Religion

My girlfriend asked me what i was looking for when i told her that i was looking to read Chosen( a book that deals with the second coming of Christ and how people would react to it and whether anyone would believe it, with a nasty surprise ending). Considering that my favorite comic was Lucifer it was perhaps a loaded question to answer. But it did cause me to pause and think about my beliefs. When I was younger, I stayed with my grandmother, who other than lighting a diya at 7:00 p.m. sharp showed no other religious activities (that and making the dosa with the sweet milk and insisting we eat it at gokul ashtami). It was ofcourse more fascinating for me to watch the diya burn down. School was the first time i think i was exposed to a different religion. With the inherent curiosity of if we had moral science and they (look the religious divide begins) didnt , what did they do in that time?.Most friends were reluctant to answer what exactly was different or what they were taught. But Stanislaus was a good place. I remember a friend who carried one image of each religion he could find in his compass box, it helped him pass the exams he said. My first brush with the problems of religion came when The Satanic Verses were banned. I and everyone at home were against the ban and going up the stairs i casually remarked about it to a friend , who replied "rushdie should be kicked out of britain ,how dare he etc. etc" to which i kept mum. My friend was a muslim. It did make me think at that time is it better to treat every religion equally or to simply ignore it altogether?.But those days it was more important to run to the playing field at recess time than to ponder glumly over philosophical topics. We always went to bandra fair. And my grandmother leg got into problems because of a wound and she was diabetic. So instead of putting the two wax children as offering (meant for my brother and me) we also started putting a leg. My grand mother who would always have come with us , couldnt anymore , but she would say put the leg for me. I believed. I believed it would cure her. And i prayed as much as i could. It never occurred to me that i was praying to some other religion, God was one i knew. And then they were the TV serials. The never ending ramayana and its successor the dont take your eyes of the TV set Mahabharata. I guess i owe thanks to ramanand sagar for my profound dislike of the ramayana. I always wondered what was godly of some guy trying to rescue his wife from some powerful guy who wait for it is powerful because of boons granted by the other gods? Oh and before i forget all this to kick out his wife. It did start me thinking.It also raised the questions that if it was right in the mahabharata to go to war against relatives for kingdom why wasnt it right in the ramayana where instead banishment is accepted meekly? And how could a god say it was right to go to war , when it also means killing up 1000's of those rounded up extras in the shower of multiplying arrows? The Mahabharata was much more fun to watch. Its successor the bible ki kahaniyan however wasnt (more to do with the production quality than with the stories themselves). My knowledge of christianity however came earlier due to an amar chitra katha'ish comic bound up with phantom and mandrake and flash gordon which i read and was impressed and was angry that the hero died at the end. Islam was something followed by the people in the building. The ladies in the building didnt wear a burkha at home , but did when they left the house ,i assumed that was because they liked dressing up. It was strange for me because one set of neighbours were boris(burkha wearing) and the other werent. But noone cared. So i passed out of school with my feelings towards religions mostly of the sort , all religions are equal, you dont bother me , i dont bother you sort of attitude. And then i moved on from mostly detective mysteries to reading some scientific material, Asimov, Sagan and their ilk. Reading about the idealistic way to doing science, the continuous questioning of data, the rationalist thought and philososphy, The everything is a hypothesis , when you get more data either the hypothesis is reinforced or it is discarded. But a hypothesis it remains. It came to me that while science doesnt preclude faith, it does say that when you question it , the faith grows stronger or you have to discard or atleast change some aspects of faith when you find information that contradicts your faith. Whereas religion believes that if you question your faith , your faith grows weaker. You must just believe!.Supremely egoistic i believed that i had been given a brain so that i could understand god's plan than merely be a part of it. And given the choices i'd rather believe in the scientific way. And so i questioned everything. I wouldnt read an out and out religious book so i would only read something that dealt tangentially with religion which essentially meant that i would end up reading about matters related to Christianity. But it wasnt a problem. all religions are similar so what would apply to one should in someway apply to the other. So therein started the journey of "if thou shalt not kill doesnt it apply to god as well" "if an earthquake is god's doing why does it kill indiscriminately" "if we are to be judged eternally based on life spent on earth what happens to infants who die?" "if god is our father why would there be a hell even if we sinned" "how can god be most forgiving and condemn us to hell" "if god is all powerful then why do children suffer due to no fault of theirs" "why did god show himself 2000 years ago but doesnt do so (atleast not directly) anymore" "if god is in all of ours whats the need for holy places and holy men?" and so on.And then i realised that a lot of what we heard and attributed to "god" was really hearsay. Who says the ramayana occurred as it did?certainly theres lot of material saying that what we read is a cleaned up version. Same too for the mahabharata. Ditto for the old / new testament. Its then that i believed that religion is a man made structure and like every other man made structure it protects itself first and foremost. I also realised that while there may be a lot of good in all the religions , there is material that may be bad or atleast open to interpretation or illogical even if harmless (like the jains who cant eat onions). And that i would respect the brain i got and follow what i deemed was right. that i would pick and choose what i wanted to follow from any religion.So where does that tie in with the things i read?The ability to choose brings with it one responsibility. That you should make sure you have enough information to make that choice. And while im too old now to read the bhagvad gita or the bible or the torah i dont mind reading other peoples opinions of it. Its surprising sometimes how when the point of the story has religion only as a side issue , the observations you can make.In chosen the most important part is the writers conversation at the end. In it peter gross is asked by his 4-5 year daughter that if he draws stories about the bible , are the stories true or false? And he says he replied that it is the stories and what you learn from them that are important. Whether they are true or not isn't. And he says as a story teller , stories are his religion. Something to think about , found in an unlikely. Mike carey in lucifer makes other important statements.And heres the secret good authors write and it makes you think. That it may deal with religion is unimportant
So what am i looking for? A good story that makes me think and question my faith