Should We Dream of a Religion-Free World?

by Rajendra Kumar Ojha

As science is proving its effectiveness globally in fighting Covid and natural calamities – even leading to places of worship being shut during the pandemic – I feel this is the time for a new social initiative. The time is ripe for us to collectively work towards a religion-free world. The Covid virus may well prove to be a blessing in disguise, forbidding gatherings at places of worship and the performance of rituals that have been followed by humans for millennia.

For the sake of our cultural legacy, we have maintained religion as a pillar of ancestral memory for generations, but the last few decades have shown that religion hasn’t even been able to maintain its basic moral values, character and primary objectives.

Let us understand how religion was created. Before the dawn of human civilization as we know it, there was virtually no system to maintain peace and harmony among humans, who fought with one another, living like wild animals. The few wise ones among those early human communities invented “God” and “religion” to create a moral and ethical value system that everyone would follow and thus prevented society from falling apart.

Over hundreds of years, customs, rituals, literature and more in support of religion were created that gave religion a solid foundation of belief among followers. Humans have always suffered from a “Fear Factor” which had to be exploited to create the belief in an unknown protector. This was “God”. The communal and shared belief in “God” proved to be a great success and many prophets emerged, who also vouched for religion. They firmly proclaimed that “God” was the only one who could save humanity from the unknown, which essentially meant the aftermath of death, the biggest unknown that we can think of.

Many philosophies and opinions were also convincingly propagated, enabling religion to gain more and more popularity and to get acceptance among communities all over the world. Thus, the fear of the unknown was fought with a belief in an unknown force, which is “God”. But different communities have different ways of looking at this unknown force (“God”) and this created different religions and divided people further.

We never like to think that something beneficial for us today may turn harmful for future generations. This is exactly what happened with religion. It was a guided path to reach a common destination of peace, harmony, love and happiness. But we got lost midway and now can’t reach that destination.

Religion hasn’t been able to exploit the best of human qualities. On the contrary, it is turning humans into their worst selves. I will never say that religion wasn’t necessarily useful for a length of time, but at present it is proving damaging and disastrous in human life.

I, therefore, would like to suggest that for the betterment of humanity, it has become mandatory to publicize the idea of a “Religion-Free World” rather than propagating and making people understand the meaning of secularism.

If we find ourselves and the human race properly evolved, civilized, educated and logical, then we have to break the myths and mythologies that are the basis of all religions. Let us all dream of a future world full of love, peace, brotherhood, harmony and compassion for the generations to come.