Wah lau this forum open liao never invite moi. Waste my sapport
sia, spadey.
Ok, craps aside. I have read the entire article, though the author
seems to be rooting for gay rights at the last few paragraphs, what
he has mentioned do make sense (just to clarify my stand, I'm a
straight).
He made me waste time opening up many Answers.com windows just to
understand his text, but in essence, what he is trying to say is
that people tend to justify their actions through religion rather
than through logic as it is the easier way out. Using his gay
example, Christians would simply look at it and say "Oh, my bible
says gaying is a sin. So this is wrong up-down-left-right," instead
of looking it from other perspectives, like biologically (kinda
queer to me though).
Imo, I think it's that people are getting overly-dependent on their
religions. Any religion, excluding cults, is created for the good
of the people, which is what I believe. I was told that Islams
forbidded pork and dogs because they were common parasite carriers
back then. When I look at food offerings, I would think that people
in the past had tried to come up with an ingenious way to let those
desperate and hungry ones on the streets having something to eat,
without creating a reliance for others to give them food. So by
people making food offerings to their gods, it will "filter" those
who are dying of hunger and the others who can survive for the next
few days and may able to find alternatives to get food in the
meantime, since the former wouldn't mind offending his gods as he
is about to die anyway. The undesirable consequences that comes
with eating those offerings would deter them from developing
reliance. Then of course, you have all those karma and confession
thing coming in, so that people wouldn't dwell on their mistakes,
but instead begin on working to be a better person from that point
of time. So basically, our ancenstors have laid such a good
"infrastructure" for us to live in already, using religions and
beliefs.
But like what the 21st century Man has did to Mother Earth, Man is
now screwing up all the efforts their ancenstors have done. They
become overly-reliant on it. They start to think that if you have
faith as small as a pea, you can command a mountain to move from A
to B. So some of them would pray every day to move the money from
the nearby bank to his house, hoping one day it will come true. Of
course, that's an extreme, but my point is there. They have
turned their religion into a superstition. They decided to
stop exploring new possibilities by defining anything undefined as
an effect of their religion.
"Why that ger dun like me?!?!" - "Karma."
"So it's ok if I do bad thing?" - "You exerting karma."
"Why Toto never strike?!?" - "need to kowtow 108 times at some ABC
temple every full moon"
"Why she die..." - "It's pre-destined."
If people think that way, they will never progress as a society.
They simply become stuck forever in a trial-and-error loop. If this
was how Thomas Edison thought, he would still be testing his bulb
with the first metal he started with, then complain for the 1098th
time, "haiya, here aura not good, change position tmr and try
again" and die before the next sunrise.
Religion, at most, should only be a guide book in people's
lives, not a template for their diaries. When we are lost
and on our own, we can refer to them not to determine our paths,
but to guide us through ours. If copying homework in school all the
time means that you are not getting the full sum out of your school
fees, then living by the book from cover to back is simply wasting
your life.
It maybe, just maybe, could be that our ancenstors have not
expected their religions to be passed on for so long, till now. So
we have issues like burning of incense papers which contributes to
global warming, food rotting at altars which could possibly be
enough to feed the entire Africa population, healthy dogs and tasty
pork, scientists coming up with the theory of evolution which goes
against the origin of Man in Christianity etc. Alas, we may have
come to a road split, I suppose. From here, we may choose to firmly
believe in our religion, or to be on the other side and believe in
science. But what's more important would be to believe in our
choice, and ultimately, believe in ourselves.
*Edited for grammar.*
