RELIGION IN MODERN WORLD
Religion has lost much of its significance today; whether religion was created out of some sort of necessity or policy at a certain period of history, or it has existed in some form or other since time immemorial nothing can be said in this connection with certainty. Even a correct definition w religion is not possible. It is most difficult to define religion. It might be the creation of an imaginative mind, who thought of creating religion to mislead the innocent, the less developed minds, in order to serve some selfish motive. No doubt the great spiritual leaders, the great mast who preached goodness and nobility and philanthropy were great souls but they had nothing to do with the religion, not a single great man had any notion of ‘religion’. No spiritual leader had ever wanted to found anything that goes by the name religion. The supreme sentiments of love, selfless service, philanthropy, mercy, generosity, hospitality, charity – none of them formed, forms a part of religion. Religion is supposed to be an abstract agent inspiring the highest imaginable ideology and noble acts and noble words and deeds but there is nothing of mat sort in them (religion); rather the religions are nothing but heaps of self-contradictory, ambiguous statements very easily misinterpreted, innocently or on purpose-generally on purpose, the aim being to lead astray the innocent people who are too simple-simpleton, to catch the real intentions of the creators of the religion. It is the innocent who visit the places of worship and not the cunning, conspirators and instigators. Religion is employed to mislead people who make them work, act and think according to whim and fancy of the self-interested persons who always have an axe to grind. Religion is the opium of old minds. An anonymous saying goes, “When the first scoundrel of the world came across, another religion came into existence.” Though highly exaggerated, the remark delivers the goods. All that bad things are done in the name of religion. Religion has so much blood on its head that no other agency has. So many people killed, so many women dishonoured and molested, so many wives widowed, so many children orphaned, so much property destroyed, all in the name of religion. Religion has shattered the humanity into numerous fragments. It seems that people following the various religions belong to different species, different animals, and different creatures. Religion has been and continues to be responsible for so much humanness that not all other agents of destruction put together could be responsible for. God’s people killed in God’s name! It is really marvelous that God is given so many names and everywhere this creation of man’s brain (God), a remarkable invention is dishonoured. It was with the idea of keeping the ignorant-ignorant and suppressed-suppressed and the down-trodden-down trodden that religion was created and it has very faithfully performed its function and to some extent goes on doing so even now. But now the innocent and ignorant masses have shed off some of their innocence and ignorance, and so they are beginning to understand the cunning pranks of the creators of religion.
It is very certain that religion was not created by God or by His prophets. As and when man became bad again and again or showed the inclination towards reversing to barbarism. He sent his messengers to bring the ignorant and the ‘lost back to the sheepfold. The ignorant masses did not understand the thing and called the prophets the founders of religions; they were not. They were just good people, noble men who preached goodness and nothing else and the ignorant masses learnt everything but goodness.
Today the situation is different Sugar- much of it has been washed off or licked off the sugar- coated bitter pill of religion much of the luster has gone off from the surface of the religion and revealing the base metal beneath the gold coating having been washed off or robbed off. People the not so ignorant masses; have now begun losing interest, losing faith in the religion. Religion holds no charm now for innocent masses that have lost some of their innocence and ignorance. Religion does dominate the people’s life today as it did in the past. Religion is on its last legs now. Most of the countries have shed off the religion, cast off the religion and they are happy without it.
In the modem world religion has no place and whatever value religion had, is diminishing at a very fast rate. In the modern world otherwise also people have little time to spare for the so-called religious function which, they will realize now, are mere superstition, superfluous meaningless, unnecessary and not worth the money spent neither on such functions nor worth the botheration of pains taken, pains wasted.
