Addendum:
Solution could be:
When materialism is taught in
the schools, many would copy the spirit of Evolution Theory (survival of the
fittest/mightiest, richest or whatever). ‘My desire should be fulfilled at any
cost, no matter what happens to others’ would be the typical attitude most
people would follow. ‘Thus we have the Governments we deserve.’ Result is the
present system of things where the real rulers are LUST (overpopulating the
world beyond its resources), ANGER (saturating the earth with weapons of mass
destruction) and GREED (widening the gap between the rich and the poor—“the
richest 1 per cent of humans own half the world’s assets,” according to Credit
Suisse Report of
October 2014) Even in religion, they are the rulers! Though outwardly
spiritual, religions are actually materialistic encouraging adherents to seek
MATERIAL blessings from God, thus making God a MEANS in materialistic system of
things. Even JWs are no exception as they teach: “You get paradise if you take
up our version of worship.”
Interestingly, great analytical
minds such as Alexander Pope,
Adam Smith, Neil Armstrong, Thomas Alva Edison, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Victor Hugo,Voltaire, Wernher von Braun,
George Washington, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi ………. believed that religions
of this world are like water-tight compartments—they do not unite people, hence
cannot be from God. Gandhi did not share the religious views of the world,
because he declared: “A trader who earns his wealth by deception only succeeds
in deceiving himself when he thinks that his sins can be washed away by
spending some amount of his ill-gotten gains on the so-called religious
purposes. For me, God and Truth are convertible terms, and if anyone told me
that God was a god of untruth or a god of torture, I would decline to worship
Him.” Gandhi thus declared invalid all religions which promise salvation to
their believers in exchange of something material, which would, of course, be
flagrant violation of omnipresent Law of Cause and Consequence—something God
will never do!
All those great people with
keen insight believed that God has given us REASON, not religion. Religions, in general, use fear
and reward to keep the followers with them. Albert Einstein simply dismissed
the very basis of all those religions when he said: "If people are good
only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we
are a sorry lot indeed." He did not believe that God of the
universe has used any religion or scriptures: “I'm not an atheist, and I don't
think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child
entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows
someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not
understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a
mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is.
That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being
toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws
but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious
force that moves the constellations." (from Einstein and Religion by
Max Jammer)
These great men were right. If
religions were from God, they would have remained in harmony with each other
and would have had scriptures that would not conflict with others! Hence those
great men believed that THE NATURE is God’s unchangeable book which contains
all the lessons mankind needs, if they are willing to learn. To mention a few:
1) SUN (whose nature is to give
light and heat) teaches us to light up faces of ours and of others, and to do
things that warm up others through our words and action.
2) TREES (which prepare food
for others to enjoy life) teach us to do good for the sake of good.
3) RIVER (which is always on
the move) teaches us not to be attracted or disturbed by the things of this
world.
4) LAW OF CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE
teaches us to learn from past things and act carefully in the future.
The list goes on and on, making
God’s role throughout the history unnecessary! When individual changes, the
world changes. Individual can make his life a celebration if he chooses to live
by the lessons found in the book of Nature!