Well, this post was pretty much inspired by a quote I read in another blog (which I won’t mention). I don’t really agree with it, but this is not a blog war or something. I’m just using it as a springboard.
The quote is: “The cornerstone of faith is fear of the unknown.”
The two key parts of the quote are “fear” and the “unknown”. If we look at this, I think the quote is spot on for a lot of religions. Not meaning to negative, but I’ll be honest:
Islam
I’m going to cite the Quran on certain assertions I’m making about Islam. This is dogmatic Islam – when Muslims believe in the entirety of the Quran. I don’t intend to insult anyone, because most Lexington Muslims don’t follow dogmatic Islam. Nonetheless, here’s what Islam is really about:
First, you have to spend your entire life worrying about whether you’ve done more good deeds than bad deeds. You’ve got to worry about whether your scales are positively balanced. Salvation is dependent on your scales (Surah 17:13-14) – whether your good outweighs your bad. You have no current tally of your good and bad; you just have to guess. If you’re half religious, with these views – you’re going to have a pretty miserable life, not to mention – you’ll be quaking in fear about every single thing that comes your way, hoping you can earn that “good deed” point. Not only that – salvation is an “unknown” – you have no way of knowing if you’re saved or not in Islam (there is one exception, which I’ll get to later).
Second, you have an impersonal ‘god’, namely Allah, who does not engage in personal conversation with a mere human being. In the Quran, Satan claims through Mohammed, that God is far off and too ‘great’ for humans to relate to (Surah 2:277). That’s why the 5 pillars are there, so that you can “earn your way into heaven” by follow this set of 5 rules. Again – you have no divine figure to come and help you, since Allah is far off and impersonal. You have no clue how ‘god’ is, except that he’ll screw you over if you don’t obey the 5 pillars. You are eclipsed by the unknown and the result is, as the quote says, fear.
Third, fear drives Muslims to the only sure way of attaining salvation. This is the one exception I was talking about. This solution is jihad and actual, physical martyrdom. I’m not talking about that internal Jihad that they taught us in world history to be politically correct. Hadith 1:35 clearly states that physical death fighting infidels guarantees you a spot in heaven, wiping away all your sin. You don’t have a Savior to shed His blood for you – so you try and save yourself, by blowing yourself into pieces. I might be sounding somewhat obnoxious right now, but deep down – I’m so sorry for you. You were given a beautiful life and you threw it away because you were afraid of the possible consequences of a life without martyrdom.
Ever wonder why insurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq keep alternating and getting stronger – Al Qaeda and other traditional Muslims are teaching you this. Dying for Allah brings you salvation. That’s their message. That’s why they can keep sending off thousands of kids – our age – to go off and murder themselves and others to get their salvation. Now – what is the reward in Islam. The truth is going to sound crude – but I’ll say it as the Quran says it. Surah 4:57 says that “Heaven is where men sit on couches, being served wine by perpetual virgins”. I’m not trying to hurt anybody’s feelings – just telling you the truth. It’s the reason I feel not only anger at the Arab Muslims who murder innocent Westerners, but I feel great sadness that you feel compelled to do this because Satan’s messed with your mind so much. Know that I’m praying for you…
Now, let’s go to another huge religious group – Hinduism.
Now, I was once a Hindu – I can give you personal testimony to the fear I lived in. For starters, Hinduism doesn’t have scripture that matters. The most devout Hindus don’t care about the Gita – they just worship pieces of bronze. The most ascetic Hindus spend their lives in the trees hoping to come up with some new interpretation of the Gita. People have taken the Gita from being the literal fight between the Pandavas (good guys) and the Kauravas (bad guys), while others take this fight to be a symbolic inner fight. There are Hindus who think that ‘god’ is external and in 300 million incarnations (which are the idols they worship) and there are others who think humans are ‘god’. There are still others who think that ‘god’ is in everything and that all things must be respected – from your school textbook, to your clothes, to your shoes –everything. There is no doctrine in Hinduism. You can think of it as ancient liberalism – an ancient form of moral relativism. It’s the reason why the New Age movement has literally fed off such Eastern scripture.
I guess one thing that’s somewhat “doctrine” about Hinduism is karma. Karma is pretty much Newton’s 3rd law with morality. Every human action has an equal and opposite reaction to you. Every good action has a proportional reward and every bad action has a proportional punishment. Seems wonderful…except for a couple of things.
First, you have no idea what constitutes a “good action” and a “bad action”. Hindus think that you can figure it out through experience and Eastern-style meditation/yoga (aka listening to low monotonous music and trying to stop thinking). Yes – I’m serious. The goal of meditation is to stop thinking and get rid of your identity so you can hear this universal energy force or ‘god’.
Second, there is no heaven or hell. If when you die, you did too much bad you get reincarnated as a lower being. So Hitler would now be like an ant. If you did a lot of good stuff, you then escape reincarnation and your ‘soul’ (which is that inner “energy force”) escapes this world and joins this massive energy force (called Atman). Your individuality (Brahman) is lost and it becomes the Atman. Think of your soul as a drop of water. Salvation, or moksha, for Hindus is essentially when that drop of water enters the ocean. Wonderful – I become part of a big blob of souls…just what I wanted.
Third, and most reprehensible of all is that every action that happens to you, that isn’t in your control is because of your past Karma. According to Hinduism, the Jews who died in the Holocaust deserved that genocide from their past lives’ actions. By letting them be murdered by the NAZIs, dogmatic Hinduism (if I can call it that) says that we are doing them a favor – since they can then be reborn as better species. Consequently, let’s look at the logical result of this belief – any good or charitable action is inherently wrong. If you help someone who’s suffering, then you’re not letting them go through the bad reincarnation. That poor beggar on the streets – he deserves to be there…if I give money to him, I’m making his ‘bad’ reincarnations prolong – I’m not letting him suffer in this life and then have a better life, next time around.
You know – that’s exactly why India is one of the poorest countries in the world, despite having a pretty sound economy. Charity is wrong! My own grandparents won’t let poor people into their home. My grandfather is a doctor and he will not serve poor patients because that is their assigned reincarnation. My parents shouted at me, when I gave my gift of 10,000 rupees (Indian currency) to a beggar on the streets. Imagine that. And now, when Christian missionary groups go to rural India to genuinely help these poor men and women – untouchables (or, dalits) – then they are murdered because the rich, wealthy, Brahmins want to let the poor die miserable lives, so that they can fulfill their bad karma.
It should be apparent by now what the “fear of the unknown” is for Hinduism. They have no reason to explain why people are poor or why suffering exists – so they invent a karma system of salvation and a caste system to back it up. This way, rich male Brahmins – the highest caste of Hindus – can go to heaven and they are religiously justified in keeping the poor and downtrodden where they “belong” – at the bottom of the social ladder. And don’t think that the caste system is going away yet. The recent election in India saw 3 Hindu fundamentalist governors be elected to Northern States. A couple of years back there was a Muslim pogrom in Gujurat, run by Hindus wanting to drive away Muslims from the country. There is an ongoing problem of churches being burned, Christians being murdered, and poor girls who see the glory of Jesus and their salvation are raped under the banner of helping them fulfill their karmic duty.
The Hinduism you see in America is the Hinduism of the rich Indians with PHDs. There is no poor for them to oppress. Open your eyes and peek into India – and you’ll see Hinduism for what it really is.
Now, I could go on for blogs on end on Islam and Hinduism, but I won’t. The basic purpose of this post was to demonstrate how the quote “the cornerstone of faith is the fear of the unknown” is absolutely true for Hinduism and Islam – and if we went around other world religions, like Buddhism, Taoism, and cults – we would find the same problem. People are scared because they aren’t sure about their salvation. They are scared because they think they’ve done something wrong – they’ve sinned. They try to follow their religion’s “moral” code by their own effort and hope that they good deeds will save them. It’s a never ending cycle of fear, worry, and uncertainty.
