Receipt - Religion

5 May 2019

This is the nature of me, I have written another post halfway, and got the urge to write about something else. So here I am. Here is a short. I hope it doesn’t become a long.
God receives your prayers. Or does she?
What is the purpose of religion?
Religions are based upon the concept of a god or a deity. Hence those beings are what I assume prayers are directed to.
Certain religions have set specific timings during which prayers are supposed to be done. A set number of times a day, a specific place, facing a certain direction.
What of you don’t follow those rules? The books say that the gods will not receive your prayer and you have to abide the rules for some few consecutive days to reset your “sin-meter”.
Some religions require you light an incense. Barring that, will god not hear your prayer?
Then again, no where in the history of this religion stipulates the use of incense. Why then is it used?
These customs are just made up, and in the case of young Singapore, religious traditions unique to us are made up very recently. Yet so many of us view them as sacred longstanding traditions that must not be broken.
Some people say religion is meant to bring peace to the soul. To that I agree.
Others claim their gods can do miracles and influence the future. To that I call bullshit. And the people who participate in those activities, giving cash donations, prayer offerings to be burnt, etc, in hope that they will be blessed, I call them mercenaries.
I may sound like a broken record as of now. But the Chinese people have a long history of being mercenaries. Working for money and not for allegiance. Or rather, money can be used to buy their allegiance.
Same goes for religion. That the Chinese only believe in a religion because it benefits them. I once saw a blog post on this topic and it resonated so much with me, it felt like everything I have experienced about religion in my life until then, just fell into place.
This could be a misquote, but Marx did call religion an opiate. That religion is merely a response to bad times. And that the improvement of economic conditions will eradicate the need for religion.
Then why is religion still prevalent today?
It is also a form of power-play.
On an Instagram comment section, (@panwithaplan post about veganism) I happened to exchange a few comments with a Jewish girl. I made the claim that the distinction of what is edible and what is not (or you have broken kosher and that is such a sin) is completely arbitrary. To which she concurred. And they find it completely okay that they have been thoroughly convinced (Read: indoctrinated. Brainwashed.) as to what they should be eating, and it is a distinction which carries no health or moral basis and is simply kept for the sake of keeping tradition. Note, Judaism is by no means the only religion with such arbitrary rules. Almost all monotheistic, polytheistic, and non-theistic religions have some arbitrary food rules.
It is so meaningless. That if not for power, what else? Gather a group of people and tell them that we will be one family as long as you completely believe in the ideology. And I am the leader. How religion emerged a long-time ago seems to resemble the modern formation of pyramid schemes.

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