Alone among the great nations of history we have got rid of religion as a serious scourge, and by the simple process of reducing it to a petty nuisance. For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.The more stupid the man, the larger his stock of adamantine assurances,the heavier his load of faith. When Copernicus proved that the earth revolved around the sun, he did not simply prove that the earth revolved around the sun, he also proved that the so-called revelation of God, as contained in the Old Testament, was rubbish. The first fact was relatively trivial: it made no difference to the average man then, as it makes no difference to him today. But, the second fact was of stupendous importance, for it disposed at one stroke of a mass of bogus facts that had been choking the intelligence and retarding the progress of humanity for a millennium and a half.... I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind; that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overborne by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
RE:Dont be stupid
by Abhay T on Sep 21, 2007 05:00 PM Permalink
You are right in the sense that human beings look for supernatural powers as Gods because they don't understand everything. This is more or less true even today. This is because common man even in most developed countries doesn't understand sceince very well. They don't even understand how exactly a fan rotates. Forget about understanding TV, mobile, computers. Even scientists are on a shaky ground to understand the true nature of the universe. They do come up with unbelievable theories like infinite parallel universes. Worshipping gods is a part of hindu culture and customs rather than ther religion itself. Geeta is very clear on this. It clearly says all paths ultimately come to God like rivers finally merge into a single ocean even though they look like following different paths. If you understand this basic philosophy, you will realise that no religion is as bad as it sounds. It is only because some people are using religion to spread hate within communities (biggest culprit Congesss). Hindu people accept all new/modern ideas and at the same time like to stick to their culture.
