RELIGION; ITS WOES AND ITS WEAKNESS.  By Dotun George

From my experience and my dealings with people, most especially my students and their curiousity in knowing my believe system. Sometime they asked me which religion do I practice and in my characteristic manner, I will tell them none. One young lady walked up to me one day and said to me, I have observed you for years and how you talked really convinced me that you don’t believe in anything and in any religion.
My write up is not to discredit or rubbish any religion but to help people think and stop all the nonsense going on in our clime and the world today.

The greatest threat to the future of the world is religion. Nuclear weapons, terrorism, SARS, shifting government, military coups, and AIDS are simply tools used by religion. More wars have been fought in the name of religion than any other influence. Millions have died over the past 2000 years under the destructive hand of religious zeal. Misplaced and misguided religious passion has produced such historical scars as the Crusaders, the Inquisition, ethnic cleansing, and the horror of the Holocaust.

Why is religion so power and controlling? Why is it more powerful than politics, military arms and scientific advancement? Because religion is not just a social, cultural, political, or ideological, instead it finds its power in the personal chambers of the soul of the individual who embrace it. Within the soul we discover the source of the private motivation that forms perceptions and behavior. Man is more willing to die for the sake of his religion than for any political, social, or ideological reason.

Religion is as old as mankind, finding its roots in the private recesses of the human spirit. Every culture, no matter how old or far removed, has developed some form of religious practice that attempts to satisfy an elusive vacuum in the pit of the human soul crying out for reason, purpose and significance. For mankind, life on planet has been nothing more than a long tedious march down the road of time, with each new generation searching for something they cannot define. The long chains of civilizations have undeniable imprints on the pages of history – evidences for our generation that the search continues. From the secrets etched on the walls of ancient caves to the grand archaeological monuments to the remnants of the great empires, man marches on seeking to find himself and make sense of his world. Man travels through this world have produced a tapestry of religion practices and ideologies that only serve to create more problems than they solve.

A brief look at our modern, sophisticated, technocratic, cyberspace age world of today can be the source of fear, depression, discouragement, insecurity and uncertainty. From the archaic world of the cave men and bush hunters through the progressive succession of the agrarian cultures to the advent of the industrial revolution leading to the scientific age of post-modernism and the computer age, we are still on better than nor different from our ancestors of old. Why? Because we fail to adopt the greatest ideal and fundamental that sustain human existence, which is love.

Nigerians are the people who have misguided passion and conviction when it comes to religion, most cases we wasted our energy on the altar of religion in order to score cheap political or ethnic point, which invariably draw us backward and retrogressively prevented us to achieve a better society built on love, social justice and equity.
God did not start any religion and He is not going to start anyone tomorrow, because it was never His ideal and idea. The whole issue of religion is man’s idea to regain what he lost or to return to God he was disconnected from. My appeal  goes to those religious extremist who perpetuated evil, wickedness and harvoc in the name of religion and doing service to God, that, it is time to embrace the greatest gift in human history which is love.

My maternal grandparents are muslim, they love me and my siblings with passion and we never relate on religion anytime or anyway. My paternal grandparents are traditionalist, before my paternal grandmother became a Christian and to many, it was an accident. To this wonderful people, we never had issue base on religion.
What surprised me most of the time is how we desecrate our humanity in the name of religion and destroy our human dignity in the name of doing service to one God, who never approved or compelled us to do the things we do. Can we have a rethink today. I will never be offended because someone beside me decided to worship and adore Allah or Mohammed, neither we I be offended because another decided to follow Jesus.
Let us stop all the nonsense going on in the name of religion and accept each other like brothers and sisters. The only cure for the degenerated society and dying world is “God” and  “love”. Love for God and love for humanity will save us unnecessary calamity.