Religion (s)

Mood: Calm, relaxed
Song: Kaatrinile_varum_geetham.mp3

What an wonderful afternoon this has been! It has been always a pleasure to house sit my Prof's house, which sits on top of a small hillock, surronded on all sides by lush green trees.. The climate outside, cant beat it man. Perfect for Spring..Wish I lived in a place like Colorado, I would have went for some outdoor activities..

With this perfect ambience, I am thinking why not ponder over an interesting piece on good vs evil..I am sure everyone of us would agree that God symbolises good, but what about evil? It would be interesting to check out how each one of the religions out there perceive evil as.
- Judaism, Christianity: Both of these religions belive in single God and in messengers from God coming time and again to lead human to right path. What about evil? As far as Christianity goes, it portrays evil in the form of Devil.. Devil is considered in Bible as the brother of God, who for his wrongdoings was kicked out of heaven, and thus has been renegated to hell. So anything anti-Godly is characterized as Devil..In easy terms,the concept of Good and Evil is bipolar in Chistianity.. So you can either do good, be loved by God or do bad and loved by Devil.
- Islam: Islam, the religion brought to the humans by Prophet Mohammed in 620 A.D. again believies in single God and in messengers from him. As with Christianity, Islam also is bipolar in conceptualizing Good vs Evil and whose responsible for what. All that is good is characterized by Allah and all that is bad is relegated to Shaitan.
- Hinduism: What about Hinduism and its cohorts of Hinduism based religions like Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism? Hinduism takes a continum approach to the good vs bad problem. Yes, hinduism does have a personification of bad in the name of Maya, but believes that it is only God who is the ruler of all the things including Maya.. If you do good or bad, you are still being protected by God and it is you, who would pay for your bad deeds..In my opinion, unlike Christianity or Islam, Hinduism based religions are very flexible and pardoning in its conceptualization of Good vs Bad..Hinduism believes that only God is instrumental in the good or bad deeds of human..
Well, I am always bedazzled by Theology. When we talk about religion, all we think about is Spirituality and we put a spiritual pardah on whatever happens/happened in it. Is that what it is? Has religion evolved or existed till now just bcos of Godly intervention? Religion, like other things about human, is mostly developed into the form as we know today by our forefathers. If you ask any good theologists, they would tell you about the origin of christianity and how it is different today. Religion, is part of the society and the society builds it/destroys it. If not, what would be the reason for demise of religions like Zorastrianism which is much much older than Judaism / Christianity? Religion like history is written by winners. Can anyone not accept the fact that vision that if the Roman King (whose name i am not able to recollect), accepted Christianity as the official religion of Rome, Church wouldnt have got any power and thus Christianity wouldnt have any incentive to have survived. The same logic applies to Islam.. If not for the Mughals, Mongols and Sultans of Ottaman Empire Islam would have confined itself to the remote areas of Mecca and Medina..
Among the existing religions of today Hinduism is the oldest and thus the most flexible one. it would be interesting to see how the relatively younger religions develop into. Already in its 2000 years of existence we can see Christianity split into numerous factions like Mormons, Prebeterians, Protestants, Catholics and so on. Could we be able to put a time series curve for these religions and hypothetically discuss its path?