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Willett's Wager

Losing the Bet

Religion: Good or Evil?

Imagine There is No Religion

A dogma is an illogical and irrational sentiment. A dogma is a statement of belief based on one's feelings and mental estimation of reality without any objective proof. In other words, a dogma is a subjective point of view or principle put forth as authoritative and imposing without adequate grounds and logical foundation.

Philosophy, the love of wisdom, could be matter-centred or self-centred. Nevertheless, dogma-centred philosophy is an amalgamation of both matter and self-centred philosophies. Therefore, all religions are a blending of matter-centred and self-centred philosophies.

Religion, a dogma-centred philosophy, could survive for centuries if not millennia. This is due to the fact that religious doctrinaires know how to twist their teachings in order to reject the truth and adapt to different circumstances. There are many examples in great religions such as Christianity or Islam in which the teachings and definitions of religious facts have been modified and changed for the survival of the religion itself.

Relatively, religion is a new invention of human mind (about 5,000 years old) compared to the age of the species of Homo sapiens (about 250,000 years old). The whole phenomenon of religion follows the universal laws of evolution -It evolves in its own terms; it adapts itself to the new mental and environmental conditions; it gives rise to different kinds of sub-religions with different adaptability for their new niches.

Imagine how many denominations there are in Christianity, Islam or any other old dominant religion. You can always find a very old, a very young, and many middle age religious designations in between with the main school of the specific religious thought in any of the so-called great religions. This is an evolutionary behaviour in which religion has been evolving for the last thousands of years. There is a rise and a fall for each branch of a specific religion with its own unique lifespan and years of glory. The law of evolutionary extinction applies to religion as well. There used to be many religions with their social and religious might and power whereas they don't exist anymore today or they are at the verge of extinction. Think about the Zoroastrian religion, one of the oldest organized religions in the world. This religion was practiced in ancient Persia for centuries. However, now there are hardly 200,000 practicing Zoroastrians left in the world.

There is a sudden extinction (i.e. the dinosaurs) or a gradual extinction (i.e. the Thylacines, or Tasmanian tigers) among animals. The same is true about religion. For instance, Zoroastrian religion is facing a gradual extinction with a quick pace, because there is no mass-organized movement for conversion to Zoroastrianism. Nevertheless, Christianity is facing the same fate as Zoroastrianism but with a slower pace of extinction.

It is all the matter of education. The mass education in the West, since the great Renaissance, has brought a new age where it is more acceptable to be just spiritual than to follow an organized religion blindly as Muslims do. This phenomenon marks the hallway of the gradual eradication of Christianity. With the same token, Islam and other great religions will face the same fate, if humanity survives in the centuries to come.

To wrap up my thought on this topic, I believe that religion played its relative constructive role in humanity during those centuries of dark ages when mankind was ignorant of himself or herself and the universe. However, this is the 21st Century in which we are in control of many things including our minds and thoughts.

You ask what religion is? To me, religion is not a mystery any longer. Religion is indeed the opium of the masses in this century. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creatures and the mind of a mindless world.

Is opium the religion of the masses? Well, this is another levelheaded topic to talk about. That's why I let you elaborate on this topic.

Love, Peace and Happiness,

Farzad

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

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