1 Vilnits Rada Vilnits Ms. Piscitello English 120 Section 122 19 October 2007 Religion: Positive or Negative?
As a person who believes in religion and believes that it plays a positive role in life; to say and to try to defend that religion plays a positive impact in all peoples lives would be an act of ignorance. Nonetheless, claiming that religion plays a fully negative role in peoples lives would be rather false, since that is not true based on my personal experiences. Just like most things in life, there is no "black and white" answer for anything; there is always a "grey area," and the role that religion plays in peoples lives is certainly no exception. Religion can play a positive role in peoples lives in many different ways. Based on my own experiences, I strongly believe that there is a higher power, something greater than everything in this world. Religion is something to trust in, because it is something that makes one believe and have faith, and something that gives purpose to life and a "track" to follow. Religion definitely plays a positive role in my life because it makes me a better person. Religion should never be regarded to be more than it is: a personal belief. A belief shouldnt be the initiator of any belligerence or hostility toward other groups, especially since most religions stand against violence. No believer should have to prove that his/her belief is the best or the truest and state that all the others are insignificant.
Vilnits 2 Unfortunately, the positive roles religion can play can instantly turn to highly negative roles once a thin line is crossed; that thin line differentiating between a personal belief and a feeling of superiority over everyone else that has different beliefs and the "notion that [a certain religion] provides the only way of salvation and all other religious traditions are of no use" (Living Buddha, Living Christ, 375). This idea is simply made by someone selfish and ignorant of everyone else who is "different"; which also brings up another subject matter; fear of differences; these differences can be anything from different skin color to different physical features to different beliefs. As we have seen and learned throughout history, religion has always been one of the many leading causes of war. People have been fighting because of religion since day one. The Palestinian-Israeli "conflict," which is the result of hate, prejudice, and animosity toward and between groups of people since the beginning of time, is one of the best examples that come to mind. However, the word "conflict," might be an oversimplification of the matter. "Never-ending and continuously-expanding brawl" would be a better phrase to use. For a significant period of time, there has been persistent turmoil in the Middle East between Arabs and Jews that can be traced to the beginning of time because of different beliefs which, therefore, caused warfare between people who believe in different faiths. Conflict between these groups, commonly referred to as the "Palestinian-Israeli Conflict", into which many other countries become involved with, continues to create and sustain belligerent attitudes between people involved in the groups included. For some reason, however, these groups cannot put aside the fact that they have "different beliefs" and just live with them; they must fight with each other to
Vilnits 3 prove (who knows to who?) that theyre beliefs are The true beliefs. As Hanh says in his essay, Buddha, "Living Living Christ": Buddhists and Christians alike, in dialogue, want to recognize similarities as well as differences in their traditions. It is good that an orange is and orange and a mango is a mango. The colors, the smells, and the tastes are different, but looking deeply, we see that they are both authentic fruits. Looking more deeply, we can see the sunshine, the rain, the minerals, and the earth in both of them. Authentic experiences make a religion a true tradition. Religious experience is, above all, human experience. If religions are authentic, they contain the same elements of stability, joy, peace, understanding, and love. The similarities as well as the differences are there. They differ only in terms of emphasis. Glucose and acids are in all fruits, but their degrees differ. We cannot say that one is a real fruit and the other is not. (376) On the contrary, some people believe that God is simply something that people use to avoid reality. They also believe that people have faith because they want and need to believe in something, whatever that something is, because life can be hard, depressing, and brutal if they dont; so they chose to believe in a religion. However, there is a significant difference between believing in and following a religion and over analyzing and reading too closely to the text and taking things out of context and mistaking the text for things that werent initially intended. For example, religiously driven terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda have stated that their aim is "to use the jihad, (or struggle), to defend Islam against Zionism, Christianity, the secular West, and Muslim governments such as Saudi Arabia, which it sees as insufficiently Islamic and too closely
Vilnits 4 tied to America." (Definition of ,,Islamist Terrorism) (I may be wrong, but I doubt any prophet would ever tell people to be against or cause harm to every other group but their own.) One could certainly say that it is because people think like this, that wars start and events like September 11th, happen. Clearly, this is one of many instances that show that religion does not play a positive role in peoples lives, but extremely dangerous and negative ones. As much as I would like to believe that religion plays a more positive role in peoples lives, it seems that to prove that religion plays a positive role in peoples lives, would be virtually impossible. There are far more concrete examples and proofs that religion plays more negative roles in peoples lives than it does positive ones. Its unfortunate but it is true; most of the time, a strong belief in a religion causes people to acquire a false pride in it. They believe in it so strongly that they acquire a mentality that is like a life and death situation and would do a great deal to prove to the rest of the world that their religion is the best and only one worth believing in and everyone elses should be disregarded. However, according to Karen Armstrong in "Introduction to Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet": Religion seems to be an important human need which cannot easily be discarded or pushed to the sidelines, no matter how rational or sophisticated or society. Some will welcome this new age of faith, other will deplore it, but none of us can dismiss religion as irrelevant to the chief concerns of our century. (380) All these examples return us to the idea of "mine is better" and conveys the negative role that both religion and "mine is better" thinking play in peoples lives.