Absurd worldviews

Each one of us has a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world around us. This is known as a “worldview”. But every now and then we all come across people with worldviews which cannot be regarded as a result of rational thinking. But the fact that a substantial amount of the world population falls into this category is worrisome. Why do people have absurd worldviews? Can they be reasoned out and made to change their worldview? We all stand at the top of a mountain called “ego” and live deluded lives.

Every time something unfortunate happens to my family, my mother changes the arrangement of the furniture in the house because it’s a belief in India that the whereabouts of the objects at your home can impinge your daily life. This is known as “Vastu” in India. It’s such a firm belief that there are even TV shows aired, just to advocate the belief. Sentences like “find so an so tree and pray to it for 16 weeks and you will get married” or “do this for 21 weeks and you will get a job” are commonplace and if you got to a temple you will see a bunch of people religiously wasting their time praying to snakes and trees and whatnot?

The fact that people believe that there is some mechanism which gives results to their ludicrous behavior is both amusing and disheartening at the same time. The belief in these kinds of rituals hinders the development of any country. I live in a country where the Supreme Court spent about more than ten years, deciding, to which imaginary friend a piece of land should belong to (Ayodhya dispute). If you read the holy books like the Ramayana or the Quran or the Bible, you can’t go beyond half a dozen pages before you come across something which contradicts even with the high school physics that you learned.

Like in Ramayana a character named hanuman can turn into a giant as and when needed and is also able to fly without the need of wings. Beliefs like “a cracker turns into the body of Jesus Christ”. Or that “Muhammad flew on the back of a winged horse and split the moon in two”, Claims as preposterous as these are believed by millions or perhaps billions on this earth. But these beliefs have an interesting characteristic to them. If I go out today and start a religion and preach these kinds of fairy tales, the number of people listening to me would be just as many as the number of people using Apple maps. It’s almost like, the older the belief is the more resistant people become to the stupidity it contains.

What are your thoughts on the picture shown above? It gives you a happy feeling, right? It’s just a bunch of people with various ethnic backgrounds chilling together. And one would say these kinds of images make them happy as it promotes religious harmony. But when I see this image it reminds of the word “Kafkaesque” a word coined to describe the works of Franz Kafka, which basically means going through a lot of unnecessary trouble. It’s like you had a beautiful vase, one day you broke it, tried to revive its beauty by using plaster, finally made it ugly af, and you are happy at the end of it with a glowing face hardly able to conceal your sense of achievement because you feel you achieved something great, ignorant of the roots of the problem. Science shows that all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor and all humans are just a part of one big family, when these humans come up with religions, divide themselves and later when they all try to attend these kitty parties in the name of religious harmony, this whole thing makes me sit in a corner and chuckle.

The reason for separation of India – Pakistan is religion. The crusades were a result of religion. The reason for the operation of ISIS is again a religion. Oppression of women and homosexuals, burning of witches, suicide bombings etc. I can go on and on with the examples but it would be futile as all of us are well aware of the deeds of religion. More people have been killed in the name of god than for any other reason throughout history. Religion is just a small part. People can have absurd worldviews even without a religion like in the case of flat-earthers or racism.

Finally, I would like to advise the readers that if you are walking on a road and you see something inexplicable like a stone just floating in midair, your first instinct shouldn’t be yelling out “ghost” or “god”. Rather conduct scientific experiments, check with the existing discoveries, find out the answer. Chances are it’s already known if not, you would have discovered something new yourself but either way, I am pretty confident that it’s nothing other than”SCIENCE”.

                                                                                                   - Ajet