A
religion is always associated with some concept of god. Priesthood of
that religion backs that creed. Thus, we see that there is some
intimate relation between the god of that religion and its
priesthood. Priesthood claims to represent god of that religion. Very
often, we see the priest talk to people as if they are in direct
communion with god. They give promises to people in the name of god.
Interesting part in all this is that nobody doubt them and accept
whatever they say as if true. When we carefully study various
promises, these priests give to the faithful on behalf of god; we see
that one prominent promise they give is of clemency or pardon. They
tell the faithful that whatever sin they may commit, if they pray for
god and do a particular ritual or such and such prayer, as per the
guidance of that priest, god shall forgive them, for their sin and
they will be free from the consequences of that sin. People believe
that promise, may be because, it is very convenient to accept that
and get free from the worries of that sin. We see priests performing
some rituals, probably to pretend to have appeased the god for which
they charge the sinner some handsome price and make some fortune.
Every sinner hopes to get redemption for the sins he/she did and
since that is the demand priest do exactly that and win the
confidence of the faithful.
Most
religions have a ready list of acts those constitute sin. That means,
if one does those acts it amounts to have done sin! They also have
another list of punishments for those sins! The list of punishments
is prepared by the priests in the way that when the sinner knows them
he/she gets dreaded and succumbs to priest's advise. The business of
priesthood prospers comfortably. Fear for the unknown in the minds of
the faithful helps the priest in these matters. Fearless people look
to religion, god and priest with certain disdain. Priests often in
their sermons criticize these fearless people as skeptic or atheist
and warn the faithful to keep away from them, call them heathen and
what not.
Priests
often give other promises and through them, they guarantee that after
certain rituals performed the host will get his wish fulfilled. I
always wonder why at all people need, some thing like a religion, to
support their life. Why and how, they easily accept that a mortal,
just like himself or herself, can claim of having talked with the
almighty. Somehow, this happens everywhere and in all religions and
so I feel that is the need of common peoples anyway and everywhere.
Some priests perform some magic and tell the gullible that it is a
miracle due to direct communion with god!
This
promise of forgiveness or pardon interested me very deeply. I decided
to find out if really god forgives or not. As you may understand
that, I am not any priest of any religion and so have no reason to
use the cheap gimmicks to make any claim of that sort; however, I
still can use the logic to find out whether God forgives or not. I
searched for that and found that Mother Nature is the thing that
speaks on behalf of the Almighty. Every body agrees that Mother
Nature is the true reflection of The GOD. All behavior of Mother
Nature characterizes the behavior of GOD. Therefore, if Mother Nature
forgives we can say that GOD forgives. Careful examination of the
behavior of Mother Nature undoubtedly showed to me that Mother Nature
never forgives. There are only two options with Mother Nature, reward
or punishment. If you observe the laws of Nature accurately you get
reward in the form of success and if not then, surely a punishment in
the form of failure. For example, airplane flies successfully so long
as the rules of aerodynamics observed with great accuracy but one
minuscule mistake and the plane crashes. The Mother Nature has no
mercy. There is no in between and so if we want the Mother Nature to
favor us, we have to follow its rules without mistake. For those who
do not follow rules of Mother Nature, there is no mercy. By observing
several examples, I came to this conclusion. We must understand that,
priests to cajole the fearful faithful invented the concept of mercy.
I am sure if these priests of all religions tell their faithful the
fact that god does not forgive they will lose all their hold on them
and that will be the end of that religion.
Does
God forgive?
Considering
god is Mother Nature, we understand by corollary that God also never
forgives. If you do badly, you must pay for it by the way of
punishment. If you do well, you must get good in return and that is
true law of God. The via media, priests developed, is idea of pardon,
so that they can make some money. Nature never pardons and so we
should understand that this is the way priests fool the faithful by
propagating about god that it pardons. If we understand for sure
that, there is no pardon; we shall behave more carefully and make no
mistakes but then the business of priests suffers and that is why
they always tell people that you can do any sin but then come to me
and perform the ritual and god shall pardon. The business of religion
prospers. Priests make their money and ordinary people keep doing
wrong things. Sinners are the main customers of these priests. Very
often priests frighten the gullible individuals by threatening that
if they do not perform the ritual as per their guidance, god shall
punish! This is the corollary of the idea of pardon. This is the way
priests keep on fooling ordinary people to hold on them firmly and
continue their business. I have seen priests making jokes, on
faithful followers about the way they trust the claims priests make
on god, in their private conversation. Interesting part in this
observation is that god of religions is different from the GOD of
Mother Nature.
Selling
god –
The
god is commodity that these priests of religions market. Many
examples of the various marketing strategies I have noted during my
study of this subject. Other gimmick we see these priests indulge in
is miracle, this they need to prove to the gullible faithful that the
priest is in constant communion with god. He performs the miracle
just because he has special favors of the god. Most miracles found to
be handy work of some sort of trick and nothing else. Miracles are
essential to keep the faithful in proper control. Almost all
religions encourage this strategy to control their followers. By
performing miracles, they show to the faithful that they are
different from the other ordinary folks because ordinary people
cannot do that. Priest of different types have varied styles to
impress the faithful. Threatening, terrorizing, blackmailing,
impressing by magical acts, false promise are most common methods
they use.
Need
of religion –
Why
people need a religion at all was the question I was working on. I
realized that fear in the mind of persons for the unknown makes
him/her accept the concept of god and the rules of ethics woven
around that concept compose the religion. One other need of people
stems from the guilty conscientiousness people harbor when they do
something bad. They need some redress from the effects of that bad
deed. Priests help in that by suggesting that submitting to the god
of his religion through him shall help them and that these erring
people accept very willingly and the religion gets strong footing in
that society of erring people. A large part of any society is made of
such erring people and that settles the religion and its priest in
that society. Later on, the religion of the people becomes their
identity and when they conquer other people, they impose their
religion on the conquered people to impress upon them. This often
done by compulsion and we have ample stories about that in our
history books. Priests of that religion continue to propagate for
their religion in the newly conquered society and attract erring
people from that society. This they do probably through sermons they
give there and explain how submitting to that religion through the
priest shall help them. They also tell listeners repeatedly that they
are conquered by these outsiders because the god of them is superior
to the god of the defeated society. The process of brainwashing thus
continues probably with great results and that religion supersedes
the previous religion of the defeated society. By imposing religion
of one society on other society, they attempt to destroy the identity
of that society because an identity of a society is their customs and
culture. Religion carries with it the customs and culture of the
foster society who has conquered the other one. This strategy makes
controlling the other society very easy since the conquered society
has lost its identity by accepting the alien religion along with its
culture, customs and even traditions. Excellent example we have is of
Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Hinduism and Buddhism religions these
people practiced before the advent of Arab conquest. After Arabs
conquered them, Arabs imposed their Arab religion on them by ruthless
compulsions in the name of Allah. After many centuries these people
have totally forgotten their original religion and with that the
customs and culture of their ancestors. Today things are in such a
sorry position that, these Pakistanis and Afghans now disgust their
own original identity and cherish the identity of the conquerors, the
Arabs. This happens because today their ego is attached with Arab
identity and not with their own original identity. They are today
proud of Islam and hate religions of their ancestors Hinduism and
Buddhism. Islam has become an integral part of their ego. This one
example abundantly shows how religion helps the conquerors in
establishing their control through the religion. That also shows how
religion is a tool for conquering other societies.
More
on this subject I shall share with you in the next posting.
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reckon,
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for philosophy
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