Why religion is not eternal?

Well, I seem to be thinking a lot about religion lately. Probably because it’s such an important ingredient in humankind’s collective existence. The other day I was talking to my father about religion and its relation with the so-called God, if there is any relationship at all. He said there’s a strong relationship. I asked him for the basis of such a belief. He said the idea of religion sprung out from the collective belief of an almighty, an enigmatic entity, much more powerful than a man could ever be. But since man could not generally think in empty spaces, there had to be a means to understand this God. Something man could see, something he could recognize. Nature was God because it gave you life. And religion, taking a lot from nature, must have been thus created. So there, he said, lies the relation. If there was no belief in the Almighty, there would have been no religion.

That is a relation alright. But I guess it just about ends there. Because though man was trying to form a structure of such an Almighty, he was after all only a man. He was trying to immortalize the sense of such a Being, being somewhere in existence (or everywhere, whatever you like), but all I guess he ended up in doing is quite ostensible, more now than ever before – he divided the power, and created several Gods . And that is my biggest argument – man was trying to form a means of understanding the Almighty, and he didn’t consider him mighty enough to be in existence all alone? (S)He, the God, ended up dividing labour, and charge, amongst lesser Gods. A lesser God? I know, isn’t that a paradox?

Why religion is a farce?

Before I try to answer that question, here is another one: Why do we live? Well, honestly, I don't have an answer to that one. The crux of all existentialist debates, the question is certainly unanswerable. People have come and gone, thought, speculated, preached, written, and what not. Does anybody have the answer now? No sir. And nobody will ever have. The sooner one comes to that understanding, the better. However, being what we are, men and women who seem to have (arbitrarily) a certain fixed model about the universe, we try to mould our every experience to befit, in some or the other way, the structure of our creation. Some of us are tireless, like a Kafka or Kierkegaard, constantly rejecting models hitherto proposed by the 'mighty dead', while the rest of us don't bother, and perhaps rightly so, for what would happen if every man spent his time thinking about what lies beyond rather than thinking about what lies here and now.

So the non-Kafkas and non-Kierkegaards tend to accept, quite involuntarily, the models already in existence. The most potent of these is religion. Not only it allows us to understand (howsoever irrational) the complexity of our existence in the cosmic world, it also makes us recognize other people who have a similar bent of mind, thus creating a community we can feel safe in. But the problem with such a system, as is so evident in the post-modern world, is when there are a lot of people. And when they all know each other. Religion was fine as long as a certain community didn't have anyone to contend with a rather different creation, but once there were two communities face-to-face with extraordinarily different ideas about God, war was inevitable. We, humans, are just not fine with disagreements. We can't, implicitly, accept that the other man is indeed another man. We have to make him view the world, and the universe, as the way we see it. Whatever it may take. Tearing his guts to pieces, or cutting open his throat. Whatever it takes. Well, I think there lies the tragedy of mankind.

Remember, religion was initially conceived as a solution to existentialist problems. We could look up to someone greater than us, and with more authority. It was a means of communicating with the so-called God. It was making our own existence secure in a world where everybody was different. Unfortunately, even after ten thousand years of our existence, we are just as insecure.

Is there hope? I guess not. Call me a pessimist, but I don't see how the ignorant minds of the world will just change their perception of models they have so internalized. Not the least by reading what I write.