Why Conscience is more important than Reigious Dictates

(By religion I mean the one that trickles down to us through its man-made interpretitions)

Religion becomes politically necessarry to justify any act of goodness or, evil. Please, don't forget that the Vaticans backed Hitler during second world war. The sub-servience of the blacks by white rulers in South Africa had been justified through biblical references--and then it was the same Biblical references that later condemned such apartheid.

However, I don't think religion is necessarry to make an independant judgement on moral/ethical issues. I think it is more of your conscience and your own relativity to the environment that counts, for a man, in my view, should be defined more by his core, not his religion, because religion blinds a man from seeing evil he's committing in the name of religion.

An implication is that it is because of RELIGION do people keep themselves from committing evil. Is it not? I disagree.

If you look at it more closely, it's basically a heed your "conscience" is giving to what it feels right, otherwise, had I considered anD accepted my Holy Book, I could have become a jihadist who kept the self from having free thoughts.

Second assertion why religion is important is because it can give you some moral guidelines in an otherwise "materialistic" world. If one wants to cite examples where land expansionism and greed for more catapulted bloodshed, then he/she must consider reading history one more time. The Crusades throughout the history had been the prime reason why there'd been so much chaos around. In fact, religion itself had been quite materialistic and goal-oriented. Why? it's a about the Holy Treasury! more the followers, more powerful it becomes. There's no such thing as an unmaterialistic religion. If there is such a thing, then that's spiritualism and mysticism. That has nothing to do with dictates of relgion. It follows its own course and remains quite personal.

The third assertion is the moral codes. As I mentioned earlier, morality is nothing but a personal judgement and that too depends on how you relate yourself to your environment. However, hegemonic dictates of morality have proved to do more wrong than good. There are times when the circumstances run stronger than predetermined moralistic impositions by the society. It is, but ony a religion that gives no respectable place for homosexuals, illegitimate children, women who have fornicated, or have even been raped in some cases, infidels, heretics, sense of good humor, freedom of speech, lifestyle and thought.

Never under any circumstances can you find two people who can think alike, because they have their own convictions. What they seek is not a judgemental religion to lead a civic life in a given society. They need secularism that can ensure that nobody oppress them, transgress into their personal liberties and that their right for protection is well-guarded.

Not all ideologies are evil, or even the practitioners/ followers of it are necessarrily evil. However, the very concept of religion,which otherwise wouldn't exist without it's propogation is what I find evil on two counts:

1) When it tries to propogate its righteousness and absolutist judgementality against those not falling within its realm. (Which reliegion doesn't say that only its followers will go to heaven while its non-believers will rot in hell?)

2) The second inherent trait of it is "preaching", which in my view is taken in two ways; 1) brain washing by using fear tactics (fear of doing something that can result in God's curse/punishmment) and 2nd is Authoritarianism; failure to comply can result in one geting ostracised from the community, or even punished by death in some cases.


As for people like Desmond Tutu as concerned, yes, I admire him a lot, not because he used Bible as a justification to help bringing down the apartheid in South Africa, but because his intentions were much stronger than the religion itself to bridge the gap. But what if Desmond Tutu were a segregationist himself? Then his use of religion to propogandize in favor of apartheid would have been equally justified. It was the conscience of the man, and intentions based on it that helped South Africa move in the right direction.

The question is, why can't this all be done without having to rely on religious beliefs? Are people really that naive that they cannot feel, think and relate themselves with their reality without having to rely on some sort of divinity about it?

Something's been stopping them to take such a "risk' to think independantly. That fear of reblliousness against an orthodox is caused by none other but religious brainwashing.