuspecting, confused people into their echo chambers to strengthen their own narratives and support, coupled with the huge multiplier effect that social media offers by way of things going viral, has created a fertile landscape for propaganda from both sides, blown-up conflicts, and fast-moving ‘patches’ to ‘problems’.

It is altogether easy nowadays to polarize people with simplistic ideas and perspectives on the importance and flaws of religion, which I think is an extremely complex terrain. Religion as an invention by humans has existed for thousands of years and continues to shape modern society with an unrelenting, widespread force. Science and objectivity are much more modern creations that have only recently taken over the wheel of ‘progress’. The dismissive narrative for the relevance of religion, at present, is that people are simply holding onto remnants of past ways of life. While that is true to some extent, anybody who truly understands science and the scientific method knows that this is ignorant of the big picture for a very simple reason -

“The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes and that none of them actually ‘grasp’ reality.” - Alan Watts

If I ask you what reality is for you, it is impossible to separate ‘you’ from your ‘reality’. Science and objectivity are the lenses we employ to study the 'observed' as distinct from the observer. But even that paradigm has become questionable with the discovery that the microscopic world is quantum mechanical, where it is impossible to separate the two. But we do not even need to go that far. Even the laws of nature we study with the scientific method are mere concepts, without knowing which, reality would still exist for you, all around you. And objective principles about the universe cannot illuminate the depths of your human condition, why you experience things at all, especially in certain ways. In this sense, it can be argued that the only reality for a person is whatever they subjectively perceive, experience, and engage with, something science cannot explain adequately, that religion has always tried to address.

It is only in the last few years that I have been slowly understanding what religion means to people I meet, as I discard my biases and carefully observe them. And I have stayed away from books and literature on different religions, except for pieces on the human condition that apply universally to humans, on how and why they behave in certain ways.

Image generated by Dall.E 2

So it is my opinion now that, since we have already invented religion, it will continue to exist as long as humans exist, because of its appeal to the subjective experiences of humans. Or at least, the core ideas of religion would exist in repackaged forms, completely dissimilar to religion as we know it now. In fact, this is also my hope for the world. And the following essays are written with the intention to deconstruct these universal and timeless aspects of religion -

1. Acceptance of reality - the case for any belief system such as religion

2. Spirituality - perspectives on the essential value of religion for an 'individual'

3. Morality - some fundamental values of religion for communities

4. Flaws and shortcomings of religion - some root causes for problems in modern society.

These opinions are solely my own. They are intended for a general audience and the only plea is that you consider it all with an open mind. I hope these articles change your perspectives toward religious people and atheists, and above everything, make you more empathetic to people whether they are religious or not.

There is so much to unpack here. Let's go!