The Need For Religion

Confession: I am a very firm believer of God and everything I write might be biased. Agnoustics may consider the arguments only based on the logic presented.

The increasing proportion of agnoustics in our population seems to be a case of history repeating itself; only that in this case, it seems to be a case of American history repeating itself in India. Considering the influence that religion (or the lack of it) has on the lives of individuals, I sometimes wonder whether the times ahead will be better or worst compared to the present (or even the past). We have seen tumultous times in history, we are seeing a bizzarre underground (or in some cases, over the ground) movement terrorizing the citizens of particular countries in the name of a particular religion. Not that I favour any particular religion. I have as much contempt for the supposed religion I was born in as I have for other religions which spread inequality, contempt, and high-handedness. Not that I believe that the religions are inherently bad, but miscommunication throughout history seems to have produced the worst out of them.

Yet I do believe religion. I do believe that all the religions, the supposedly best and the supposedly worst, teach the same things. Probably marketing might not have worked as well as it is working now if one of the major principles that most religions have preached - consume only that much which you need - would have been taken to the heart. But the reason I wanted to write about religion is that I feel there is a God. Consider the human species. If we look all around, there is sorrow. Even the relatively happier person doesn't consider himself happy. A few days back, a friend I met in summers, who seemed so jovial and full of joy at that time took a quiz on Facebook which said she is hiding her tears from people. Just an example, but it can be said of most of us. We try to find peace in various activities, we try to keep ourselves busy to avoid loneliness, the most hit movies and soaps today are those which emphasize sorrow.

Now consider a situation: You are born Mowgli of Jungle Book. You do not know that a world exists where there are people who eat good food, who wear proper clothes, who live cleanly and healthily. Consider the situation of Mowgli when he joins such a society (here, I am assuming that the bonds that Mowgli develops with the people in the village are at least as strong as the bonds that he developed in the forest with animals). He would love the tasty food, the cleanliness and the pleasures of the village. He wouldn't like it as much if he goes back to the forest, because, at the back of his mind, he knows that the situation can be much better. It's the same as students deprecating the quality of food in a hostel mess, when the same food will taste like heaven to somebody who has never had food like that prepared in our homes. If you want to understand what heat is, you have to know cold.

We fight throughout our life, seeing relatively happier people and trying to become like them. Yet we are never happy in the true sense of the word - at peace with our mind, our surroundings. How many of us would want to wake up on a "khat" (a sort of a bed) in a farm surrounded by greenery, plants, the woods nearby, the orange skies with the sun rising - how idyllic! Ask somebody in Mumbai today and he might murder to get one such day. Intrinsically we know that the situation should be and could be better. But it can never be better in this world, where we survive by predating on living things. I may be a vegetarian, but I still believe that there is something wrong if I am predating a growing fruit on a plant. I might do with something the plant has discarded - like when a fruit on a tree becomes ripe. We can survive like that, but the entire population can't. It does seem wrong; I am cutting off a piece of a living being - be it a silent one like a plant.

So maybe somewhere we know that there is happiness, there is knowledge. After all, no one can say that all the knowledge that the scientists invented and discovered didn't pre-exist - they found out what existed. That they have this creative streak shows that the knowledge was there in their minds, just they found it out. Scientists help religion more than anybody else in the world - by discovering knowledge unknown. If it was already known, they would have learnt it. It just shows that the knowledge is there in all of us - we can't say that A could never have discovered what B did. Yes, it is suppressed, and only streaks of it is visible in those who concentrate towards a particular part of it.

So where does all this lead to? Well, just thinking about the basic facts of life tells us that there has to be some place where we have all been to, where happiness does exist and we know it. And probably, that's why we want to attain it again, through religion. God is just a way to take our mind of that issue, it is possible that there might be a lot of people who have attained that state in that place, as we see in the fable "Jonathan Livingstone Seagull". Just the means to attain happiness can generate so much ill-will in the world itself is something which I do not understand.

P. S. I do not know how beneficial this blog might have been from consumer behaviour point of view. Maybe it can be considered as a view of a consumer of religion. Also, some of the arguments I used above are not my own; but those arguments are there in my blood and I can't give a particular source.

P.P.S. This is not all of the argument, only a very very small part of it.