Religion restricting Intelligence – You want to be religious? Don’t ask Questions! – 6 Jun 12

Sometimes I get asked ‘You write a lot about Hindu religion and things which are bad in it, for example the caste system. How come?’ I tell them that I was born into this, I grew up with this and called it my profession once. Obviously this has the consequence that I know a lot about it but I am not only against Hinduism, I am actually against any religion, against the whole concept of religion. I believe that apart from the negative things that happened because of religion, it is just wrong that religion wants you to be a blind follower and additionally religion wants to convince everybody to be such a follower.

I believe that the concept that religion uses for its following is wrong. The main idea and condition that you have to understand when converting to any religion is that you need to trust. You have to believe. Don’t question and don’t have doubts. Whatever you are told is true, even if it seems strange or wrong to you. You want to be religious? Don’t ask!

Religion attacks your power of questioning and your intelligence. You are allowed to use your intelligence but only in a very limited way. You can ask people to tell you more about their scriptures but never question the religion itself. You have a limited area in which you can move your intelligence freely. It is like a stadium in which you can run around. Take one round after the other, another one and another one but never dare to put a foot anywhere else or to open a door and look what is outside the stadium!

In this way religion limits the freedom of people and controls them. Sects do that even more strongly. And with all those restrictions on the thinking and on people’s opinions, you can feel that they want to hold people, want to keep them from changing their belief.

At the same time they send missionaries, priests and whatever those people are called in different religions to spread the word. There are so many people who have only this profession: spreading a religion, promoting a religion and converting as many people as possible to their belief.

This is where I believe the definition of religion does not only mean anymore ‘way of life’ or ‘philosophy’. It is not anymore the word ‘dharma’, about which I also recently wrote.

How should you be able to tell me about my dharma? How can you tell me about my way of life, about what I accept in my life? Or how could I tell you about yours? Everybody has his own dharma and that’s how it should be. How could I be able to simply accept your dharma and how should I be able to force you to accept mine?

We have to think about what we want and what we accept in life ourselves. Who are you to tell me about my way of life? Everybody is maintaining their own lifestyle and philosophy which can even change from time to time. I want to be only human until my last breath and until then follow the dharma of humans, the philosophy of love and not the manipulation and control of religion. In this way I will be free to think what I like, to question everything and to believe what I feel is right.

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