Explains why the religions are, in fact, blasphemous
GOD VS RELIGIONS
(Gujarati version at પરમેશ્વર વિ. બધા ધર્મો)
The title of this posting sounds like a court case. It is on purpose. God has been and is being wronged in several ways listed below. It is for the dear reader, like a juror, to decide.
God is above and beyond all religions including rationalism.
All religions are blasphemous because they put words in Gis mouth. None of them truly represents Gim. They are based on the wrong premise that Ge cannot reach each individual directly and separately and therefore needs an agent to do so. Therefore we need to liberate Gim as well as mankind from all religions.
There are people who deny the very existence of God. I do not. A young man once told me that he did not believe in Gim because he could not see Gim. Our conversation ran somewhat like this.
“I don’t believe in God because I can’t see Him with my own eyes.” “Have you seen your eyes?” “Yes.” “Where?” “In a mirror.” “So, what you have seen is the image of your eyes, but have you seen your eyes themselves? How do you know that they exist?” “I have seen the eyes as well as their images of other persons and therefore I know that the images of my eyes truly represent my real eyes.” “Just the same way, we accept the existence of God by experience and not by seeing Gim. Ge is not for us to see but to feel and realize just as one can experience electricity without seeing the electrons. We believe in things like China’s Great Wall, North and South poles, etc. without seeing them and without ever intending to see them, don’t we?”
So, I do not question the existence of God. But I do question the validity of the tall claims made by Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Mohamed etc. of being Gis incarnation or Gis sole representative authorized by Gim to make rules for all mankind to follow forever. Another article discusses specific religious fallacies separately. (Religious Fallacies). This article will deal with the common ideas.
When we use words from our lives to refer to God, we inadvertently also impose our weaknesses and shortcomings upon Gim. Of necessity, we do have to use such words, but we should be conscious of the limitations of such uses. For example, creation by humans requires time and work necessitating rest. For God, creation would be instantaneous and effortless causing no fatigue. Ge would need no rest. Yet the ‘creationists’ assume that Ge took six days to create the universe and then rested on the seventh. How ungodly! Also, when we talk about going to Gim, we imply that Ge is away from us. How can we ‘go’ to Gim since Ge is everywhere including within ourselves?
Almost all religions consider God to be omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. Many of the rules prescribed by the same religions violate these basic attributes. For example, since Ge is present everywhere, it does not make sense to consider one place holier than any other or to move away in search of justice like Moses did. He should have stayed put and demanded equal rights for all people within Egypt. Since Ge knows every thing, it should not be necessary to pray in a language other than one’s home language. There is no need to pray in Sanskrit, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic or any other language not spoken at home. As God is all so powerful, no religious leader should try to ‘protect’ Gim by proclaiming others as blasphemous and passing sentences for being so. Ge can Gimself punish the miscreants. For instance, the death sentence imposed by Ayatollah Khomaini on Salman Rushdie only proved the ayatollah’s lack of faith in God. If Ge is really upset with Rushdie, Ge has ways of Gis own to punish him and would not need the ayatollah’s help. And, if it were so godly to kill Rushdie, why would one need to be paid a reward for it like the ayatollah offered? The same can be said about punishments proclaimed by other religions.
Observations reveal some important characteristics of God.
One, Ge does every thing by setting up automatic systems i.e. Ge is the ‘Great Automator’. Ge makes days and nights automatically by making the earth rotate on its axis. Ge makes seasons change themselves by making the earth revolve around the sun and tilting its axis. Everywhere in the universe, there exist automatic systems.
Two, God recycles every thing as evidenced by the water cycle, nitrogen cycle etc. Therefore, most probably, Ge recycles souls too by causing repetitious births and deaths.
Three, God loves variety and is far from being a cookie-cutter as can be seen from the numerous species of animals, plants, rocks and what not!
Four, God is a ‘Great Equalizer’ and maintains the averages. One way Ge does this is by getting together spouses of dissimilar nature and qualities. For example, if all handsome men were to marry only beautiful women, there would be a segment of population that would be handsome and beautiful with another segment just the opposite. But God brings together handsome husbands with not so beautiful wives and beautiful women with not so handsome men so that the children turn out to be in-between. The same can be said about other attributes of husbands and wives.
Failing to realize these attributes of God leads religions to make incorrect statements about Gim. For example, Ge who loves variety would never want all men and women to be identical, yet many religions prescribe codes that would make their followers look, pray and act alike as if they were the soldiers of an army or mechanical toys.
Religions exhibit an inherent distaste and antagonism for science. On the other hand, some of the scientists profess atheism. For example there is a controversy about the theory of evolution as opposed to ‘creation’. The proponents of both theories neglect to answer the most important question, “Who created science and its laws?” God was the one who created science, its laws, initial quantities of matter (mass) and energy and then set them up in an automatic system to develop the universe. Ge did ‘create’ the universe but by first creating science and then using it to make the universe develop automatically but not the way assumed in the story of ‘Genesis’. You may want to see UnGodly Genesis.
When we mention scientific laws, such as Newton’s Laws, all we mean is the laws first discovered and stated formally in a scientific language by the particular scientist such as Newton. They are all Gis laws and existed long before their discovery. The scientists did not start or own them. Once we realize this, the antagonism between science and religions becomes baseless. It also becomes needless to rely on miracles for believing in God.
Consider walking on water. Our inability to do so stems from Gis laws of gravity, floatation and balance of action and reaction. A true devotee of God would not want to violate them. Instead, hse would employ the same laws to make a boat and travel on water. Therefore, Jesus' walking on water was, in fact, an ungodly act. Similarly, we cannot fly due to the laws of God. Gis true devotees would not try to fly like a bird using yoga or other ‘spiritual’ means but would use Gis laws of aerodynamics to make an airplane fly in the air with human passengers without claiming it to be a miracle.
Miracles do happen every moment. God makes all of them. For example, take water. All other substances get heavier and sink when they freeze. When frozen, water becomes ice, which is lighter and floats on the warmer water. This anomalous expansion of water could not be happening as a chance occurrence. It is a well thought out exception to the general scientific law. It is a wonderful miracle that God keeps performing every moment so that the aquatic life would not get trapped in the ice of frozen lakes, oceans etc. This itself is adequate proof of Gis existence.
The angle by which the earth’s axis is tilted is also a miracle. Had it been 0o, there would have been no seasons. Had it been 45o, the warm and cold climates would have been dangerously next to each other and there would have been no temperate zone. This would have left very little land, if any, for mankind to develop and flourish.
Our circulation system is another miracle. A pump to circulate blood through our arteries and veins would be much larger than our bodies. Yet our hearts the size of a fist perform the feat due to the miraculous properties of blood. Similarly, the fact that flowers of many beautiful colors, patterns and fragrance grow out of dirt is also a miracle of God. The more science we study the more we wonder about Gis miracles.
And yet we, of small faith, keep looking for people who claim to perform miracles so that we can believe in them in the name of believing in God! What a pity!
Faith is the concept most misused. (Uses and Abuses of Faith) The faithful need no proof, the faithless accept none. However, it is important to make a distinction based on the object of faith. Faith in Ram, Krishna, Jesus, Mohammed, Budhdha or any other person is not faith at all. These people and their likes were great only in their audacity to make the most preposterous claims of being the God incarnate or the only son of God or Gis only spokesperson and so on. Faith generated by miracles performed by these people is ffaith (fake faith). True faith can only be in God and Gis principles.
(Please see my separate posting on ‘Logic, Faith and God’ for more about faith.)
What is prayer if not the intense personal emotion one feels for God? Being so, it cannot be regulated. And yet, all religions regulate the prayers of their followers by specifying the words, timings, places and postures for praying. This is one of the reasons why I consider all religions to be blasphemous. Prayer, to be true, must be done individually, spontaneously and privately. Religions cannot and must not be allowed to put words in individuals’ prayers. Joint prayers in temples, churches, mosques etc. are nothing but confirmations of conformation. People do need to conform to or belong to one group or another for social and psychological support, but using prayer for that purpose violates the sanctity of prayer itself.
I have occasionally been present at some prayer meetings. I have been praised for saying the prayers aloud when I was actually thinking of some thing else. I have also been criticized for not saying the prayers aloud when I was really paying undivided attention to the prayers. The people around me were certainly not paying attention to their own prayers because they were busy watching me.
Ravishankar Maharaj, the selfless social worker of Gujarat, India, likened devotion (bhakti) to steam. Water vapor is present almost everywhere. But, it accomplishes heavy-duty tasks only when confined in a boiler and brought to high pressure. Similarly, devoted prayer can achieve great results only if its pressure is not allowed to dissipate through the holes of singing, dancing and exhibition as what happens in the places of worship.
Prayer should not be just a once-a-week, once-a-day or even five-times-a-day event. What we do between such scheduled prayers is also important. Prayer should rather be a continuous process, a second nature like background music playing incessantly in our subconscious mind. Whatever we do in our lives should be a prayer. All our actions should be performed with deep faith in God constantly keeping in mind that no secrets can be kept from Gim.
People make children pray. But it is the adults and not the children who need to pray.
‘Religious freedom’ is the worst oxymoron. Freedom is the first victim of all religious preachings. No follower of any religion is ever free to think on hisr own. Hse must accept every word of hisr religion’s holy book to be God’s only word. All the knowledge and wisdom Ge wants mankind to have must be assumed to be contained in the Vedas, Gita, Bible, Koran, Granthsahib or the particular book of the believer’s religion no matter how obviously incorrect it may be. Is this freedom? Certainly not. Freedom of religion is nothing but freedom to chose one’s own captor. Yet, seemingly intelligent people do engage in the futile acts of changing their religions. (Why I did not convert) What mankind really needs is freedom from religion.
Religions assume that God cannot reach individuals directly and separately. Therefore they dictate going to Gim through Gis self-appointed agents.
Religions also deny God Gis right to differ from their dictates. For example, Christianity would not accept God sending many sons (and daughters), or Islam would not let God keep sending prophets or Hinduism would not let God act between the incarnations. Therefore, it is also necessary to liberate God from all religions.
Organized religions are worse than organized crime. It is much easier to fight crime than the religions.
Aldous Huxley said that "religion is the price that the mankind has to pay for being intelligent but not sufficiently so". I do not know his background explanation for saying so. I believe that we humans are intelligent enough to ask some tough questions about spiritual matters but dumb enough to accept the unbelievable answers provided by the religious leaders without questioning them. We should be wise enough to realize that there cannot be any definite answers to the spiritual questions. “Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know” as aptly stated by Voltaire.
One of the questions that perturb most of us is, ‘Why do good people suffer but bad people enjoy?’ Different religions try to answer it in different ways. But we fail to realize that bad people only appear to be happy, whether they are really happy or not is known only to them. It also implies that we pass judgment against people we consider ‘bad’ and doubt God’s judgment. Besides, if all good people were to be happy and all bad people were to be miserable, there would only be two types of people. This lack of variety is not characteristic of God. Ge would love to make all sorts of combinations of various degrees of goodness or badness and happiness. In a way Ge is like a writer, director and producer of a giga size soap opera who needs to create all sorts of characters to make the story interesting.
People, who accept remuneration for preaching and particularly those, whose only means of livelihood is preaching, cannot be expected to tell the truth. Therefore, all those ‘saints’, ‘gurus’, priests, ministers, maulavis etc. cannot be relied on because they have vested interests in starting and perpetuating ffaith.
One of the characteristics of a true devotee (Vaishnava jana) is that he would not even touch other people’s wealth. Yet, in India, and probably elsewhere too, people who have never earned any thing themselves are called not only devotees but also saints. This is outrageous.
The concept of ‘Guru’ is inherently self-contradictory. A truly spiritual person is supposed to be free from ego. But, only a person with the ego of being spiritually superior to others can become a guru and take disciples. Most if not all the gurus have been found to be extremely egotistic. When one starts making rules for others to follow, it is a sure sign of a very boastful person. Therefore, true Gurus cannot exist and the fake ones do not deserve any respect.
Idol worship is considered to be bad. Idols, however, do not prevent devotees from using their God-given intelligence. What is worse than idol worship is hero-worship as in worshiping one’s guru, or worshiping Krishna, Jesus or any other subject of ffaith. The worst of all is worshiping books, like Ramayan, Mahabharata, Bible, Koran, Granthsahib etc. and believing that all of God’s wisdom is contained only in that book, because it stops one from thinking on hisr own. For more on this, please see Forms of Worship.
Forgiveness is good only if it is given to others. Asking to be forgiven for one’s own wrongdoings means lack of sense of individual responsibility. One must be prepared to accept the consequences of hisr deeds, good or bad, intentional or not. God would not be Gim if Ge keeps forgiving us just for praising Gim. On the other hand, punishing people for being ‘blasphemous’ goes against the very nature of God who is supposed to be kind and forgiving.
The only ritual that serves some useful, although limited, purpose is the wedding ceremony. All others are nothing but sources of income for the worship business. Most are ridiculous and carry no spiritual significance. They are based on make-believe rather than reality.
Religious literature and lectures by religious propagandists are mostly collections of high-sounding hollow words. They are also full of concocted stories which are self-contradictory. These guys could not even write good believable stories!
Symbols are either needless or useless. Those who know the significance of a symbol do not need it. For the others, it is meaningless or useless. Would displaying a flag or a cross four times as large as my neighbor’s make me four times as much patriotic or religious as him even if I cheat on taxes and violate religious principles? The truly patriotic need not salute the flag of their country. For the others, saluting the flag is a hollow formality only. Religious symbols too serve hardly any purpose.
One of the ways religions maintain their strangle hold on their followers is by making them feel guilty of committing sins even when the acts are not sinful. The most common act considered sinful is sex, which is perhaps the most common ‘weakness’ of mankind. Intelligence and spousal sex are God’s best gifts to mankind. Not using them is an insult to Gim. Using them is considered sinful by religious leaders only because it serves their wicked purpose of keeping followers under control.
Similarly, there are preachers who place excessive, and often exclusive, emphasis on vegetarianism, being a teetotaler, not eating beef, pork or even vegetables like garlic, onions, potatoes etc. as if abiding by such restrictions makes a person virtuous and others sinners. Such rules only help the preachers by inducing strange complexes among their followers but do not necessarily develop better human beings.
Logic, Faith and God, usesandabusesoffaith, whyididnotconvert