The Root of the Matters

Found this interesting post from my friend's blog. I hope nobody mind I re-posted it here along with my comments. I don’t want to say that it is right or wrong, in fact for matters of faith, believe, religion and god you can’t be logically right or wrong. You can only believe. But if you allow me to differ, here’s my opinion. It's started actually with simple question, that with so many religious conflicts, what's in God's mind really? Then came these answers:

It starts with one question. Do you believe life (eternal life) after death? If you believe it then you become a follower of a religion. If not you are an atheist. A religion is a way / tool to achieve the ultimate objective i.e having God’s love in the eternal life after death in heaven.

First question: Why are there so many religions? Simple analogy: Why does Bill Gates make so many Windows versions? If we ignore the commercial reasons the other reason left was for IMPROVEMENT. So did in the religion. Religion was being evolutionised and improved until last version of religion which is the final and ultimate improvement. Just like Windows they kept improved and made corrections if some bugs exist. The last religion is the improvement and correction to previous ones.

Let’s suppose that God created all religions. By definition God must be an all-powerful-perfect-being. If God is perfect than God can make no mistake. Then why God created imperfect religions at the first place (a mistake) only to replace them with a more perfect one? That’s the analogy about Windows was all about right? A continuous process of improving things.

The essence of evolution is actually adaptation, survival of the fittest. Following this line of thought then, older imperfect religions must cease to exist because their changed environment won’t allow them to, and give way to more improved ones. They can not live hand-by-hand. Contrarily we can see all around us that the majority of followers of older religions live (at least by their own definition) perfectly happy. They have no need to ‘upgrade’ their faith.

However, this line of thought (evolution of religion) is not totally unique. Nietzche for instance, had used the same argument when he announced the “Death of God”. Human has evolved and at the latest state they can rely perfectly in their logical thinking. Hence no need for God or religion for moral guardian. Free yourself from moral norms and you can be an “Ubbermensch”. Talking about dangerous mind...

Hence I don’t think that evolution of religion can really explain the co-existence of various religions currently. Maybe, it’s more related with marketing strategy. Yes, segmentation. As society evolves different needs emerge. At first you only have one type of automobile—say 4-seats-sedan for argument sake. But then you have needs for different transportation activities, hence buses, trucks, family-car etc. The models might be improved (i.e. Kijang Kapsul, Kijang Innova) but the types remain. There’s no perfect or imperfect here, only different type for different needs, thus they can co-exist.

Second question: Why do religions make conflicts? A lot of followers (may be majority) think that:

(1) his / her religion is the only correct one, others are wrong
(2) everybody in the world must follow my religion, if not they are enemy
(3) I have to safe all people in the earth so they must follow me
(4) My religion is majority, the minority is wrong

That followers forget:

(1) religion is not a God. A religion is a way / tool that we must believe can guide as to arrive safely in heaven
(2) God creates mankind : as God's representative on the earth which must bring peace and happiness to the earth (not only human but also animals etc)

Logically it follows then, that it’s irrelevant to say bus is better than sedan as they cater for different needs. This is the answer for question 2: why there are conflicts among religions. I then, tend to agree with the answers given earlier. Some die-hard jeep-owners-club might think that their type of vehicle is the best. This is an erroneous statement since you may say that jeep is not ideal for those who prefer cleaner-more-fuel-efficient vehicle et cetera

Third question: Why are there heaven and hell? Some analogy:
(1) Like a travel we have to have destination
(2) Like a business, we have to have business objectives
(3) Like human resource management: there are rewards and punishments

Can you imagine life without objective? We’ll go nowhere! And you will say: Look at Russian and Chinese people. They don’t believe in God, but they are successful (at least compared to Indonesia). They actually make the religion by themselves. Country is like a religion for them.

I agree with the answer that after-life is an objective, hence: heaven and hell. And it follows that our objectives drive the way we live our life. But to say that this is the ONLY objective might undermine other alternatives. Others for instance, may say that life in itself is an objective. Their objective is then to live life the fullest. Their definition of success then, is limited to this life only. Those who believe on heaven and hell seem to set their objective longer than they do, but this should be fine as each of us can not force others to follow our objectives and our definition of success. Why?

This is comparable with companies or business entities that set their objective as market-share driven, margin driven et cetera. No matter what your objective is, you should compete legally, within set of rules we had agreed upon. Otherwise none of us can reach our objectives. To force others following our objectives is totally useless, might be illegal and thus counter-productive. Imagine those who set up their companies with an objective of forcing others to follow their way. This is laughable and that people can be considered as deranged. But yes, like business consultants, you can set your objective as persuading other companies to follow your way. To do this however, you have to be invited.

Last question: Why do we make mistakes? Oh yes, we are not angels. Human do make mistakes. But we have ‘user manual’ as our guidance. And God is merciful. So is natural that we make ‘unintended mistakes’ and then ask forgiveness to God. One thing we must not do: to do mistakes / sins that we have already know that they are definitely mistakes / sins.

Again, I agree with this. Apparently that’s all we do. Make mistakes after mistakes after mistakes... That’s fine I guess, as long as your mistakes don’t interfere with my effort to reach my objectives. That’s punishable by laws or norms—game rules we’d agreed upon.

All in all, this concludes that matters of faith, believe, religion and God are personal. Conflicts usually arise because erroneous believe that those matters should be organized in one way or universally fashioned—if you may. Let others live their life in ways they think fit their needs. As long as ones’ believe don’t interfere with others’ we should be all right. Sounds simple but as we have seen daily in this sick world: not easy to be achieved.

So as Captain Spock says: may you live long and prosper my brothers. That’s the Vulcans’ objective by the way...

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