Niwahal Chinthakaya

 

Most of the time religions, when linked to imperial dominance follow a highly tyrannical savage procedure. When power diminishes they act like innocent saints. In order to explain this, it is thought appropriate to provide a short description of how religions came to be.

But first, let us consider two accusations normally leveled at this type of discussion. The first is “Authors of religions and religious teachings are good. Ordinary people who follow these are the bad ones. Therefore, do not attack religions.”

Through this article it is my intension to show you that this is a false argument, that it is the authors of religions and their leaders and not the common masses who divide people, create enmities, and imbue in them savage behavioural characteristics.

The second accusation goes like this. “Those who adhere to religions do so much good. They are so generous. They live peacefully providing social services, running destitute children’s homes, etc. Are these the people you are criticizing?”

I understand your distress. I feel you are asking it with some pain of mind. I feel it is for people like you that I thought of writing this article. Most of my relatives and friends are also in this group. Therefore, with compassion I will reply in this manner.

There are only a handful of good people doing social services the way you mention. Most pious people lead banal lives – attending to household chores, looking after their children’s children, not even engaging in any reading, not going to see a drama or a musical show, but watch the television a little at night and observe one’s religious rites and go to bed. It was the same yesterday. It will be the same tomorrow. In addition, they keep swinging between the home, the church, mosque and the temple. There, only what the priests say give meaning to your life. You have no capacity to question these. Leave alone questioning – you have no right to contradict them even in thought. That is also a sin. There is the root of the danger. There, they get the space for making you belive what is true to be what is not true, making you understand what is good as bad, and what is bad as good. This is how the good values you inherited from birth are distorted.

Also, religion is not the source of kindness, benevolence and co-operative effort. It is common to all beings. When you observe the behaviour of animals at home or in a jungle, you will understand it easily. The earth in which we live came into being 4.5 billion years ago. Humans came to be through evolution at least 100,000 years ago. (For the Jewish religion, it seems the age of the world is 6,000 years!). Charles Darwin, the author of the Theory of Evolution stressed that evolution is a chain of events that takes place slowly, step by step. Accordingly, religions were born very recently. Until then, if we did not have inborn values before religions came, we would have destroyed ourselves fighting among ourselves. Therefore, the perceptions we have about good and bad are older than religion and come to us through evolution. The problem is, as stated earlier, it is the religions that turn such good virtuous people into violent reckless ones.

Two examples: