I have been wondering about religion and how it affects our daily lives. This has brought me to a question of individuality.
I asked myself is religion a matter of social order or an individual consciousdecision? I have seen people change religions in there later stages of their lives and even earlier, but the number is small and fairly insignificant. This can be attributed to marriage, migration and even education amongst other things. So this again comes to the question is or was it an individual conscious choice? I have to confess that I am one of the people that have changed their religion from the one, which was practiced in my family structure during my upbringing, but I will not go into the discussion as to from which religion to which as it is immaterial to the essence of the article. But I will say that the change came about through research and experience. That being said I do not imply that I found thee religion but merely that i made my own choice.
So we proceed….. What makes a person a Muslin, Hindu, Christian, atheist or whatever the case maybe? Why does religion rarely cross race, ethnic and domicile lines? Does the prevailing social order dictate which religion I will follow? In all probability a person born into a muslim family will likely be a Muslin, same applies to Christians, Hindus and all the other 4200+ religions being practised worldwide. So how much of this decision is from individual choice is worth looking into.
Humans like any other animal, fish, insect or whatever, they are inclined to keep a social order and conform with it. A collapse of this a social order could have adverse consequences. The “need to belong” is viewed by Abraham Maslow as one of the major sources of motivation, does religion satisfy this need and is this the bases of inception for most religions? Does this result in the thoughts of the group being stronger than the thoughts of the individual?
I will end on that note till the next time…….
These thoughts are objective and inconclusive…. Feel free to leave constructive comments……. sibuseesaw.blogspot.com