Fervor, Fraud, and Foolishness

This is one of several "honorable mention" essays in FFRF's 2007 contest for college students. Anant received $100 for his essay.

By Anant Agarwalla

Every few years or so, my family makes a pilgrimage of sorts back to India, to visit family and to reintroduce my sister and me to our Indian heritage. Our last such trip was in the summer, a year ago. I spent about a week in the holy Hindu city of Ayodhya for a week-long prayer ritual being held by my grandparents. The city is often described as one of the holiest in Hinduism; its air is permeated with thousands of years of religious history, and millions of pilgrims travel to the city each year. Though I spent much of the week participating in the rites of the ceremony, I had very little idea what was going on (the ritual was conducted in the dead language Sanskrit, of which I spoke not a word), only that it was important to my grandparents and to the hundred or so family members and guests they had invited. What was evident, however, was the utter devotion with which my grandparents, and many of the guests, regarded the Hindu deities represented by the idols that were part of the ritual.

Growing up, I had always found this devotion a little strange; the gods in the Hindu pantheon, unlike the Father, Yahweh, or Allah of the major monotheistic religions, are often just as fallible as us mortals. Unlike in the Judeo-Christian tradition, frequent and dedicated worship of God is not a prerequisite for salvation (achieving nirvana in the Hindu tradition, going to Heaven in the Judeo-Christian). The lack of this direct positive outcome from the worship of God in Hindu theology always puzzled me, and it was not until I was much older that I really understood what can cause such love and affection for a being whose presence we cannot ever feel: for my grandparents, and for many religious people throughout the world, worship of God is, in many ways, a defense mechanism. Whether it is a fear of death, a fear of pain, a fear of a random and unpredictable world, religion is a defense against fear. It is a way for people to explain the universe, life after death, or to grow personal attachments to something without being hurt. It lets people grow attached emotionally to something or someone, entirely without the possibility of rebuke or rejection, or to explain a world that does not leave everything to chance. God, because we can never directly sense him, cannot cause us emotional harm in the way that interpersonal relationships so often do, and it is a comforting thought to many that there is someone who cares for and loves them unconditionally; that there is some sort of purpose to everything that happens, no matter how out of control the world might feel. One can even see how this explains the origins of religion; especially in ancient times when the world seemed unpredictable and harsh: to think that there was someone in control, even if that someone was not benevolent, would be comforting.

Now, in my grandparents' case, this is not harmful, and probably makes their life more fulfilling. But Ayodhya, where the ritual was being held, exemplifies better than any other locale could how even this benign form of religion can bring out the worst in people. The city of Ayodhya was, in ancient times, one of the most magnificent Hindu cities in India and, for this reason, was ransacked a number of times by the Muslim Mughal invaders who eventually came to rule much of India for centuries. Sometime in the 16th century, a temple, supposedly located at the site of the birth of Rama (one of the major deities of Hindu mythology and a legendary king of Ayodhya), was purported to have been pulled down by a Mughal emperor and replaced with a Muslim mosque that stood in that location for several centuries. In 1992, Hindu nationalists, spurred by these rumors, pulled down the mosque and ignited a riot throughout the city, where thousands of people were burnt, raped, and killed because of their religion.

There are many philosophical reasons why atheism seems rational. But it has been witnessing the results of this kind of devastation, the same kind that led radical Islamists to fly planes into the World Trade Center ten blocks from my high school on September 11, 2001, that, better than any other, has underscored for me that religion has been positively detrimental to human society. Examples of this kind of fervent, faith-fed violence exist in every religion, from the Crusades in Christianity, the ransacking and pillaging of cities by the Hebrews in biblical times, and even the release of sarin gas in the Tokyo subways by the fringe Japanese religious group Aum Shinrikyo.

These examples of faith-based violence were always especially odd to me, since I grew up around a number of different religions and regularly saw, first-hand, that they were not actually that different. As a child, I regularly attended church with the rest of my class (I went to elementary school in England, where the schools are all affiliated with the Church of England). I lived in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood and had a pair of friends who tried to convert me to Islam. When I moved to America after fifth grade, I attended a Catholic junior high school, all the while learning about Hinduism from my parents at home. While these religions might differ in the details, the message and effect were the same throughout: each religion essentially functioned as a moral guide for its adherents. While mythologies and rituals had arisen around this message, and it was these that provided my grandparents and so many other believers a sense of belonging and purpose, it was the message that had originally been the core of the religion.

While there have been many other ideas that people have been willing to kill or die for, only religion has the institutionalized form of belief that allows people to abstract the context of the idea (the mythology and specifics of the religion) from the idea itself (the original message).

In ancient times, religion provided an explanation for how the world works, and was thought necessary to ensure moral and healthy behavior (which is why many lifestyle suggestions are written into religious law: kosher and halaal rules, for example). In the modern age, however, we have seen that not only is there an explanation for the world that does not require the existence of a divine presence, but that religiosity is not required for moral and law-abiding behavior. There are other ways to achieve the benefits which religion provides without encouraging religion's destructive fervor.

Not only is there little need for religion in society today, there is little to indicate that it is correct, as science has already shown that it provides a far more consistent explanation for the world than religion. Even if we were to assume religion was correct, we would then have to decide which one was right; though all their messages are the same, in the end each claims that one has to have certain beliefs and abide by certain codes of behavior. Since religions all claim to be divine in origin, and almost all are contradictory in some form, only one can be right. That implies, however, that all the other religions that also claim to be divinely inspired must be false and man-made. That false religions can inspire such worship, however, leaves little reason to believe that even one of the religions is divinely inspired, as there is no way to verify whether what someone claims to be divine mandate is actually the "word of God" or not.

To think that God would give humanity no way to determine which religion is real, but to then doom all nonbelievers to some version or another of hell, seems far from the benevolence that God is claimed to possess. Almost everyone in the world determines which religion they believe by what their parents or those around them believe; religion then becomes an accident of birth, rather than a matter of choice between possible faiths. Most religions claim that one's fate after life is determined by their actions during life, but then claim that God would punish nonbelievers simply because of the happenstance of their birth.

Furthermore, most religions require worship of the deity. This in itself seems inconsistent with the concept of a being who is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. In fact, it almost seems to make God immature and proud, that He would need humanity to spend time thanking Him, rather than simply behaving morally.

For me, it becomes impossible to reconcile all the contradictions between and within most religions of the world, to ignore all the indicators that religion is a fraud perpetrated by humanity on humanity, and to forgive the vast atrocities that religion has justified. To do that, I would require far too much of the essential trait of believers: faith, something that I have never truly been able to summon. Though I will always study religion--it is too ubiquitous for one to go without understanding it--I know that I can live a moral and fulfilling life without belief in a higher power. My grandparents and I will probably never share similar opinions on religion; ultimately, however, whatever decision one makes, it is most important that we have questioned religion in the first place, because, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, "if there be [a God], he must more approve of the homage of reason that that of blindfolded fear."

"I am a sophomore at Duke University, with a major in political science and economics. I have a deep interest in international relations and the interaction among governments of the world, and have been involved in Model UN for several years. I currently serve as the Duke International Relations Association's Director of External Affairs, and for the past year served as the president of Pegram Residence Hall. I would like to eventually pursue a degree in medicine and make a career in health policy, both domestic and abroad."