AN APPRAISAL OF RELIGION IN PERSPECTIVES

By Lucky Racer

We are in the part of the world where religion comes to play in virtually all sectors of the society. The poor man is entangled in so much animosity with his poor fellow while the rich keeps exploiting them. I imagine how the poor man has lost his sense of reasoning and humanity to the fallacies built-up in religion. Several activities are undertaken under the guise of religion and religious organisations are fast becoming solace points for unscrupulous elements.

It is somewhat debatable that most extremisms across the world is consequent upon the fallacies built-up in religion by the rich. They are weapons in the hands of the rich to maintain the status quo. The poor man seeks to attain the unattainable, he struggles to realise the unrealisable, and in the process, he loses his mind to the unpalatable and unavoidable consequence of his folly.

The fallacies built-up in these religious beliefs result in a docile masses. The masses see the rich as unquestionable and infallible authority possessing unlimited and unrestrained powers to control every aspect of their lives. There is the promise of a better life in the after-life and so the poor man leads a brutal life with the hope of having a paradise.

Poor minds are indoctrinated and compelled to fight for a course-less cause. They consequently become fanatics whose morality and sense of reasoning draw from un-probed religious beliefs.
Then I ask myself, how and why shall I fight for a cause inimical to my being and existence?

Karl Marx once said, "Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand". Though religion involves so much mysteries, the poor man is a prey of the miseries. The poor man is made to believe in strange beliefs of an unknown being. Consequently, he acts in defense of these beliefs in the most lethal ways.
I ask myself again, how and why shall I fight for a mysterious cause in vengeance of a mysterious being who cannot avenge himself?

This is not to say that religion is without any good. But that so much fallacies have been built-up in religion by the hegemony constituted by the rich. In fact, it is important to say that religion constitutes one of the bedrocks upon which the society is based. Most of the values we exude resonate some of these religious beliefs. The values of love, hard work, honesty, selflessness, integrity, truthfulness, faithfulness, trustworthiness, tolerance, contentment, respect, purity, patriotism, altruism, etc. all have their roots in some of these beliefs.

I hereby stand with all the Functionalists who believe that religion has certain functions in the society, the most important of which are social cohesion, social control and the meaning it gives to life. All these ensure continuity of the society. However, I stand against every ungodly, inhuman, intolerable, barbaric and unjustifiable activities committed under the pretense of religion.