Written by mlife.org
The opponents of the religious life argue that religion was put
together as a sort of outpouring of man's feeling of powerlessness in
the world or of his feelings of relief and gratitude when rescued from
powerlessness. In summary form, the argument goes like this:
Certain
natural phenomena proved impenetrable to man's understanding and
control and so he attributed them to a creator. Or, man attached to
certain natural phenomena an aura of sacredness because he derived an
unreliable benefit from them. Indeed, he went so far, in some cases, as
to deify such phenomena. Thus it was, they say, that the river Ganges
came to be held sacred by the people of India, or the Nile by the people
of Egypt, and, in different ways, the cow by both. Confronted by
fearful insecurity in the world, they say, man sought to secure himself
by revering and appeasing what he supposed to be the source of his
security or insecurity. The division, in some cultures, of this aura of
sacredness between two deities, one good the other evil, led to the
attribution of love and mercy to one, and of terror and punishment to
the other. The argument carries on to 'explain' in a similar way the
concept of hell and heaven, and eventually concludes with the
observation that religion became, for the middle classes of people in
society, a comforting illusion, and for the men of power in that
society, and most especially for the men of religion, a means of
manipulating the masses in short, 'the opiate of the people'
Does this argument have any real foundation?
It does not.
Religion is not by any means a consequence of infirmity in reason nor does it depend upon any infirmity of will.
Among the meanings of the term religion are obedience, recompense, and a way or path. These meanings are interlinked. The path is the way that leads, through obedience, to God, the All Mighty, and at the end of life man will have to render full account of his good and bad deeds, all that he did on the way. In a more technical sense, religion may be defined as 'the whole of the Divine Law as it guides any person possessed of reason to do good'. Just as the Law distinguishes a legally responsible person from one who is not, so also the demands of the religious life are addressed to a being capable of reason and not to one incapable. Religion is not there because man cannot reason or because of what he cannot understand; rather, it is there because, by God, he can reason and because of what, by God, he can understand. Further, man obeys or disobeys God by exercising his free will. Obedience is required of him, it is not imposed. The notion that religion happens simply because man desires to obtain a good harvest and to avoid a bad one, in other words simply because he has no choice, no control, in his affairs, is utterly absurd. The true religion does not negate free will. On the contrary, it most particularly points out that nature was not created to impose upon man but to benefit him and enlarge his potential, and it emphasizes that man was endowed with the ability to choose his way by exercising the freedom to do so.
