Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "quran"
Religions, Prophets and Politics
"The Church has carried out some of the most inhuman and above all un-Christian acts of human history, yet, it is still gloriously hailed by the majority of human population as to be synonymous with Jesus Christ." - Neurons of Jesus
You have heard countless times from me, that Religion is not a book, it is not an institution, and it is not even a person. Religion is realization of the self.
The Bible, the Quran, the Vedas and all the scriptures in the world are mere inventions of man (not woman) in the pursuit of understanding the self, and to some extent, in the pursuit of authoritarianism. Scriptures from the past have nothing to do with the neurologically created and experienced sensation of divinity and religion. However, all the books which humanity so gloriously worships as sacred, attempt to codify the divinity that is born with the human body and dies with it. This divinity or simply religion is born with the self created by the brain and ceases to exist when the self dies upon the death of the brain.
Religions began as realization of the self, but ended up being retaliation against each other. A handful of individuals in human history, empowered by their own neurons of divinity, experienced something quite extraordinary. They experienced something beyond this mortal world. They experienced being one with an Omnipotent Entity or Abstract Source of Energy. Despite the fact that, these experiences were all taking place exclusively within their own brain, they manifested as extraterrestrial encounters. Hence, the pre-conceived notion of Supreme Entity somewhere up in the sky, got more deep-rooted into the psyche of the ignorant masses.
When a person lacks understanding of the physical universe, and its phenomena, the primordial nature of the mind is to fill in the gaps with all kinds of gibberish concepts that originally come from our primitive days in the wild. And one of these concepts is that, there is a superhuman entity somewhere out there, who keeps an eye on us. That is the most natural knack of the primitive part of the mind. Because here, by believing so, we are psychologically entrusting an imaginary father figure (or mother figure in some religious beliefs, such as the Hindus) with our security and peace of mind. It does act as a placebo effect, but unlike the placebo pills used in our clinical trials, this placebo effect of a father figure or a personal God, has immense biological impact upon all aspects of human life, through the neurobiological substrates of the mind.
In simple terms, when a person believes that a God is truly concerned about the well-being of life on earth, and especially of human life, the belief adorns that person with various positive psychological elements such as emotional stability, in times of distress and a highly functional moral compass. Here this belief has nothing to do with reality whatsoever, rather it serves the evolutionary purpose of self-preservation.
However, if history has shown anything, it is that where there is a God, there is an institution trying to lock up that God in its lifeless structure of orthodoxy, in order to have authority over people and sell tickets to the Kingdom of that God. Thus emerged all the pompous lies about the extraterrestrial Kingdom of God or Heaven.
"By infusing Jesus the man with the divine magic – by making him capable of earthly miracles as well as his own resurrection, the early church turned him into a god within the human world. Thus, the church reinforced the monopoly on the so-called route to heaven, i.e. salvation only through Jesus Christ. And during those days, whoever kept the keys to heaven would rule the world. " - Neurons of Jesus
This way, religion became politics. It became everything but realization of the self. It became a matter of doctrines, books, hierarchy and superiority of institutions. Hence, today the majority of the human population, perceives religion to be synonymous with certain books. And that is why there are so many conflicts in the name of religion and God in this so-called modern world.
A Christian would ask you to believe in the Bible, to believe that the Bible contains divine irrefutable commands from God. A Muslim would ask you to believe in the Quran, to believe that the Quran contains glorious messages from God or Allah. A Hindu would ask you to believe in the Bhagavad Gita, to believe that the Gita contains answers to all your problems given by God or Brahman. Thus, a religion becomes merely a matter of blind faith upon texts of the dead people. Hence, no religion can maintain a healthy relationship with another for a long time.
To quote from my book In Search of Divinity
"It is not much use to talk about religion, until one has felt what the founding fathers felt. Why is there so much disturbance, so much fighting and quarreling in the name of God? There has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause. And it is all because people never attempt to reach the fountain-head. They are content only to comply with the customs of their forefathers, and want others to do the same."
The point is, what the individuals, whom humanity venerates as prophets, experienced was something beyond the laws of their contemporary religious dogma, and as such, all of these individuals were hailed by the religious institutions of their time and society, as heretics. However, their ideas did indeed succeed to influence a bunch of people stuck in obscurity. So these people embraced these individuals as their own personal Gods, and in the mind of those ignorant people, every God must be worshipped with utter obedience. And their way of showing obedience was to concoct laws and rituals to ascertain the divine significance of their personal God in the spiritual patriarchy of religious prophets. Thus, obedience for one divine Teacher, turned into obedience for a God. And in time, it turned into obedience for a set of laws. And quite unexpectedly, one person's battle against religious orthodoxy or fundamentalism, led to the birth of yet another orthodox circle. This happened at various corners of the world in various circumstances.
In Asia, Buddha, a Hindu, stood up against the orthodox Hindu society, and ended up constructing yet another religion called Buddhism. And on the other side of the world, Jesus, a Jew, stood up against the orthodox Jewish society, and ended up being the personal God of yet another religion called Christianity.
You have heard countless times from me, that Religion is not a book, it is not an institution, and it is not even a person. Religion is realization of the self.
The Bible, the Quran, the Vedas and all the scriptures in the world are mere inventions of man (not woman) in the pursuit of understanding the self, and to some extent, in the pursuit of authoritarianism. Scriptures from the past have nothing to do with the neurologically created and experienced sensation of divinity and religion. However, all the books which humanity so gloriously worships as sacred, attempt to codify the divinity that is born with the human body and dies with it. This divinity or simply religion is born with the self created by the brain and ceases to exist when the self dies upon the death of the brain.
Religions began as realization of the self, but ended up being retaliation against each other. A handful of individuals in human history, empowered by their own neurons of divinity, experienced something quite extraordinary. They experienced something beyond this mortal world. They experienced being one with an Omnipotent Entity or Abstract Source of Energy. Despite the fact that, these experiences were all taking place exclusively within their own brain, they manifested as extraterrestrial encounters. Hence, the pre-conceived notion of Supreme Entity somewhere up in the sky, got more deep-rooted into the psyche of the ignorant masses.
When a person lacks understanding of the physical universe, and its phenomena, the primordial nature of the mind is to fill in the gaps with all kinds of gibberish concepts that originally come from our primitive days in the wild. And one of these concepts is that, there is a superhuman entity somewhere out there, who keeps an eye on us. That is the most natural knack of the primitive part of the mind. Because here, by believing so, we are psychologically entrusting an imaginary father figure (or mother figure in some religious beliefs, such as the Hindus) with our security and peace of mind. It does act as a placebo effect, but unlike the placebo pills used in our clinical trials, this placebo effect of a father figure or a personal God, has immense biological impact upon all aspects of human life, through the neurobiological substrates of the mind.
In simple terms, when a person believes that a God is truly concerned about the well-being of life on earth, and especially of human life, the belief adorns that person with various positive psychological elements such as emotional stability, in times of distress and a highly functional moral compass. Here this belief has nothing to do with reality whatsoever, rather it serves the evolutionary purpose of self-preservation.
However, if history has shown anything, it is that where there is a God, there is an institution trying to lock up that God in its lifeless structure of orthodoxy, in order to have authority over people and sell tickets to the Kingdom of that God. Thus emerged all the pompous lies about the extraterrestrial Kingdom of God or Heaven.
"By infusing Jesus the man with the divine magic – by making him capable of earthly miracles as well as his own resurrection, the early church turned him into a god within the human world. Thus, the church reinforced the monopoly on the so-called route to heaven, i.e. salvation only through Jesus Christ. And during those days, whoever kept the keys to heaven would rule the world. " - Neurons of Jesus
This way, religion became politics. It became everything but realization of the self. It became a matter of doctrines, books, hierarchy and superiority of institutions. Hence, today the majority of the human population, perceives religion to be synonymous with certain books. And that is why there are so many conflicts in the name of religion and God in this so-called modern world.
A Christian would ask you to believe in the Bible, to believe that the Bible contains divine irrefutable commands from God. A Muslim would ask you to believe in the Quran, to believe that the Quran contains glorious messages from God or Allah. A Hindu would ask you to believe in the Bhagavad Gita, to believe that the Gita contains answers to all your problems given by God or Brahman. Thus, a religion becomes merely a matter of blind faith upon texts of the dead people. Hence, no religion can maintain a healthy relationship with another for a long time.
To quote from my book In Search of Divinity
"It is not much use to talk about religion, until one has felt what the founding fathers felt. Why is there so much disturbance, so much fighting and quarreling in the name of God? There has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause. And it is all because people never attempt to reach the fountain-head. They are content only to comply with the customs of their forefathers, and want others to do the same."
The point is, what the individuals, whom humanity venerates as prophets, experienced was something beyond the laws of their contemporary religious dogma, and as such, all of these individuals were hailed by the religious institutions of their time and society, as heretics. However, their ideas did indeed succeed to influence a bunch of people stuck in obscurity. So these people embraced these individuals as their own personal Gods, and in the mind of those ignorant people, every God must be worshipped with utter obedience. And their way of showing obedience was to concoct laws and rituals to ascertain the divine significance of their personal God in the spiritual patriarchy of religious prophets. Thus, obedience for one divine Teacher, turned into obedience for a God. And in time, it turned into obedience for a set of laws. And quite unexpectedly, one person's battle against religious orthodoxy or fundamentalism, led to the birth of yet another orthodox circle. This happened at various corners of the world in various circumstances.
In Asia, Buddha, a Hindu, stood up against the orthodox Hindu society, and ended up constructing yet another religion called Buddhism. And on the other side of the world, Jesus, a Jew, stood up against the orthodox Jewish society, and ended up being the personal God of yet another religion called Christianity.
Islam - Religion of Peace or Violence
Islam - is it a religion of peace or of violence? This is a question that torments the entire human society. But just because it is correlated with over-exaggerated discussions and debates, does not mean that the question itself is a genuine one. Let me put it this way - Islam is a religion of course, but neither of peace nor of violence. It is a religion like any other religion, that provides a psychological bedrock of baseline cultural identity and individuality to its people. But it is the actions of these people that should be accounted for to define whether the religion "Islam" is a religion of peace or of violence, instead of judging it based on the scripture Quran. Books are no measure for judgement in the society of thinking humanity. It is the actions of the people that counts, nothing else.
Here you must remember, the so-called Jihadis who are in reality, mentally unstable individuals run by Quranic fundamentalists, do not represent the whole Muslim population of the world. Muslims are just as peace-loving as the Christians, Hindus, Jews or Buddhists. Terrorism has nothing to do with religion, Islam or otherwise. Terrorism is born of fundamentalism not of religion.
Peace and Violence are both biological traits of humans as well as the entire animal kingdom. And since humans are the only species capable of creating literatures, it should not be surprising that these literatures would have the same blend of peace and violence, or simply, good and evil, that the human character possesses. And these literatures include all the scriptures in the world. As such, they are not immune to the innate evil of the human psyche. In fact, since these scriptures are the product of a time when ignorance and barbarianism ran rampant in the human society, it is more reason, for evil traits to appear on their pages alongside the goodness that they teach.
Like all human literatures the Islamic literature, the Quran and the Hadith, were also human creation. No Allah or God had anything to with them. They arose from the minds of the humans. The Quranic messages were born from the mind of supposedly the man named Mohammed in a state of transcendence. This state of mind is an extraordinary one, with such unique elements that often leave the smartest individuals baffled. And Mohammed was no smart man, like say, Albert Einstein or James Watson. He was an ordinary man of his time, who attained the state of transcendence during his daily prayers in a mountain cave. And in that state of transcendence his mind gave rise to all the revelations, both good and bad, that later collectively became known as the Holy Quran. Hence, it is the reader who must distinguish the good from the bad, if he or she is to remain a genuine part of the civilized society.
Let me bring up an excerpt from my book The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance" to shed further light on this matter.
"Think of the bloodshed there has been in consequence of some of the Quranic doctrines that literally command to kill the infidels if they do not become Muslims! Think of the textual creeds that teach, a man who does not believe all the teachings of Quran should be killed and it is a mercy to kill him! The one ultimate rule of the Quranic fundamentalists is “there is one God and Mohammed is his prophet”. Everything beyond that not only is bad, but must be destroyed forthwith. At moment’s notice, every man or woman, who does not exactly believe in that, must be killed. Everything that does not belong to this set of ideals must be killed."
And because of such barbarian actions of the Quranic fundamentalists, many atheists, including my dear friends and colleagues Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris quite naively want to turn every single religious person on earth into an atheist, which by the way, is a great and progressive notion, but I am afraid, it biologically, or to be more specific neurologically, is an impractical idea. Religion itself is a neurological phenomenon which evolved in the human mind to act as an aid in daily life. Which means, Mother Nature selected it as a neuropsychological feature for the humans in the path of survival. Hence, no individual has the power to take such natural trait away from the human mind, unless Natural Selection gives consent. Therefore, it is more practical to make people transform their mindset about religion and religiousness and walk in the path of creed-less religious harmony, than to convert the entire religious population on earth into atheists.
All we need to do, is to turn human actions into a measure of judgement for religions, instead of some old books. Once we successfully do this, eventually we will be able to build a world where the human self shall be the Alpha and the Omega of the society, not a God self of some old books. In fact, the God self depicted in those books, was nothing but the transcendental manifestation of the human self. Which means, the God of humanity is, in actuality, human, or to be more accurate, man himself. Men in different times went into transcendence and quite unintentionally, due to neurological reasons (refer to Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality), mistook the messages rising from their own mind as revelations coming from an external divine realm. Thus, all revelations of all scriptures are the creations of the human mind, not of God.
Now tell me, do you still hail those texts as irrefutable? Do you still think that you are ought to follow every single word of those scriptures with a blind eye? Don't you think that it is the existential responsibility of a civilized human being to measure those texts, as they have such a blinding impact upon the society, with your own rational mind?
Progress of the human society is predicated upon the proper functioning of a key element of the human mind, that is reasoning. Without this mental element we would no longer be a civilized species. And when reasoning runs pure in the heart of the humans, no book has the power to compel them to fight among each other in the name of religion or paradise. Remember, reasoning is the cure for superstitions and bigotry. Once reasoning reigns, love and acceptance become the religion, and hatred and dogmatism become a matter of ancient history.
Further Reading
Abhijit Naskar, 2016, Biopsy of Religions: Neuroanalysis towards Universal Tolerance
Abhijit Naskar, 2016, In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience
Abhijit Naskar, 2017, The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance
Here you must remember, the so-called Jihadis who are in reality, mentally unstable individuals run by Quranic fundamentalists, do not represent the whole Muslim population of the world. Muslims are just as peace-loving as the Christians, Hindus, Jews or Buddhists. Terrorism has nothing to do with religion, Islam or otherwise. Terrorism is born of fundamentalism not of religion.
Peace and Violence are both biological traits of humans as well as the entire animal kingdom. And since humans are the only species capable of creating literatures, it should not be surprising that these literatures would have the same blend of peace and violence, or simply, good and evil, that the human character possesses. And these literatures include all the scriptures in the world. As such, they are not immune to the innate evil of the human psyche. In fact, since these scriptures are the product of a time when ignorance and barbarianism ran rampant in the human society, it is more reason, for evil traits to appear on their pages alongside the goodness that they teach.
Like all human literatures the Islamic literature, the Quran and the Hadith, were also human creation. No Allah or God had anything to with them. They arose from the minds of the humans. The Quranic messages were born from the mind of supposedly the man named Mohammed in a state of transcendence. This state of mind is an extraordinary one, with such unique elements that often leave the smartest individuals baffled. And Mohammed was no smart man, like say, Albert Einstein or James Watson. He was an ordinary man of his time, who attained the state of transcendence during his daily prayers in a mountain cave. And in that state of transcendence his mind gave rise to all the revelations, both good and bad, that later collectively became known as the Holy Quran. Hence, it is the reader who must distinguish the good from the bad, if he or she is to remain a genuine part of the civilized society.
Let me bring up an excerpt from my book The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance" to shed further light on this matter.
"Think of the bloodshed there has been in consequence of some of the Quranic doctrines that literally command to kill the infidels if they do not become Muslims! Think of the textual creeds that teach, a man who does not believe all the teachings of Quran should be killed and it is a mercy to kill him! The one ultimate rule of the Quranic fundamentalists is “there is one God and Mohammed is his prophet”. Everything beyond that not only is bad, but must be destroyed forthwith. At moment’s notice, every man or woman, who does not exactly believe in that, must be killed. Everything that does not belong to this set of ideals must be killed."
And because of such barbarian actions of the Quranic fundamentalists, many atheists, including my dear friends and colleagues Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris quite naively want to turn every single religious person on earth into an atheist, which by the way, is a great and progressive notion, but I am afraid, it biologically, or to be more specific neurologically, is an impractical idea. Religion itself is a neurological phenomenon which evolved in the human mind to act as an aid in daily life. Which means, Mother Nature selected it as a neuropsychological feature for the humans in the path of survival. Hence, no individual has the power to take such natural trait away from the human mind, unless Natural Selection gives consent. Therefore, it is more practical to make people transform their mindset about religion and religiousness and walk in the path of creed-less religious harmony, than to convert the entire religious population on earth into atheists.
All we need to do, is to turn human actions into a measure of judgement for religions, instead of some old books. Once we successfully do this, eventually we will be able to build a world where the human self shall be the Alpha and the Omega of the society, not a God self of some old books. In fact, the God self depicted in those books, was nothing but the transcendental manifestation of the human self. Which means, the God of humanity is, in actuality, human, or to be more accurate, man himself. Men in different times went into transcendence and quite unintentionally, due to neurological reasons (refer to Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality), mistook the messages rising from their own mind as revelations coming from an external divine realm. Thus, all revelations of all scriptures are the creations of the human mind, not of God.
Now tell me, do you still hail those texts as irrefutable? Do you still think that you are ought to follow every single word of those scriptures with a blind eye? Don't you think that it is the existential responsibility of a civilized human being to measure those texts, as they have such a blinding impact upon the society, with your own rational mind?
Progress of the human society is predicated upon the proper functioning of a key element of the human mind, that is reasoning. Without this mental element we would no longer be a civilized species. And when reasoning runs pure in the heart of the humans, no book has the power to compel them to fight among each other in the name of religion or paradise. Remember, reasoning is the cure for superstitions and bigotry. Once reasoning reigns, love and acceptance become the religion, and hatred and dogmatism become a matter of ancient history.
Further Reading
Abhijit Naskar, 2016, Biopsy of Religions: Neuroanalysis towards Universal Tolerance
Abhijit Naskar, 2016, In Search of Divinity: Journey to The Kingdom of Conscience
Abhijit Naskar, 2017, The Islamophobic Civilization: Voyage of Acceptance
