Religions.
The desire to find an explanation for all that we experience in life, a longing to know our future and to have some ability to affect our lives, has generated the many religions that permeate the world. The longing to find a reason for our universe to exist at all, goes way back far beyond documented history. From time immemorial man has struggled to answer the questions. "Where did we come from? Why are we here and above all what happens to us when we die"? The answers given by religion range from the Christian belief in an all powerful, all loving father type figure, who created the universe from nothing, to one of the native Indian traditions that tells how we crawled out of a hole in the earth, and every possible concept in between. There is no physical evidence to support any of these philosophies, but we are not prepared to honestly admit "I do not know". In spite of the lack of evidence, we have turned to a belief in supernatural and unknown powers or super entities who we must worship and who also specify how we are to live our lives and can also reward or punish us according to the way we behave.
I was brought up in a Christian home, sang for years in the local choir and my Mother, who had a simple but deep faith took me to church every Sunday. My Father was not outwardly a religious man indeed he was very practical and "down to earth". He had soldiered in France through WW1 and seen the horror and bloodshed of that time. In his duties as a village policeman he saw something of the good and bad that existed in our community and recognized that they did not seem to go hand in hand with the individuals professed beliefs in the teachings of the church. He was a kindly man who did all that he could for those around him in a very quiet way without any desire for recognition or reward. It was primarily when I left home and joined the RAF that my faith began to waiver especially when I was confronted with people of many other beliefs and experienced the friction that this generated. I also could not relate a merciful God with the daily slaughter that I saw around me. As I have traveled around the world my experiences have only reinforced these ideas.
It seems ridiculous to me, to believe that any all powerful god, who has his followers well being at heart, will not clearly and simply define what is required of them. Instead we have humans attempting to interpret the cryptic writings and beliefs of other earlier human beings. As evidence we are shown documents that have often been written more than a thousand years ago and rewritten many times. Experts now debate these cryptic messages and attempt to make sense of them by interpreting them in many very different ways. We see the minister thumping on his bible, reading a sentence and then giving us his interpretation of the meaning of the sentence he has just read. Surely this is not the way an all powerful, all loving god would communicate with those attempting to follow his wishes, he would make his instructions simple and clear not open to different interpretation by different people.. We look up at the sky at night and can but wonder at the magnificent grandeur of the universe. It is impossible for us to comprehend how and why this came about, but rather than simply say "We do not know" we prefer to attempt to make some sense out of these ancient writings of men who lived hundreds of years before science as we know it even existed. We have come a long way from worshipping animals and birds, rocks and natural phenomena, to the highly developed religions of today. We have generated legions of gods who have been accepted by their followers as all powerful and the ultimate arbiters of our present way of living and our futures.
I personally cannot subscribe to any of these religions. While many define a way of life that is admirable, the so called holy books from which they derive their philosophies for living are all very obviously written by humans. The leaders of our religions read from their various books and then try to interpret the writings in such a manner that they say exactly what they want them to say. We are then asked to blindly accept these teachings as defining exactly how we should live. I have yet to come across any religion that encourages debate or argument with respect to their beliefs, yet I have been born with intelligence and I find it insulting to be told that I must follow a particular series of ideals and beliefs even when the reasoning behind it makes no sense to me at all.
I want to make it perfectly clear that I believe every person has a right to his or her particular beliefs and ideals and I have no intention of attempting to make others think as I do. I believe that the freedom to think as we wish is vital to our way of life. Unfortunately most religions claim that only they are right and only they follow the laws of the only true god. Believers must therefore forsake their own ideals, no matter how intelligently they have developed them, and follow the religious teachings blindly and without argument if they are to achieve the eternal life that is held out as the bait for their faithfulness. In an effort to promote their ideas, most of the main religions require the children of believers to be taught from a very early age what they should believe and the ways they must follow. When Hitler and other political parties have tried these very same tactics the practice was rightly condemned and called "Brain Washing". Yet no one decries the attempts of the various religions to draw small children into their ranks and permanently implant their ideas and beliefs in their small brains. No matter that as they grow older their inborn intelligence may cause them to change their beliefs, the childhood indoctrination remains.
Many years ago while on a business trip. I was having lunch in a restaurant with a colleague, an engineer from Ireland. He suddenly jumped up and ran out of the dining room, returning about five minutes later looking pale and upset. "I'm sorry", he said, "But I had forgotten it was Friday." He told me that he was born into a strict Irish Catholic family, went to a Catholic school and until he left for college he lived in a Catholic parish in Ireland. Even though he was no longer a practicing church member, the moment he remembered it was Friday and knowing that he was eating beef, he felt sick and rushed out to vomit in the toilet. He told me that although he could no longer accept the Catholic beliefs, every time he visited his parents in Ireland he did everything possible to avoid meeting the village priest because of a feeling of guilt. It seems terrible that we indoctrinate our children in this way instead of allowing them to determine their own beliefs. Of course without this constant brain washing of our children it is doubtful if any of our religions would survive. Logic and intelligence would guarantee their demise within one or two generations.
Most religions claim to be directed towards helping mankind achieve a better life, but from time to time all of them have acted in an abominable manner. The present wars between Jews and Arabs go back thousands of years, and currently we are seeing the terrible cruelties carried out by the various Islamic groups in Iraq. The many divisions of the Islamic church are even killing and maiming their own people as well as those of other faiths, all in the name of their god. The Catholic/Protestant civil war of the early centuries still festers in Northern Ireland, the Hindus and Moslems in India are in a constant source of confrontation. There are so many horrifying examples of cruelty, all done in the name of religion. During WW2, I lived for a while in a dormitory with about 30 other radar mechanics from many different countries and with several different religions. We initially had many arguments that were based on religion, some even threatened to become physical. On one occasion I recall a man screaming at one of our Jewish colleagues that "You killed my Jesus". Very quickly we agreed to totally ban any discussions regarding religion in our barracks to avoid any friction. I have only met two or three religious individuals who I admired, men and women who lived every day according to their faith. They were caring people who would probably have behaved in exactly the same way with or without their religious beliefs. Unfortunately, every day I see many individuals who loudly and publicly attempt to promote their religion but do not even attempt to follow it's teachings in their dealings with their family members and their fellow human beings.
I am disgusted at the messages that are spewed out over the TV that constantly confirm my beliefs that most religions are primarily concerned with making money, and gaining power. The screaming and shouting of many of the so called "preachers", the clapping and swaying to so called music, is nothing more than an attempt to change peoples way of thinking through thoughtless, hypnotic persuasion. My personal beliefs are much more in line with the following list that I acquired from a Buddhist monastery where I was a volunteer English teacher.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THE BUDDHIST BELIEF SYSTEM from the Kalama Sutra.
Do not believe in anything (simply) because you have heard it.
Do not believe in traditions, because they have been handed down for many
generations.
Do not believe in anything because it is spoken or rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything, simply because it is found written in your
religious books.
Do not believe in anything, merely on the authority of your teachers and
elders.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with
reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live
up to it.
I
am always also amazed at the fuss made over death. Here again we seem to be unable or
unwilling to accept the very obvious fact that death is the natural end of life
just as birth is the beginning. The culmination of many of
the religious beliefs is that in some mysterious way, if we follow the prescribed
teachings, have faith in and worship their god, we will go to a heaven of some kind and enjoy a wonderful life for
eternity. When we stop and use our intelligence for a moment this is obviously
nothing but hype, wishful thinking and the biggest con job that has ever been developed. In spite of the many attempts
to communicate with the dead, only a few charlatans have ever appeared to be
successful and their attempts have soon been shown to be at best misguided and
based on false premises. Most are usually merely a way of making money from the
grief of the living. Yet we still pump thousands of
dollars into elaborate funerals with tears and protestations of
grief. How much better to put the same efforts into bringing happiness to the
living.
When I die I want my friends and family to come and sit down together with a bottle of good scotch whisky, take a dram and drink to my end. Then put it all away and go on with life. No coffin, no wake, no flowers, no tears. Take any spare parts of the old body that can help someone else to regain their health, then just cremate the remains as quickly as possible and throw the ashes to the wind.
After death all that remains of us are the memories others have of our life-time.