by Ashwin Kumar
This is an illustration of how man created religion and God:
Someone says, I’m gonna start a rumor.
I’m gonna tell all my friends I can throw a 150 MPH fastball. I think a lot of them will believe me.
Not the smart ones, because they’ll know that’s ridiculous, but a lot of them will.
In like twenty years, my friends will tell their kids that they knew a guy who could throw a 150 MPH fastball. And their kids will be like, “Totally. I’m a kid so I believe everything my parents tell me because they’re grown-ups and they know everything. That’s awesome that a guy can throw a 150 MPH fastball.”
And then twenty years later, those kids will also tell their kids that their grandfather knew a guy that could throw a 150 MPH fastball. And those kids will be like, “Holy cow! That guy is so athletic and good looking!”
And those kids will tell their kids, and then those kids will also tell their kids.
Eventually, people will have no idea who I am or that I ever existed; they’ll just KNOW that some dude once threw a 150 MPH fastball.
Some might even spice the story by saying the ball was thrown at the speed of light!
Some people will be like, “What? I don’t really think that’s possible…That’s like really fast…” But then everyone else will be like, “Don’t be so closed-minded. Everyone knows that he threw a 150 MPH fastball!”
Well guess what, I can’t throw a 150 MPH fastball.
But that’s the deceit of religion.
God always seemed to resemble the people that portrayed him.
To the Mayans God was a Mayan who encouraged sacrifice and cutting out hearts.
To the Hebrews God was Hebrew and encouraged Hebrew customs of killing children by stoning them to death and kidnapping and raping virgins to preserve the bloodline of those who would kill anyone not Jewish so that a loving God could be pleased.
To the Hindus God was also a Hindu, and to the Greek, and so on and on.
If one looks at all cultures and what they had to say, you can clearly see that God did not create man in his own image, but it was man that created a God in his own image to justify their culture, beliefs, and perceptions of how life should be.
According to Steven Weinberg, “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”
I understand that people need an imaginary friend to justify their existence and order.
Religion and the belief in god has done nothing but create hostilities through time.
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Kumar lives in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
