I'm feeling philosophical today, so I thought I would share this with the generality.
Before anything else, I must clearly convey that I am not an atheist and don't want to frustrate any religion in any way.
This blog post comes in the wake of the terror attack by IS in Brussels. The main rationale of these terror groups is to profess the Islamic religion and convert people from other religions to Islam.
Their ideology is flawed at its very basic level, leave out the violence and terror, all these insurgent groups are powered by their ideology that Islam/one religion is the only way in which one can achieve God.
Now let's commence with a history lesson and look at ancient religions meticulously, namely Vedic (Hinduism), Greek and Roman mythology, we see a consistency and pattern across all of them. There's Indra, the King of Gods, the Lord of the Sky and wielder of Lightning , Zeus/Jupiter, the King of Gods, the Lord of the Sky and wielder of Lightning. Also, people of all these religions are Sun worshipers and the Sun is considered to be a "God" whom we can see (Pratyakshadevata). Even the languages, i.e. Sanskrit and Greek language are very similar in text.
So, I believe that one religion was the origin of the other. We know that the Vedic texts are the most ancient religious texts in the world, so it was probably the Greek religion which sprang up from the Vedic religion. And it wasn't as if the Vedic religion sprang out of vacuum, it was created by men.
On the other hand, let's consider Christianity, Buddhism and Islam which I will refer to as neo-religions. These are relatively newer religions who have a prophet or a messiah who professes his ideology and his message to the people. The message given by these figures is always sound. They tell us to live a simple life, to be kind and to serve others, to love others and to not practice violence. Even in Hinduism there is Shirdi Sai Baba, Shankaracharya etc. We can say that the teachings of the neo-religions are the same as that of the ancient religions, except that these teachings were in context of the happenings of that era or that particular place/region.
These figures are definitely not a manifestation or an avatar of God himself. These are normal learned men who have figured out how to lead a happy contented life, and what better way to reach God, than leading such a life ? Unfortunately, human beings have a very terrible habit of portraying such figures as Gods and to start worshiping them instead of following their teachings. The marvels that the stories tell are nothing more than folk tales, so that the public would look at these figures with reverence.
What we can infer from the whole history lesson above, is that religion is something that was created by man. It wasn't created through magic, or through God's own will. All these ancient texts and books, are nothing but guides, written by learned men which teaches people how to lead a fulfilling life and attain ultimate salvation. Because, THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD.
It is as Swami Vivekananda said about Vedantic Philosophy, Religion is just a path invented by humans to achieve God, there can be many different paths for the same destination. And people should understand that tolerance is the ability to understand the same and to say that "You go your way, I'll go my way, we'll meet at the ultimate destination".We can even create our own path which confirms to the old teachings and is applicable in the modern context. But if we go on bickering about whose path is the best or the fastest, they'll just be stuck right there on the path fighting each other with blood soaked hands and deep wounds. Terrible happenings could have been avoided if people were conscious enough that they were going against all that their path stands for and "terrorism" would be all but non existent.
10. The ________ effect is the term used when somebody talented is ignored for most of his life and then gains immense popularity very fast. Hint: Grimm's Fairy tales
