I believe religion is just another form of discrimination, on the lines of racism, sexism, etc.
All religions, in its most basic and personal form is a beautiful thing, but when it goes beyond the self and person, it becomes corrupted immediately. Allow me to provide several examples to illustrate my point.
You go to an Islamic country, and your muslim friend invites you over to stay at their house. You happily accept, and go there, but unfortunately your knowledge of your friend’s religion is limited. In your ignorance, you enter your friend’s house and is rudely woken up the next morning by loud speakers singing the azan. Upset and not knowing its purpose, you complain to your friend about it, only to be educated on its purpose and its significance in the Islamic practise.
You accept that, but because it disrupts your lifestyle you decide to leave that country and swear never to stay near a mosque or even in a muslim-majority neighbourhood ever again, just because you cannot stand the early calls to prayers.
Is this discrimination? No, not in its most obvious form. Let me illustrate another example.
Two couples are in love, and if nothing happens they’d be married soon and would be the model couple that every other couples would envy and learn from. However, there is one problem. They both come from different religious backgrounds and their parents have prefer spouses of the same faith. Also, the practices and tenents of both religions are intolerant of such marriages, causing them to break up in the end.
Sounds familiar? It happens all over the world, where people seperate due to different ideologies, lifestyles, personalities, etc, and religion is one of the reasons.
What is religion? It is a person’s relation with god, or an ideology. (PS: I’m sitting in 1-U Coffee Bean and a freaking Elvis reincarnate just walked pass. DAMN!) It is a mystical journey that demands faith and resolve, and it ultimately empowers an individual with wisdom and understanding of the mythical and abstract. Some employ religion for moral guidance, some turn to it for refuge. Some treat it as a routine and some take it as a cultivation of better mind-body-spirit integrity.
But when a group of people of similar ideology or faith comes together, there will always be a force that pushes outwards that rejects people of different beliefs. It can be intentional, or unintentional, but the effect is always there - a group of like-minded people that builds an invisible wall around them in the name of establishing an identity and a foothold in this society bombarded with countless differences.
And when every religion do that, what happens is it becomes a divine marketplace. Imagine a courtyard of various merchants of faith yelling and screaming at passing-by “souls” to “buy” their wares. That’s what this world has become. And like all good marketing plans, they all claim to be the one “true” god.
Because of this nature of religion, it becomes a form of discrimination at its very essense. Can one practice two religions at the same time? No. Can one extract the best of all religions and use that as a moral template to follow? No, you’d be considered as an agnostic at best, heretic at worst.
How many countries have people of different faith living together in peace and understanding, accepting their differences? Not many. Laws are put in place to ensure that happens, or at least prevent religions from fighting against one another. It gets worse when a religion branches out into sects and each sect claims to be the most accurate intepretation of that religion.
It all boils down to the very essense of religion, one that breeds this form of segregation. Look at Palentine and Israel for a good example. Look at the Crusade for more examples. Or perhaps you do not need to look far, because religious discrimination might already be happening around you as we speak.
Due to this and many other factors unmentioned in this rant, I believe in the path of the atheist and remain firm in my belief.
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