Monday, December 8, 2014

Role of Religion in building Prejudice

The word prejudice has been unnecessarily associated with undesirable factor while grasping perceptions. But it should be noted that the consciousness uses it as a filter to prevent any contents in perception which may affect its preconceived knowledge. Hence whether you accept or not, the prejudice molds the character, guards self interest and fosters self ego.

Religion is developed to guide the consciousness to select proper virtues like coexistence, brotherhood, compassion and respect of nature for sustainability of human race. It also provides ready made answers to intriguing questions about universe, life and death , biodiversity and natural laws by implanting concept of god. This relieves consciousness from burden of unanswerable questions and gives peace of mind.

Since birth, religion gets attached to person and it forms one part of his identity.  Naming ceremony adds relation to parents. Parents have profound effect on child’s mental growth. Their thoughts, their behavior and their beliefs all influence child’s consciousness as the child has intense desire to get knowledge and full faith in parents. The basic principles of all religions are same but the rituals and method of praying are different. The child follows the rituals and praying and becomes a part of religious community. This creates prejudice about religion by birth.

Growth of intelligence increases thinking power and logic which  start opposing prejudice and try to find reason behind new perceptions. It also raises doubts about rituals and existence of god as the answer to all questions. There is resistance to such behavior from relatives and the community who try to pacify the child with justification logic from religious leaders.

Religion also can be considered an living social entity which tries to grow its believers and provides ample subjective experiences of divotees to prove existence of god and necessity of rituals for success in life.  The stories of miracles as told by people are not all false and fabricated. Many of such experiences or perceptions are actually experienced by pious people whose prejudices are so strong that even the natural events in their life are interpreted as  miracles in their brains.

Base of religion is belief. Base of ethics also is belief. Both when they are together, can create environment for human welfare. However, only religion without ethics may become threat to society as it may corrupt consciousness of community to become wild and unhuman.

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