'GOD' as a NEEDLESS HYPOTHESIS

'Is it neccessary to believe in God to be a good person?
I think not. In a way the traditional notion of God is outdated. One can be spiritual but not religious.
Some of the best people in history did not believe in God, while some of the worst deeds were committed in HIS name, and even today such incidents can be heard of.'

These are not the words of a free thinking rationalist that religious fanatics are grumping for. They are the words of Pope Francis- the first pope from America.

More than a century after Nietzche proclaimed his demise, is humankind beginning to feel that- like an adolescent who outgrows childish clothes- we have outgrown the psychological, emotional and spiritual need of God.

Socio -biologists claim that religion and concept of God not only helped our proto-human ancestors understand the forces of nature, such as thunder and lightening, but also served an evolutionary purpose. Those who worshipped a particular deity formed a caln, or tribe, the members of which would help each other in conflicts with other clans and in the sharing of resources such as food, so as to enhance the chances of survival of the entire group.

According to socio-biology, in pre-history, religion served an evolutionary end. The more cohesive a factor religion was in bonding a clan together, and making it better equipped to overcome competing claims in the struggle for survival, the more effective it became as an evolutionary tool.

From the outset, religions were genetically programmed to vie with each other in fierce, often centually violent, competition.'Stronger' religions- which not only had a comparatively larger number of followers, but whose adherents were more committed to their common faith system and therefore to each other-prevailed over weaker religions which lacked both number and unanswering singleness of belief.

Fanaticism, unquestioning and unquestionable dogma, became the adernaline, the testosterone, of religion; violence, latent or manifest, say at the heart all religions creeds.

Spiritual masters like Buddha and Mahavira, Jessus and Muhammad and Guru Nanak- evolutionary mutants, who saw through the illusory divisiness of religious barriers to the undifferentiated unity of the human spirit- preached a gospel of oneness. But their followes subverted their teachings to foster separateness and strife, from the crusades, to the civil war in Buddhist Sri Lanka, to Khalistani terriorism, to the rise of the IS and the killing of rationalist in India and Bangladesh by Hindu and Islamic fanatics.

From being an aid to human evolution, religion has become one of the most serious threats to civilization, a construct based not just on the airy-fairy ideal of a common humanity but on the literally down-to-Earth reality that all of us share a common planet equally endangered by environmental despoilation and religio-political jingoism.

The backlash against religionhas been spear-headed by scientists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris who have cogently and eloquently argued that far from being a negationof moral codes and an ethical life, atheism as a form of consciousness- raising is an affirmation of spiritual transcenence.

When the french philosopher- mathematicain Pierre-Simon Laplace presenteda copy of his monumental work on the creation of the universe, Mecanique Celeste, to Napolean, the soldier-emporer asked, why there was no mention of GOD in the book. Laplace replied- "I had no money of that Hypothesis."

Is it time we outgrow that "needless hypothesis"? Those who say it is, can do so with the blessings of Pope Francis.

Repost: speakingtree.com