The recent murder of Dr. Kalburgi and other rationalist in india bring us to a very critical question of rationalist and rationalism. As per an estimate roughly 27 million people in India have declared themselves as an atheist, meaning they don’t believe in any god this whole number may or may not be of rationalist entirely, as many people may be religious but still be rationalists, who are the rationalists? Those who don’t believe in the miracle and supernatural happenings associated with religion rather they question it scientifically. Does this mean all religions are associated with supernatural happenings and miracle? Answer to this question is bit tricky.
As per my understanding every religion has certain core moral and human value which has also been accepted without any dispute, the rituals associated with each of these religions had scientific underpinning at the time and place they evolved, take for example the fire alters in Hinduism, probably at the beginning fire has immense importance ranging from cooking food to scaring off wild animals, clearing forest for new agricultural land at that time , since the fire was giver of so much of the things it might have regarded as sacred, and people started paying reverence to the fire at home as well, but over the time this got closely connected with the religion and became ritual.
One of the major objectives of followers of religion was to bring many people in its fold, so how probably this could be done to a whole lot of illiterate people who may not understand the intricate humanistic underpinning of the religions and whose immediate objective is to gain some material benefits from the day to day struggles of life, one of the easiest ways were to make this lot believe in any particular religion was to show them the miraculous power of the respective gods by different tricks. Godmen became masters in that art.
Religion often demand unquestioned faith, but under this pretext everything including deadwood rituals also started being adopted unquestionably, this was probably the beginning of myths that further layered upon religion , superstition , to my mind was nothing but further add on, on it. Now the question, why rationalists are attacked, the obvious reason is the attack on businesses of god men (running in several thousands of crore) by the rationalist, probably another reason is that people are very emotional about religion, and when someone bust the myth, they feel as if their religion has been attacked. And they become aggressive on any such move. So what’s the solution?
the solution lies in government following and reminding people about fundamental duties which enlist quite clearly about developing scientific temper, state should enact law like Maharashtra did, and the religious leaders must come forward and precisely dissect the religion and myth.
Remember it were rationalist to whom we owe our progress, had Socrates not questioned the faith, we would have been still living in the Stone Age.
As per my understanding every religion has certain core moral and human value which has also been accepted without any dispute, the rituals associated with each of these religions had scientific underpinning at the time and place they evolved, take for example the fire alters in Hinduism, probably at the beginning fire has immense importance ranging from cooking food to scaring off wild animals, clearing forest for new agricultural land at that time , since the fire was giver of so much of the things it might have regarded as sacred, and people started paying reverence to the fire at home as well, but over the time this got closely connected with the religion and became ritual.
One of the major objectives of followers of religion was to bring many people in its fold, so how probably this could be done to a whole lot of illiterate people who may not understand the intricate humanistic underpinning of the religions and whose immediate objective is to gain some material benefits from the day to day struggles of life, one of the easiest ways were to make this lot believe in any particular religion was to show them the miraculous power of the respective gods by different tricks. Godmen became masters in that art.
Religion often demand unquestioned faith, but under this pretext everything including deadwood rituals also started being adopted unquestionably, this was probably the beginning of myths that further layered upon religion , superstition , to my mind was nothing but further add on, on it. Now the question, why rationalists are attacked, the obvious reason is the attack on businesses of god men (running in several thousands of crore) by the rationalist, probably another reason is that people are very emotional about religion, and when someone bust the myth, they feel as if their religion has been attacked. And they become aggressive on any such move. So what’s the solution?
the solution lies in government following and reminding people about fundamental duties which enlist quite clearly about developing scientific temper, state should enact law like Maharashtra did, and the religious leaders must come forward and precisely dissect the religion and myth.
Remember it were rationalist to whom we owe our progress, had Socrates not questioned the faith, we would have been still living in the Stone Age.
