Religion: Is It Required At All?

Rightly said nothing comes without a price. Tharoor said nothing new, but it's only necessary that we revisit the past, to understand our present. The link was meant for the benefit of several other readers, who missed hearing about it. I can now only recommend Vivekananda next. His arguments are precise and being respected the world over, I think you should have no reservations about him. Lastly, Adi Shankaracharya should resolve all your doubts about Religion God Spirituality. I rest my case there.

 

What makes you think the godly British did not oppress the masses ? They very well took advantage of the religious diversity in India with their divide and rule policy. Besides introducing tea , cricket , english and developing our railway system I do not see any other advantage to having them ruled over India. Ofcourse all these were introduced solely for their benefit, it just happened to work out for us in the long run.
If you can forgive the Godly British why don’t you forgive the Muslim rulers as well? No one colonized or ruled a country with a intention to benefit its citizens , it’s done for purely selfish reasons . I don’t need a well spoken Shashi Tharoor to tell me the British plundered India , there’s enough historical evidence and common sense to suggest that.
By claiming that india deserved to be ruled by the British you seem to make the sacrifices of all the people involved in the freedom struggle very insignificant . It’s very easy to take freedom for granted if one did not have to work for it.

I am not religious but think it is a powerful tool to unite people. The choice to practice a religion or not is very personal and should not be impinged upon.

 

@Tamrakshar,

Welcome to IL and as you rightly said above, you or anyone else has freedom to express the views as they wish. Even one disagrees with each other, the process of disagreement should be through mutual respect.

In my view, principles of right living has been developed at different parts of the world thousands of years back even before laws of the land were under development. In a world where all beings needed to coexist, the body of principles become very important whether it is called religious belief or not. In my personal view, there is no need to worship, if a person conducts himself/herself conforming to the unwritten world order of love for one another. It is also my humble view, most species other than human comply the demand of the nature's law. The very discrimination power which is considered as superior quality possessed by the human beings is often misused to harm other species/beings instead of for the common good of the world.

This discrimination power gives the human beings the right to inquire more about ourselves. However from time immemorial, we have used to inquire the existence or lack of existence of God. Even today, there exist many unknown factors in Quantum Physics that is beyond the comprehension of science and technology. For life to exist in this planet, the science believes there should be 32 different conditions that should coexist 24/7 and all of them exist with 0 tolerance and how and when such conditions were created and who maintains these conditions is being questioned. I am not making this argument to confirm the existence of God but to mention that such conditions are not created by men and women and there are many factors that exist beyond our human comprehension. The science is exploring them everyday.

Despite all the best practices of right living existed in the United Kingdom, the rulers conquered land after land throughout the world. With that squandered wealth anything was possible for a country to achieve. What China is doing to Africa now is what British did to other countries giving away a few goodies for squandering the wealth of other countries while enslaving the sovereignty of every nation under the rule of the United Kingdom. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, they are one of the occupiers/aggressors like Romans, Moghals, Greeks, French, Germans and Japanese. They are more takers than givers. Despite achieving industrial revolution so early, they are not able to make further progress than most advanced civilization due to the Kingdom living in past glory of conquering the world. Today, a conquered nation has become #1 economy in the world that too within 241 years from its independence from the oppressors. They didn't spend time conquering every country in the world and instead welcomed people from all other countries to live under one roof to create the world's greatest economy and created a country under the rule of law. Freedom and liberty were the uniting factors in this part of the world. They recognized all the problems in the society and removed the obstacles for progressing as a nation.

With all due respect, I have to question your conclusion that the concept of God was developed by the middlemen to alleviate the fear of vagaries of nature. In my humble view, inquiry of existence of life resulted in men and women realizing some truth and they propagated/shared whatever they had learned with each other. Each such set of principles became a religion all leading to only one Truth. I am against superstitious beliefs as well as blind following of the teachings of the religion. One has to inquire deep inside to understand the Truth. We can dispense with science if human mind could comprehend rationale of everything that exists or happens around us. Similarly, if human beings understand the true meaning of love for one another, the religions can be dispensed with.

I always enjoy different points of view. Once again, welcome to the IL community. Balajee and I are from a different school of thoughts but we are best friends in IL. More than establishing who is right, what is important is developing a healthy discussion of different points of view in a forum like this.

Viswa