In a world that seems to be getting increasingly polarized on the basis of religion and coming to the brink of war, weapons of mass destruction threaten the very existence of our society. It is not difficult to identify the nuclear flashpoints that exist in our world, be it the Indo-Pak border, the Gaza strip, or America’s war on terror. With fair ease one can imagine a day when we are thrown back to a primitive state and would have to start rebuilding society in the hope that history wouldn’t repeat itself. A fresh start would give us the opportunity to critically look at every aspect of society, and with the advantage of hindsight pick and choose the aspects that would prove to be genuinely helpful in the future.

We can imagine various aspects of our society till date as products of the human intellect. Most of these emerged due to a certain need at some point in history. For a few we had an estimate of their implications in the future, for others we didn’t, and some we outright misjudged. Given the opportunity of a fresh start we are presented with a supermarket housing all these aspects as products. Shopping in this intellectual supermarket we would have to carefully judge the positives and negatives that tag along with every aspect of human society, weigh these against one another and perhaps against other aspects and then make a conscious decision to include or exclude these from our new society. Certain aspects that have served us well in the past, we would willingly add to our shopping cart. Trade may be one of them. At the same time we may walk past aisles like the one carrying the weapons program. Meandering through this supermarket we would sooner rather than later come across religion. What do we do here?

Do we have an assessment of what religion has done for the society and what its place is, in today’s world? Religion is one of the oldest attributes of the human society and many would go so far as to argue that religion is an inherent value of a human being, and hence the question of finding a place in our intellectual supermarket wouldn’t arise in the first place. It is not something we can choose to keep or let go. This view however finds a counter in an ever-growing population of non believers. The number of atheists and agnostics is well beyond what would be considered a minor aberration in human tendencies. Add to that the light thrown by neurology and genetics and we can prove beyond reasonable doubt that belief in God or religion is not an inherent necessity but an evolutionary tag-along. This makes it open to debate and criticism just like any other attribute of human behaviour.

Humans tend to be curious to a very high degree but what separates them from other animals is the ability to pursue these curiosities and to make significant headway at satisfying them. Even today we live in a world with many unknowns and if we look back to the beginning of society, a lot of questions would have not just troubled our ancestors but haunted them. Questions like where do we come from? What is the purpose of our existence? How did the universe come to be? Who guides the stars and planets with such clockwork precision?

The anxiety created by these mysteries needed to be satiated and different religions stepped up with possible explanations of the mystery. The explanations, among themselves, varied drastically but kept the respective communities satisfied. While in Christianity all one needed to do was look up a book, his Hindu counterpart would have to meditate and reach a level of higher consciousness to experience the answers. There was no way to check the truth in these answers, no concept of proof. But it served a purpose and society thrived, for a while at least.

Can we bank on a similar support today? Given the advancement of science very few people should hold on to religion in a hope that it will answer the questions mentioned above. Most of those questions have still not been answered by science but few should doubt the ability of science to get to the truth. In a short span science, through its methodology, has surpassed the reach religion had in trying to explain nature. Every single day science pushes the frontier of human knowledge a little further and it is unlikely that it would stop in our new society. Even if we remain skeptical about the powers of science, we surely know better than to take the religious writings literally. These scriptures are thought to be complete in the absolute sense and there is no scope for further advancement of knowledge. On the other hand science has only just begun unravelling the mysteries of our universe and its limits seem far away.

But the same religious writings also mention a lot of aspects that make sense especially for a new society just growing out of the soils of unrest. Morals form a large part of this. Most religions show us away to live our lives in an ideal way. What we must do and what we must not to achieve peace and happiness. These teachings would come very handy in a new society wouldn’t they? How else will we know good from bad?

As it turns out, the notion that morals find their origin in the religious scriptures is a myth. A closer look at the way our society exists would reveal that wherever we get our morals from, it is not from the holy scriptures. There are a lot of negative and some outright depraved thoughts mentioned in these writings. From restricting the freedom of women, to killing in the name of God, from bigoted ideologies to anti-contraceptive injunctions, from stoning adulterers to death to justifications for polygamy, the scriptures are full of contradictions and morals that we no longer adhere to in this day and age. It is something beyond religion that allows us to judge the validity of a moral action mentioned in the scriptures and choose which ones to keep and which to throw out. Once again, no one takes the scriptures literally. If we possess this judgment anyway, what is the need of those scriptures from the point of view of morality?

Religion seems to give psychological support to believers. Most religions preach about afterlife. Some claim that once you die you would go to a beautiful place where all your troubles would vanish, while others claim that you would be born again in a different form. And even if you are not the one to believe in afterlife, in this life there is a supreme power watching over you, guiding you and tracking your progress. It seems that if you get in trouble you have the comfort of knowing you are not alone. But the thought that the universe owes you comfort is simply ridiculous. The universe is a very hostile place and we live on an oasis within it. That such a place exists is an incredible thought in itself. Why would you want to dilute its significance by claiming that this is just a step to a better place?

Religion also extends social support. Many religious believers today do not take the scriptures literally. Yet they hold on to their beliefs because it gives them a social identity, and an access to the community. What else has the power of getting people together the way festivals of Diwali, Holi, Christmas or Id have? Churches on every Sunday, temples on every Tuesday or mosques on every Friday get thousands of people together under one roof. Surely this is an attribute that points in favor of religion. While there can be no denying this aspect, one wonders whether you need religion to foster such communities. Today festivals are celebrated across all religions and you are unlikely to find a person objecting to the celebration of his festival by a person of a different faith. These festivals can always be celebrated without the religious baggage if community spirit and celebration are the objectives. Because it is this religious baggage that draws a differentiating line between humans who are otherwise no different.

For long, religion has been an underlying cause of wars, communal violence, riots and the despicable acts of terrorism. Countries have been divided, millions of lives shattered and a fear has engulfed society which in turn feeds more violence. Communities have been destroyed and stereotypes created and all of this mainly because of differences of opinions as to the holy writs.

Religion has been a hurdle in the progress of science ever since the time of Galileo. As much as one may want the domains of science and religion to be disjoint and independent from one another, it is just not possible. After explaining human evolution and the formation of the universe and Earth, science now finds itself at the brink of explaining human emotions and thoughts. Inroads are being made into our understanding of morals and the classification of good and evil; a domain earlier thought to be beyond the realm of science. In such a scenario it is impossible for religion and science to coexist. Clashes are inevitable and are being observed across the world.

Secular countries are spending millions of tax payer’s money to promote religion at various levels, whether it is a subsidized Haj pilgrim, or freebies during the Amarnath yatra. Lavish temple complexes are coming up across the country and other secular parts of the world. Politicians publicly perform prayers and other rituals when it is clear that the politician is a representative of every citizen irrespective of his or her belief (or non belief). Why should a person’s hard earned money be splurged by the government to promote any religion when our constitution screams secularism?

Had it not been for religion, India would not have been divided in two; Godhra would not have burnt; Kashmir would have been a peaceful paradise on Earth; the World Trade Center would have stood tall; and countless children would have had a happier abuse-free childhood. How many more partitions would we need before we realize the intensity of the poison that religion spreads in our society, and that morality and goodness aren’t given to us by religion? How many more times do we have to come to the brink of extinction and rebuild ourselves before we let religion stay on the shelf or better still in historical museums?