For thousands of years, millions of humans have been killed or have suffered at the hands of other humans in the name of God.
People are willing to argue, fight, beat, kill in the name of their God. But hardly 0.001% try to read what their own scripture tells about their God, let alone try to understand if they can themselves can make sense out of it. Even the few who read it diligently, they don’t read to understand or to make sense out of it, they just do so blindly, mechanically, ritualistically.
It is worth spending a few hours to understand this ‘God’ if not for yourself, for world peace
Every major religion or ideology has some documentation which forms its core. This is invaluable since every individual can refer to it to understand the philosophical core of their religion or ideology. We will also true refer to these books (the Holy Bible, the Holy Quran, the Upanishads,the Communist manifesto, etc).
There are only two things that cause religion to come into being. One is God and the other is what happens after death. Remove these two things and it becomes any other book.In which case, you typically just pick it up, take whatever suits you, and move on. The moment you get in God, it gets very, very coloured, the objectivity is lost.It is challenging because it is not easy to prove or disprove these things.but we can try to understand, infer, and analyse this.
So here, I have classified these into three –
1.Indic religions and philosophies –(Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Yoga, Sikhism etc)
2. Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam)
3.Western materialistic (Communism, Capitalism, Science and Technology)
This is in no way an exhaustive list. There is obviously a lot more. Hinduism is very broad, there is so much variety there (Advaita, Dvaita, Vishishta Advaita, Shaivism, Vaishnavism, etc). Same thing in Jainism, Digambar, Shwetambar. Islam has Sunni and Shia and different schools of thought in each of these. Christianity has Catholics and then the many forms of Protestantism, plus of course there is Judaism. So,there is a lot out there.
However, once it comes to what determines the fate of the individual, and the perspective of God, all of this crystallizes into three broad viewpoints.
In all the Indic systems, one’s fate is determined by one’s Karma. Based on Karma, one is born again and again until the individual reaches moksha or final liberation. Rebirth can happen as a human, as a lower life form, i.e. animals, in heaven or in hell. Only in human birth can one generate new Karma`s and only in human birth can one achieve liberation.In all other births, one only expends their Karmas and once expended, sooner or later they wind their way to human birth can one achieve liberation. In all other births, one only expends their Karmas and once expended, sooner or later they wind their way to human birth. The concept of God is kind of fluid in these, and since God is not the arbiter of fate (at least not the sole arbiter),the importance of defining God, and proving the existence of God is less.The perspective on God, in Vedanta is fairly sophisticated –at one level, at the risk of oversimplification, it says God is existence itself. Hard to deny the existence of such a God! God being everywhere, does nothing, yet is conscious and everything happens because of God.This is as far as the supreme God or creator God goes. There are many sub-Gods, i.e.,these are not the creator God, but represent either some aspects of power and energy or are there to represent certain qualities. The physical reality of these is not very important in the scheme of Hinduism.Please read my commentary on the Ishavasya Upanishad to get a better idea of this. In Jainism, there is no creator God, but it does have a concept of higher beings, which humans can evolve into. And Buddhism is agnostic towards the concept of God.
In the Abrahamic religions,Judaism, Christianity and Islam, there is the belief in a creator God who is the final arbiter of one’s fate.The typical understanding is of one life anddepending on whether one is a believer in that particular faith and God and one’s conduct in that life, God decides your fate.While this is the predominant interpretation, it is not the only interpretation and at times, certain people, interpret certain passages of the Scriptures to support karma and other interpretations.
Communism, Western atheism, science and technology by and large, denies the existence of a creator God. Karl Marx, famously said, “God is the opium of the masses”. The viewpoint is materialistic, in the sense that it reduces life and human beings to stuff made of atoms and molecules and nothing beyond. While science and technology has developed elaborate theories for all phenomena in the material world and has developed the ability to explain everything by precise laws, it still believes life and its processes are completely random.They are completely unaware of the discussions, the debates, perspectives,and the depth of thought among Indians seers and philosophers.
The individual end point is also different. In Indic religions, it is about liberation, it is about freedom from the cycle of birth and death, whereas in Abrahamic religions it is heaven or hell. Indic religions also have heaven and hell, but as explained previously, it is also a temporary phase and not the final endpoint.
Vedanta, in a popular line, castigates those who aspire to heaven as colossal fools. And in the Western materialistic perspective there is nothing, death is final
And in Western materialistic perspective there is nothing, death is final.Let us look at it from a social point of view social point of view.In Hinduism if you think about it,Vedanta says that God is in everybody, so try to see everybody with an equal eye. Do your dharma, do your duty towards your parents, your community, teachers etc.Jainism is very strong on not trying to hurt anybody, even the lowest of creatures. Gautam Buddha came in with this conceptthat you don’t have to be a higher casteperson, you don’t have to be a Brahmin eligible for liberation. My path, anybody andeverybody can follow. When Jesus came, he founda lot of exploitation -he saidthat the lowest of the people whether it is the sinners or whoeverI am there for them, I am there to take them, the people who are outcast from the society. InIslam lot of focus on what I call outer equality, everybody is equal in the eyes of God, everybody is at the same level when theygo to a mosque, same way and all, that kind of stuff. So,just like Jesus he found a lot of exploitation in thename of religion a lot of mismatch and he tried to create a system which makes everybody equal, which does not give any priest or anybody else, a chance to exploit others in the name of religion. There was more focus on laws and justice. Karl Marx saw that the poorer classes or the ones that did not have capital did not have opportunity to come up. So,he saw this class-based division and he wanted to create an equal society where everybody is equal and these class distinctions do not continue. His motivation was also similar.So,if you look at it in one way everybody’s motivation is to create a good and just society, everybody is happy there’s no exploitation, corruption. However, we have seen many times, that the cure can end up being worse that the disease. Why is that? It is something to think about.The first and foremost reason is we need to talk things over. As simple as that. Because the more we talk, the more openly we talk, the lesser the conflict within society. Conflict is always because you are suspicious,or you don’t know what the other person is thinking or doing. The moment you’re openly talking and enthusiastic to discuss, that openness creates more trust. It is always the hidden part, and you don’t know the other side fully well, which creates issues and conflicts. The second is, the lack of knowledge. It is said, half knowledge is a dangerous thing, which is half true, because half knowledge is the step to full knowledge.It is only through knowledge, that we solve things, whether material or spiritual.
