[Sun Jun 15, 2003 8:55 am]

If anyone had a little bit of brains to question oneself you will see the dangers of religion which only serves to segregate, differentiate and cause animosity between humans making some "MORE EQUAL THAN THE OTHER"! In fact religion based discrimination is worse than racial discrimination and has definitely led to more violence in the history of human kind than any other factor. The Christians will try and claim of themselves as a peace loving religion now but if anyone knows a bit of history of even a few hundred years ago, burning at the stake of heretics not of other religion but WITHIN THEIR OWN SECTS was very common !

It is just that they have a higher population of educated questioning people that have purged the flaws and corrupt BRAINLESS "pre science" practices. Unfortunately the rest of the religion is still almost totally dominated by followers who are less knowledgeable and most important lacking the courage to question the most fearful of all things in life - GOD. Compared to most other major religions, Christianity is a very recent religion and that is another factor why it has less of the brainless unscientific adulterations. But if you see Christianity in lesser educated regions you will STILL see the same "BRAINLESS" flaws that we see in the other religions. In Kerala the upper caste Christians STILL to this day do not allow the lower caste to attend their church. Christians in the Philippines still hang and crucify themselves. Even today there is a very strong lobby in the US opposing the teaching of the evolution theory in the US. I would like to hear the opinion of feminist female Christians to the debate of ordaining female priests which was opposed by the scriptures (God's inviolable words ! - http://www.christianity.co.nz/bible.htm ) that is being used in the current debate of ordaining the first gay priest in the US. But the most ludicrous of it all is that they claim Christianity is the only true religion WHEN THEY FIGHT AMONGST THEIR OWN MULTIPLE SECTS !!

If you read (and more easier, watch documentaries) about religion objectively/academically, Christianity grew out of a reformist movement of Judaism just like we see many reformist movements in Islam and Hinduism spawning off different religions. And Jesus was just another preacher of this more tolerant reformed movement that tried to get rid of the corrupt practices seen in Judaism then just like we have our own shankaracharyas or Vivekananda and Arya Samaj reforming, purging and preaching their belief of what Hinduism should be, or for that matter on a more grosser analogy OSHO who felt he had a better way that MANKIND should lead their life.

I can't go into the details here but you have to read about the history when the Israelites were being invaded by the Romans, which is when the reform movements of Judaism were spawning off. And that is why the Old testament is the documented teachings shared between Judaism and Christianity while the new testament only belongs to Christianity as these are preachings of Jesus documented after the branching took place.

And that is how religion is born. RELIGION IS MAN MADE to explain the unknowable and as a tool to control the morality of society.

Every Christian is too brainwashed with the supernatural powers of Jesus and all they do is analyse and study the person and his teachings hiding the overall history of the religion. The lucky historical twist of Christianity is that it managed to convert the MOST POWERFUL PERSON in the world then - the ruler of the holy roman empire - Constantinople. And what did he do with his new god ? Fought his wars under the Christian flag ? And when he managed to kill his enemies and won his wars the only logic was - his had to be the correct God ! And that BRAINLESS reasoning or killing others being sanctioned by their God during the pre science years is acceptable. BUT even at the current Gulf War, Iraqis claimed allah would bring them victory and the Americans had their preachers at the battlefield blessing their soldiers!!

So we have obviously been THOROUGHLY OVERESTIMATING the intelligence of the average human being ! And so religion is here to stay for a very long time EACH believing theirs to be the right one as logically there has to be ONE GOD AND HENCE ONE TRUE RELIGION while the others are ones Satan has conned the DUMB people with !

In most developed egalitarian countries where the majority of the population have been raised to fearlessly question previously held notions, religion is almost dying off. From my interaction in the western countries, in the younger age group who are educated less than 50 % percent believe in a God and less than 30 % in a religion. Now in more religious countries like the US as opposed to say Australia there is a higher religious population but that is also made up more from the immigration population from more religious asian, latin american and african countries that do not have a culture of courageous questioning and so still fearful of taking that leap to question God.

The intent of this long mail and others that I have posted before is not the evangelise the members to agnosticism or atheism. Like the SC/ST debate, it is to get the information out and then left to the members to draw their own conclusions IN AN INFORMED MANNER. Because of the strong sympathy for the separatist movement among our younger generation, the meiteis are just probably one generation away from being plunged into a religious void. The strong and OMNIPRESENT Christian evangelist realises this and hence this big push to grab this goldmine. The social upheaval from the religious void is going to be CATASTROPHIC if we leave that to fate and for those religious - to YOUR version of GOD (as obviously no one can agree on a single ONE !) http://www.anointed-one.net/religions.html

So having this objective information about the history of religion will help people make their decisions for their CRITICAL SPIRITUAL need. It is ludicrous to expect the majority of our society to "frivolously" dispense away religion and God at once after reading this. But we need to be very cautious and have our elders, intellectuals and leaders be forewarned about the social upheaval this religious void is going to cause with the clash from the imminent attempt of Christianity to fill this void, so they can debate the best strategy ahead for our society. Christianity was brought into manipur when the British ruled us after the Khongjom war. The meiteis revolted and fearing uncontrollable social unrest, the missionaries were sent instead to evangelise the hill population that had a less established religion. When the meiteis are pulled apart along the three religions of sanamahi, Hinduism and Christianity this time, the worrying part is that all three will be EQUALLY STRONG and anyone WILL NOT BE able to kill off the others quickly.

I wonder how it will play out when that happens in the next few decades ! My solution is that I wish we can all separate religion as a cultural entity that determines our festivals and social ceremonies but spirituality and the concept of God left out of religion and opting for a SINGLE common GOD for ALL human beings. Only then will religious tolerance exist where foreign religions are seen more as an exotic, enriching cultural experience and not an entity that threatens your interpretation of GOD. .......

apologies to previous members but I have appended previous post for the benefit of newer members

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Manipur-Diaspora/message/196
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Manipur-Diaspora/message/289
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Manipur-Diaspora/message/486
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Manipur-Diaspora/message/492
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Manipur-Diaspora/message/575

[Sun Jun 15, 2003 8:55 am]

We have had some animated discussion on religion in our forum before when XXX introduced the idea of a christianity being "THE TRUTH". For those interested you can check the archives if you are a member using a yahoo mail account at this link and search the archives...
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Manipur-Diaspora/
After a few documentaries on religion and a recent article on the "5 big unsolved questions on evolution" by professor Dunbar in the New Scientist "www.newscientist.com" I thought I'd write a rejoinder to the previous debates to get the members thinking and debating again on an issue that in an indirect way is very critical for the future direction of the state

Given our major illiterate population, Religion is a very volatile and incendiary weapon in the hands of the wrong individuals so it falls on the few educated people to have a strong debate to check any future destabilising efforts but keep religion accessible to those that still needs "spirituality" in life without it being used as a tool to differentiate one another that adopts a different religion.

Now I understand why christianity preaches that their's the only true single path to God. Because if the premise is that there is ONLY one God, and religion is NOT man made but God's directions of how humans should live, then there has to be only ONE religion and the rest of the religions are satan's way of corrupting the population and keeping them from God. And that is exactly what drives the christian evangelists to reach out and save the non christians from the other pagan religions that satan has tricked people with.

FOR TO ACCEPT THE VALIDITY OF OTHER RELIGION WOULD IMPLY THAT GOD DOES NOT EXIST AND RELIGION IS PURELY MAN MADE AS GOD AND HENCE RELIGION HAS TO BE A SINGULAR ENTITY.

It is the same reasoning that made the catholic church censure Galileo and those from within the church seeking reforms in the 17th century during the peak of the dreadful inquisition when mankind HAVING EVENTUALLY ACQUIRED SCIENCE AND HENCE KNOWLEDGE began to challenge the rules in the "supposed word of God" enforced on all as the "inviolable TRUTH". Because to admit that the church people who were enforcing the word of God in the inquisition were wrong would basically lead to a credibility issue in the future but most important, it would be an admission that religion and maybe God too are man made notions.

It was only in 1992 that the Pope agreed to admit that Galileo was right in that the SPECIAL life bearing earth went around the lifeless sun ! Professor Dunbar claims that even if evolution had gone a different direction and mankind did not come about after the extinction of the dinosaurs, any creature that progressed through the millions of years of evolution to acquire the limbs and organs to walk, see, talk and evolve a big enough brain to think would "probably INVENT RELIGION".

Religion is a survival advantage to creatures living in altruistic societies like ours, because the threat of divine punishment carries more weight for believers than earthly policing or appeals to decency. Gods are created by big brains to prevent free riders benefitting from co-operative society without paying the costs. Religion can also be seen in a more positive light, a way of making people feel part of a group.

I still feel nothing wrong about christian evangelist attempting to convert meitei hindus and pangans because as I mentioned before conversion happened to us all before and that was a forced one. Pluralism and tolerance and freedom of choice dictates that the evangelists be not hounded out. Moreover christianity will bring about a different facet to our society in a range of knowledge , ideas, culture, food, music, information, education and make us intellectually and spiritually richer by addition of a new input as long as we inculcate in all the importance of tolerating and understanding our differences.

But however it falls on our educated population to keep the populace informed and pull up the evangelists if they try to palm off any misleading lies to the gullible uneducated population of which the most important one is christianity's dismissive stance of other religion as I mentioned at the start of the article. Some of us can live as athiest but for those that need spirituality in life without religion, agnosticism is the way to go. But if you must believe in a religion and find the above reasoning of the hypocrisy of the existence of a SINGLE GOD but MULTIPLE RELIGIONS a whole lot of ***** then atleast learn to be tolerant to other religion. But if you come across a stubborn christian sticking to his faith as the only true one then you also know why. Hope this makes you question more on the concept of God and religion.

The objective of the forum is to promote constant and probing questioning and shaking off the shackles to not question the previously held notions imposed on us by your elders in our hierarchical society. So the few active participants we have in our forum would hopefully help to guide the thinking of others less knowledgeable. And this is a very critical instrument of promoting intellectuals and leaders amongst our people specially handicapped as we are living in this underdeveloped isolated corner. So we cannot leave development of our leaders and intellectuals to fate/God/prayers as we do not have the critical momentum to produce them by our existing educational infrastructure and opportunities. Because given the odds we have, the logic of "HARDWORKERS WILL SURMOUNT THE ODDS" apply to only a bare 10s of individuals a year. What we want is a strategy to make not only the super hardworking 10s but also the next less hard working and weaker 1000s to a chance at a shot of getting a good education through reservations. And we still would not take up the SC/ST opportunities for the meiteis ! .... you knew I had to have a dig at that again :) And to reply to XXXX 's ending note, the question is not whether the govt will allow us to get SC/ST. If we agree that it is a better option for the meiteis, then we should go about the tasks of mobilising people and intellectuals to gradually press on our politicians. So my promoting this debate and this forum in general is a step towards that and I have continuously been endeavouring to get more members to join the group. And I hope you will do the same.

A time consuming patient process but a stable one once we have a large number of our current educated younger population believing in it. Then it is only a matter of time before this crop of intellectuals and leaders eventually nudge out the current old fashioned, hierarchical, traditionalist and conservative politicians and leaders we have today. We need to inject youth, energy, change and a questioning attitude from the educated younger generation to wipe out the corrupted old order and start afresh with new thinking in almost every facet of our society and development policies. So it is not "will THEY" but "how can I". And the Manipur-diaspora is a forum to bring such "how can I" thinking activists to gather strength from each other knowing "I" am not alone and also very important respect that all we "I"s do not necessarily think the same way of going forward.

[Tue Mar 25, 2003 1:06 am]

There is no denying that Religion is a must in this world and I have admitted that many times because everyone in this world is not mentally as strong and stable as informed agnost like me who hold this view after a lot of questioning and reading and eventually have realized that there is nothing that ANY religion teaches that my STRONG CONSCIENCE does not tell me. The challenge is of having the strength and honesty to listen and follow the conscience as that is invariably the harder path in life.

But the majority of the people in this world feel the need to be reassured, comforted, helped and guided by God feeling truth and the future can only come from God. That is why I have said before that if a religion is to be chosen I prefer christianity for many reasons. But I still prefer that educated people like you who are genuinely interested in the development of manipur should not have to pull the wool over the eyes of vulnerable people by claiming christianity is the path to development.

I would much rather see you investing your resources and knowledge to bring about education to remote areas than teach the bible. Conversion has happened before in manipur and I personally have no issues about it being attempted again but I want you to know that despite your convictions in your evangelistic abilities, there are many pretty well entrenched opponents specially in this group that will be very offended by your attempt as these are well informed strong headed outspoken individuals. You will have better success outside the group with people that are less assured and vulnerable.

Also I feel that an educated person like you should not be that blinded by a single path to communicate with God. Such an intolerance when coupled with fanaticism is the cause of all troubles in this world.

[Sat Mar 22, 2003 5:43 am]

… What is valuable in the puyas is not the mythical and religious content that existed in all primitive generations before we knew science, but the yearly chronicles from which we can academically construct the history of manipur. By the same token XXX, what is important in christianity is the general teaching of tolerance and generosity and not blindingly digging through historical validity of each bible story like Noah and the flood and of Jesus christ. Sticking to the letter of the bible has caused enough obstacles to the development of science and hence civilization. The strong christian lobby in the US had prevented teaching for many years of the radically blasphemous evolution theory after the scientific community in most western countries had overcome the objections of the church which preferred the Adam and Eve story. In the infamous Scopes "monkey" trial of 1925, when a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, was prosecuted for teaching evolutionary theory the pro bible orator/lawyer was asked if you believe every story the bible says, do you believe t hat Jonah survived inside a whale for 3 days !!

Despite the absurdity of the bible stories, the poor teacher lost the case ! and if you think that was a story that has now been killed by science now, read these ...
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/evolution980617.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/evolutiondebate990812.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4371165,00.html

If you read the history of the Popes in rome , you will see how corrupt, power hungry, manipulative and cruel they were exploiting the masses with the fear of God. Copernicus too was persecuted for discovering the sun and not the earth was the centre of the solar system !
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9906/07/pope.02/

And if you challenge any christian on the ridiculous stories of the bible they will escape by claiming the stories are not to be taken literally ! The fact is that all religious texts we have today were written when mankind did not know science. today we cover up the scientifically embarrassing contents with the "not to be literally taken" escape clause ! Religion is just a way of connecting man with the concept of the unknown for those individuals that do not have the self confidence to realize fate and the future of yours and others are totally in your own hands. The older religions and those with lesser educated following will have more ridiculous stories, myths and superstitions. Do not try to promote one religion over other !

Just spread the word of tolerance, plurality, generosity and universal brotherhood to all and try to lessen the economic and religious divide that we see around the world. Prabhu Jisu is not the answer ! Man's generosity to another is ! And if you derive your generosity from Prabhu Jisu that is perfectly OK. But imposing your source thinking all of Mankind can ONLY derive that from Prabhu Jisu is not only IGNORANT but OFFENDING to others that follow a different faith ! PLURALISM is the mantra you should learn to chant first!

I used to be the one that constantly bombarded the group at its embryonic stage and it is nice to see XXXX taking on the role to lead the group. Hope we get to see more younger members plucking up the courage and having the conviction and maturing into leadership roles.

G'Day all ...

[Tue Dec 24, 2002 2:25 am]

very important discussion and highly recommended .. not to win the debate though but to seek the truth by engaging strongly with those that share an opposing view... My family is a case in point. My father is a staunch hindu and an ISCKON member. Emoinu and all that "pagan" celebration was never heard of in my family when I grew up. Infact he used to speak very disparagingly of my mother's family because they were not hindus and followed sanamahi ! the sanamahi corner in my house lasted as long as my grandmother lived after which I dont remember seeing it again !

So yes old traditions get eroded when new ones move in. But there is a belief that only my religion is good and the others intolerant but that could not be more faulty. That is why I have given up religion as constantly it is used to differentiate "good tolerant us and incomprehensible bad them". The fact remains in most of these comparisons that we invariably compare our best sides to their worst side.

If you have doubts about that, you should find out what the non hindus have to point out about the many flaws in hinduism. And just as you will argue that most of those flaws are beliefs of a fundamentalist minority so do the others feel about the flaws pointed out in their religion.

[Fri Dec 13, 2002 1:34 am]

I always thought I was one of the only radical nonconformist so it gives me so much comfort to know there are so many of you out there too. It is a sign that one is no longer afraid to question and also has the intellectual capacity to rationalise. Religion and god is dying out in the west and growing in the east not because of an east west cultural shift but because there are more self confident educated questioning people in the west who are raised not to be afraid to question previously held notions even about God.

Having said that, religion and a concept of an all powerful god who controls our every actions and keeps a tab on our sins is still a necessity in society for not all of us are morally probitious. It is like freedom in society. WE want as much freedom as we can but we have to draw the line as not all of us can respect that freedom. But just like there are people with more developed principles who can respect total freedom being granted to them, there are individuals who can do without this fear of god to walk the right path.

So these individuals should not be seen as lost souls by the believers but as some who have transcended to a higher thinking. I am still harping on this religious debate for 2 reasons. I feel the more agnosts we have , the less will be the ethnic divide we have. But most important is it's impact on personal development. You will no longer pray to a god for favours to be granted but will be kicking yourself in the backside as you know YOU and YOU alone is in charge of your fate and if any trouble comes your way it is you who have to work to get yourself out of it and the same applies to your goals of achievement.

[Wed Dec 11, 2002 3:59 am]

Religious tolerance along the lines of racial tolerance is the way to go. But I still see a very racist view in the current interpretation of religions. The view of a religion's god being the ONLY true GOD and the only true means to God tantamount to racism. The concept of religion is to preach morality and civic sense and social behaviour and not to lead people into accepting one version of a god over another. The above values can be taught without the PREREQUISITE of first having to choose the Gita, Bible or Koran. That aspect of having to choose one of them is the religious equivalent of racism.

For me I go one step more and believe I can learn and abide by those values JUST by listening to my CONSCIENCE alone and that is what an agnost is. The question that gets posed to me whenever I make that statement is how do you know what is right. God has to be the one that tells you what is right ! My challenge to that is tell me something that is either form the bible or gita or qoran that your conscience cannot tell what is right or wrong ! The question is more of SELF DISCIPLINE and WILLPOWER to abide by the righteous path which is ALWAYS the harder path. And that is where the fear of God and hell comes into play to coerce those that cannot choose the righteous path by his own choosing.

I went to a christian missionary boarding school of majority indian hindu students where my principal who was a christian made the most groundbreaking change in our daily early morning prayer service. All reference to Jesus in the hymn books were changed to God and those that were too jesus emphasized were never sung accept ofcourse the christmas carols during our one off end of year christmas service. The other teachers did but he would NEVER preach a sermon from the bible either. He would read us a story from readers digest or some other book or an incident from the news and teach the moral implications of it. Now that is the direction of religion we should be going to just as we have now accepted multi cultural and racial tolerance.

That is what movements like the bahais were originally but again such movements before long becomes no diferent to another religion ! I have always tried to drop in my agnostic message during my post because I wanted to subliminally introduce this religious debate within ourselves. It is only a few radical strong willed and disciplined individuals who can throw out religion. Religion otherwise is a MUST for the other vast majority. But we now have a religious void developing atleast amongst the hindu meities with the growing separatist anti india sentiment which sees hinduism as the culprit that wiped out most of out indigenous culture and hence our identity. I SHARE THAT VIEW TOO. However unlike individuals like me, the giving up of the hindu gods and religion leaves a dangerous void in the rest of the populace.

Sanamahi being the indigenous religion is what most will embrace as this shift was triggered by a "back to our indigenous culture" sentiment. But majority meiteis, probably see sanamahi as a primitive religion but I am just guessing here as I have basically no knowledge of that. With christianity, I feel that spreading the religion and the word of jesus even overides preaching the sermons. And that as I said before is the only flaw of christianity which otherwise has weeded out most of the other superstitious and fundamentalist beliefs that the other religions are still dominated with. But that is purely because of the more educated following of chistianity as opposed to the other religions where the majority of the followers are primarily uneducated.

The difference for example is the "sponsor a child" program at most christian organisations and the "ADOPT a COW" program at the ISKCON site !! So given that missionary zeal I am sure christianity is going to look at manipur as a prime recruiting region in the coming years and I am just scared of the consequences of that which could be a dangerous backlash amongst the community. It happened before when christianity was tried in manipur and one should read the history of that in the Kanglaonline site. However I would love to see hinduism in its current form go from the meiteis as that is one of the main reasons for the inter ethnic divide. The meitei hindus' mangba view of the other beef/meat eating ethnic group will slowly erode away once the meiteis too eat meat and beef and that probably I see happening anyway in the next generation when we have a majority of meitei hindus also having grown up eating that.

So religion is a very important issue that should be handled very carefully in the coming transitional and vulnerable years and I would hate to see manipur ending up in chaos and genocide like in the riots we see in some african countries and indonesia. So lets us spread the word of god, love, sharing, caring and tolerance abstracting it above the religion associated with it. Any religion that forgets that and stoops to bring in the religion along with that message might trigger off the scary backlash that should be avoided at all cost. I would love to see others jumping into this important discussion and more important not forgetting to keep discussions objectively and not take it personally.