The Problem with Religion

I fully support Jorma Kajaste, Espo, Finland who says: ban the religions as a solution to end the wars between them. Each of them believes in a different way that only their religion is right..

Religions are meant to bring peace but often make war to suppress opponents. And wars will continue forever.

So far life (still) remains a miraculous mystery.

It is obvious that most of us:  cannibals, Eskimos, Chinese, Europeans, Africans, Americans, the whole world, have a strong urge for an answer to this question. 

We only know for sure that we do not know. (Socrates, about 2450 years ago) We should learn to live with this fact and behave nice to each other which must also be possible without a religion.

Why do religions originate?                                                                                     

In some way we are victims of our intellect. 

It is clear that we, human beings, are equipped with a miraculous intellectual capacity.      Instead of simply realizing that "we do not know" many of us, in the absence of a realistic explanation, have a strong urge to assume that there must be something imaginary. Like a god. 

How do religions originate?

This makes it easy for the different religious leaders to misuse their authority (power) to make belief their view as the only absolute. They lead their followers to war convinced they are the privileged ones for which the world is made…

But…imagine: all people are destroyed, no human survivors, like the Dinosaur, 65 million years ago. What would happen to the world? The world would continue to turn around the sun without us like 4.5 million years ago when the first humans originated in Africa. This means that the world was not made just for us, humans.

All this sounds Utopian. Gorbachof had the courage to say that communism did not work. A couple of Gorbachofs are needed to tell the subjects of all religions that that they should behave nicely, stop fighting each other because in fact we still know nothing and that we should learn to live in peace which is not a monopoly of a religion. 

Kees Koetsier, Spain. Updated February  2010

The Problem with Religion (Time, Oct.28-2002)