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Religion, politics and race all lead to human misery

Three fundamental social forces divide humankind and preclude harmony: religions, politics and race.

Three fundamental social forces divide humankind and preclude harmony: religions, politics and race.

Each of them, history records, are responsible for shocking, horrendous crimes against humanity. Today, each, within its own sphere of convictions, disparages the others.

Thus, Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, Moslems, Jews, etc. are quietly at odds with one another as they have always been.

A fragile facade of benign tolerance is purposely maintained.

All religions assert the superiority of their respective credos over that of the others.

And, when one’s religious dogmas are seriously questioned by others, if prodded by zealous fanaticism, war and senseless massacres usually follow.

In politics, one individual resents his neighbour if his views about social management do not coincide with his own.

On a wider, global scale, such an attitude worsens relations with other states that embrace different ideologies.

That too, in the past, has led and can lead in the future, to division and war.

As for race intolerance, it is a barrier imposed by nature to keep its species, including those of animals, well differentiated.

Legislation cannot overcome this barrier at present, but will in the future when each individual, of whatever colour, reaches a high level of goodwilled civility.

Presently, each race, haughtily and privately, denigrates all the others.

Thus a fertile soil is made ready to sow contempt that will lead to outright hatred and wars in the future if not willingly disavowed.

Behind each religion, political bloc and racial culture, are governing individuals ruling their respective societies, armed with dogmatic ideas inherited from their personal religious early indoctrination.

Thus official religion surreptitiously influences, through royalty, presidential and other leaders, the deliberations and decisions of its respective state.

In view of this, conflicting religious traditions cannot ever confer unity and harmony.

The evidence is that all the prayers said by all the religions in the world have failed to ensure global peace. And this simply because prayer was never meant to change external circumstances but to change man internally.

It is man who manages his affairs and, so far, man has not done anything to change his primitive outlook.

God, as a father-progenitor of all without distinction, immune to human flattery and devoid of man-made religious prejudices, has yet be discovered.

Neither is it realized that houses of worship, and their elaborate rituals, do not impress Him.

Nevertheless, in some quarters, it is grudgingly admitted that man can commune with his God without the ceremonial paraphernalia of organized religion.

All that is needed is a quiet place that can be anywhere and employed anytime.

Finally, arguing about whether the world was erected in six days or six billion years, or if it was the result of a cataclysmic big bang or a small bang, has little effect on the digestion of most of us.

That the universe is, proves that we are here for better or worse.

If we don’t like the world that religion, politics and racial intolerance have wrought, it is up to us to change it by adopting proven, unifying, universal facts, instead of clinging to valueless, divisive myths.

Paul Franck

Red Deer