Religion:
- The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
- A particular system of faith and worship.
- A pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.
“Just as a candle cannot burn without fire,
men cannot live without a spiritual life.”
– Buddha
I can understand why Buddha believed that we cannot live without a spiritual life. Most of us, when we are going through difficult times, tend to seek for spiritual help within us. Even if we are not religious we pray or we try to have positive thoughts. Nevertheless, I can also understand that some people disagree with this as they do not believe that praying will change their current situation.
It is important to accept and respect other people’s beliefs as it can be a very sensitive subject for some individuals. However, it has been impossible for everyone with different beliefs to get along.
Religion vs Religion
It can be said that religion has been the biggest cause for war and terror within communities. This is because, some people do not respect other people’s religion which leads to conflicts whereas, others do not respect the people that choose to be atheists.
Also, there are religious people who start fights with other religious people because they try to compete and believe that their religion should be the only one that everyone else should follow. For example, recently the most conflicted religions could be Christianity versus Islam (the holy Bible versus the Quran). Nevertheless, religious wars have been going on for centuries, since the conquest of Canaan by Israelites therefore, it is nothing new.
Other negative impacts that religion has caused in the world could be the Syrian civil war, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ethics is no where to be seen when people are fighting over religion.
Religion vs Science
Many people that do not believe in religion choose to believe in Science instead. This is because in many religions they believe that the world was created by a God or gods whereas, atheists have a more scientific explanation on how the world was made, the famous “Big Bang” theory. They also believe in other theories such as evolution and other scientific studies. For the religious people, they follow their books and their inspired teachers or proclaimers of the will of God in order to give them an understanding about life in general, and how they should live their lives.
Religion vs Cult
Some people confuse cult with religion. These are two different things.
Imagining a world without religion…
We can fantasise in having a perfect world without religion but, would it really be that simple? In my opinion I do not believe that the world would be in peace at last. This is because, the human kind will always have disagreements for other things. We are never happy with the natural resources that our beautiful planet Earth has on offer. We are greedy as we want more and more, no matter how much we have, we like to compete with others which means that, even if we have enough of something we are not willing to share with the less fortunate. So, people will eventually fight for some of these goods. Humans also love power, we like being in control of others and be on top, and some would do anything to get it, even if it means war.
If religion was to disappear, where would our hopes and faith go?
I believe that we don’t exactly need to follow a religion to have hopes or faith. Me, for example, no longer believe in religion but this doesn’t mean that I have lost my faith and hopes. I grew up as a Christian, I went to church every Sunday, I’ve learnt a lot about God and Christianity, I learned all the books in the Bible and so on. I’ve discovered that a lot of people hid their true characters by going to church. My decision to stop going to church was because I don’t believe in religion, I’ve seen a lot of people dying because of it, and it only develops too much hatred between communities from all over the globe.
Now this might sound a bit strange and confusing for some, although I do not believe in religion, I believe in God. Yes, as I said before everyone has their own beliefs and I believe that there is a God and, when I celebrate my happiness I talk to God, if I am struggling, I ask God for help and I believe that it works. For me, it’s more about having that spiritual life that will keep me sane and serve as a blanket to comfort my mental health. Nonetheless, sometimes I get confused when I feel like my life is not getting any better, or when I see innocent people suffering. I ask myself, is there really a God? So, I do understand why some people choose not to believe. Other times, I think that I’m agnostic.
The moral of this blog post is to make you understand that you should always respect and accept other people’s beliefs. You should not force anyone to follow the same religion as you. You have the right to be whoever you want to be except an extremist.
“Religion is meant to teach us true spiritual human character. It is meant for self-transformation. It is meant to transform anxiety into peace, arrogance into humility, envy into compassion, to awaken the pure soul in man and his love for the Source, which is God.”
– Radhanath Swami
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xoxo Nini
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