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Letter: Religion and freedom
Wed, 08/06/2008 10:17 AM | Reader's Forum
Indonesia - and the world - have far too many religions. Ethics is not the exclusive preserve of religion and neither is a belief in God.
Belief in a single uniting divinity is harmless, helps people to appreciate and be grateful for their existence and to treasure all their blessings.
It is a counterweight to the materialistic pressures which insist that we do not have enough and that we should want more and more.
Unburdened from complex belief systems, such a simple axiom does not require us to jump through mental hoops but is enough psychologically for us to make sense of our own existence and to give a sense of purpose to our lives.
But religion is something different entirely. While purporting to be about worshiping God, what it does in fact do is to divide people; create clerical elites; disturb people with the repeated noise of loudspeakers or bells; burden our minds with guilt and worst of all, stop us from being able to question and use our minds to the full.
Instead of giving thanks under the trees and stars for all the wonders of the universe, we worship saints and prophets under the roofs of cramped and gloomy man-made structures, in languages we do not understand.
Religion creates weird and dangerous world views which set us about with enemies and fears. It demands of us unremitting and meaningless duties and sacrifices. It is the spark for war and hatred while claiming to be the source of peace and love. It is evil.
No, the opposite of religion is not atheism nor amorality. The opposite of religion is freedom.
RAFIQ MAHMOOD
Bogor, West Java
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Dr Ng Swee Ching (not verified) — Thu, 08/07/2008 - 9:27am
The opposite of religionis not freedom, for religion is also freedom. Everyone must be free to chose his or her religion, based on their understanding of life. No earthly authority should imposed a religion on anyone, for religion deals with God and the afterlife, where such authorities do not exist. MOst religion - if not all religion - will subscribe to the theology that God is the supreme ruler in the afterlife.
So unless the nation on earth is ruled directly by God, any other authorities do not have a mandate.
So people should be free to choose what to believe. If they want to make their own gods by all means. If they choss not to do so fine. We can all co-exist by respecting each others choice.
Any religion which calls upon their members to dissociate themselves from non-members cannot be seriously considered to be a religion.
Rafiq Mahmood, Bogor (not verified) — Thu, 08/07/2008 - 4:26am
Please do not try to "correct" what is not wrong. As well as changing a grammatically correct sentence into one that is not, your sub-editor has completely distorted the meaning of my letter and I demand a correction.
I wrote "Indonesia - and the world - has far too much religion." I did NOT write "Indonesia - and the world - have far too many religions." The apologists for Hizbut-Tahrir and others want to reduce the number of religions in Indonesia to only one - their own. I certainly do not agree with them.
If religion means the relationship each person feels - or does not feel - for what they perceive as their Maker then there are about 240 million religions in Indonesia and that is how it should be.