REDEFINING RELIGION - 3 Those who in the name of Faith embrace illusion, Kill and are killed. Even the atheist gets God's blessings – Does not boast of his religion; With reverence he lights the lamp of Reason And pays his homage not to scriptures, But to the good in man. The bigot insults his own religion When he slays a man of another faith. Conduct he judges not in the light of Reason; In the temple he raises the blood-stained banner And worships the devil in the name of God. All that is shameful and barbarous through the Ages, Has found a shelter in their temples Those they turn into prisons; O, I hear the trumpet call of Destruction! Time comes with her great broom Sweeping all refuse away. That which should make man free, They turn into fetters; That which should unite, They turn into a sword; That which should bring love From the fountain of the Eternal, They turn into prison And with its waves they flood the world. They try to cross the river In a bark riddled with holes; And yet, in their anguish, whom do they blame? O Lord, breaking false religion, Save the blind! Save the blind! Break! O break! The altar that is drowned in blood. Let your thunder strike Into the prison of false religion, And bring to this unhappy land The light of knowledge.
PROCESS OF KNOWLEDGE The knowledge is, not something humanity acquires but merely, the slow uncovering of the 'known' from the darkness of 'unknown'. The truth was always there to be discovered by human consciousness. This process of gathering knowledge is nothing but forcing the truth to unfold itself to us and the method of forcing is what may be termed as the system of inquiry. Therefore the truth, in a stricter sense, is actually revealed to us responding to our inquiry and the discovery bears the testimony of the correctness of our methodology of the process of inquiry. We have, in front of us, almost endless fragments of truth, waiting to be revealed. Since the realm of truth is enormous we, for our own convenience, have to categorize it into diverse sub subjects (or even further subs down the line) and take them up for specialized studies. DOMAINS NEED TO COMBINE TO KNOW From the history of learning or gathering knowledge, we have seen a process of contemplation, imagination, thoughts, ideas etc. begins when we try to know about something or explain certain observed phenomenon that was not known earlier. This was called Philosophy, which is a general study in an attempt to understand and explain it and is not really intended to provide any specific proof or detailed analysis (although not limited) to establish the cause of the phenomenon but triggers a thought in the inquisitive mind to proceed further in revealing the truth behind the phenomenon. Then the phenomenon is more closely studied, analyzed, generalized or classified, the governing laws or principles, based on which it occurs, are found and established, experimented with simulation and synthesis, the parameters that affect the results are detected, measured and quantified and their relationship with final result is established so that the end result can be predicted with utmost accuracy for all future occurrences of the phenomenon. This method of inquiry was called Science. Likewise, study of the territories of the earth, its regions, facts, about the material of earth, about the oceans, mountains, rivers, lands etc. was named Geography. The inquiry and study to know the truth about the evolution of human societies through the ages, their lifestyles since the origin of, and a general study of the past of, mankind was branded as History and so on. Now, if we want to study the Mummies of ancient Egypt, we must have knowledge of Geography to ascertain the locations of the Pyramids, knowledge of History about the time and rule of the Pharaohs to ascertain the social status of the Mummy from its appearance and placement, knowledge of Science to ascertain the age of the Mummy by Radio Carbon dating etc. So we can see an inquiry on a subject is not limited to any branch of knowledge but calls for a combination of many. Therefore, the inquiry starts from Philosophy or 'love for knowledge' and encompasses, History, Geography, Science etc. Hence knowing of the truth is all inclusive and it is sheer foolishness to point out which human-categorized branch of knowledge is being used to know something. That is why separation of domains of subjects in the way of gathering knowledge is meaningless. CATEGORIZATION OF STUDIES The word Philosophy, originated from the Greek word philosphia meaning 'love of knowledge or wisdom' and its English meaning, as given by Oxford dictionary is, the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence or the study of the theoretical basis of a branch of knowledge or experience etc. So, Philosophy can be considered as all inclusive and fundamental as far as knowledge is concerned, whatever may be the subject. Hence we presume that Philosophy should precede any or all human inquiries so as to accommodate any discovery of truth having been first conceived and contemplated in the human mind. The English or more correctly Greek or Latin meanings of different branches of knowledge as mentioned above are classified by western scholars and thinkers and they may properly represent their scope of interest or studies for they date back since few centuries BC and except Philosophy and Mathematics, most other branches, in general are thought to have originated from western minds, especially Europe. The case for Religion is somewhat different, as it did not really qualify to be a tool for knowledge and not considered worthwhile or if it could have been of great utility for humanity if properly used. So its studies were rather confined to history only. However, ancient eastern philosophers and thinkers did not derive the same meaning of Religion as that of their western counterparts and a great deal of abstract and complex philosophical thoughts has been loaded into their religion in order to understand and explain deeper truth concerning human life. RELIGION THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANITY Religion, which I like to consider, is just another branch of knowledge akin to or included in Philosophy and is even much older than the pre-classification time of knowledge in the western world when all branches of knowledge were merged into Philosophy. We can see this from the Christian doctrines where the Church attempted to explain and teach (superficially or incorrectly) many phenomena of the natural and physical world. Even Islamic and Hindu religious scriptures were more or less no exception. But the over simplification in explaining the nature and the introduction of a Creator Designer personal GOD made the western religious thought somewhat 'childish' (the word used by Albert Einstein). This probably made the English or European meaning of Religion somewhat inappropriate and the 'Mazhab' or 'Dharma' of Middle and Eastern world is not the same as Religion of west and the western meaning partially reflects the true aspect of Religions of this part of the globe. This is not to say that Christianity did not bother about human well being (and it did), but the emphasis was more on miracles, supernatural powers and the verses are more GOD centric with lot of stories about miracles and supernaturals. Though it is not denied that eastern religions do not have those, but a much higher degree of philosophical content could very well be extracted from the scriptures to make a serious occupation of the intellect which need not all be in vain and futile. Although eastern religious thoughts did deal with the inquiry of the nature and our place in, and relationship with, the universe, they were primarily concerned about the causes of human suffering and transformation of the life into one of happiness and bliss. Values of human life acquired the centre stage. The reality and the nature of the universe were also tried to be investigated but with less importance and limited to their utility up to the human requirement, though thinkers like Aryabhatta, Kanada, Bhaskara, Brahmagupta, Ibn al-Haytham or Alhacen, Abulcasis, Abu Rayḥan al-Biruni, Avicenna, Zhang Heng, Ma Jun etc. were engaged in the pursuit of what we now know as Science. I do not say all the eastern religions had the same interest and purpose but the main concern was humanity and their well being. SCIENCE DOES NOT SERVE ALL HUMAN NEEDS As per modern day concept, the branch of knowledge, which we call science, does not have an unlimited scope. Its meaning, as given by Compact Oxford Dictionary, is 'the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment or a systematically organized body of knowledge on any subject' and its origin is Latin scientia, from scire i.e 'know'. From its very meaning and application one could see it does not encompass the systematic study of the well being of humanity, its causes of happiness or sorrow, values of life, morality, what is good or bad for the society, so on and so forth. From human point of view these are no less important to be known than the structure of the atom! Although neuroscience tries to explain the causes of our various feelings through studies of working of the faculties of our brain and chemical reactions involved or the firing of the neurons. But it is again not intended to lead humanity to reduce mental sufferings and increase happiness by proposing ways to a general well being of humankind. Science will not tell me to help a blind man to cross the road albeit it can calculate the probability of the blind's meeting with an accident provided it knows the parameters like the traffic density, their average velocities, breadth of the road, the movement of the blind man etc. Therefore my thought of helping the blind man is certainly not in the scope of science and does not fall in its domain. This, of course, need not lead to a debate whether a nonreligious man does not help a blind, but simply to say that such matter is a non-issue to science. Likewise there are complex advices and guidelines in respect of man's behaviour, character, responses to actions of fellow beings in the society, morality, values etc. that may lead to a better harmonious social living and condition the intellect in a way that maximizes the joy or happiness and minimizes the grief or sorrow the human mind experiences and help perform social obligations in a better manner. This precisely should be the scope of religion. However, without the presence of some sort of value oriented mind (well within the domain of religion) if a man becomes a Good Samaritan, I still consider him no less religious than an honestly benevolent and philanthropist who also practices true humane religion. However, in some intricate situations of crisis in human life, religion definitely comes handy and is of great help (for many, if not all), which personal experience could only comprehend and are seldom shareable with others. I certainly do not mean by GOD's grace, blind faith or some miracle but with some underlying principles inherent to human existence which is universal in nature and equally workable for all human beings irrespective of which Religion he belongs to or if at all he belongs to any (even if he unconsciously abides by the provisions of the Religion). This is because they are principles, subliminal or apparent, by which the entire human race is bound, including theists, atheists and all 'ists. RELIGION NEEDS UNIVERSALIZATION, MODERNIZATION AND REFORM But any branch of knowledge may contain rubbishes depending on the motives of its preachers which should be examined and abandoned if not found correct or useful and religion is no exception just as science is. The honest truth seekers of science simply threw earlier incorrect hypotheses, postulates, theories and ideas into garbage bin and replaced them with newer and more correct ones backed by experiments and proofs. Unfortunately, religion, on the other hand, has not undergone such evolutionary process due to four main difficulties in my views, – a) Human well being as far as our mental state is concerned, together with happiness and grief, pleasures and pains, values etc. can not be quantified and measured with instruments and no proof can be provided to establish a relationship between the methods advised to be adopted with the end results; b) A tendency to cling to the ancient scriptures and hard-line believers' and so called guardians' refusal to accept deletions, additions or modifications to develop and modernize these ancient scriptures and even rewriting them with newer and better tried and tested ones; c) Non-acceptance of a single universal human religion for the entire human race across all the societies of the world; and last but not the least, d) Doing away with the concept of a personal GOD with all His attributes of Creator, Designer, rewarding, punishing, miracle-making, supernatural etc. and shifting the faith in Him to ourselves and on all accomplished, philanthropically genuine good human beings of this world. There may be other problems as well but above are the principal ones and whereas (a) is an inherent difficulty that can not be solved, (b),(c) and (d) can certainly be addressed to in order to make a more viable Religion, that can embrace the entire humanity and would be truly useful for the benefit of the entire race. "I intend to continue this article and it will be highly encouraging if I receive comments (positive or negative), but do not want to indulge in debates at this moment until I finish it. But I will certainly consider the comments made or opinions expressed against my article while writing my future episodes." With Love and Best wishes to all.
Surojit |
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Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh
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Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
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MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
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Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona
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MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
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German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:
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