What gave humanity peace and solace for millennia has become a source of discomfort today. With or without terrorism, it has let itself down as the source of truth.

CAUSES

Historical Baggage

At places the Holy Books are full of contradictions; at times they are outright fabrications. If with intellectual rigour these are reconciled, people are faced with rival understandings and commentaries that cover centuries.

When people protest they are cajoled to follow some arbitrary authority, whose vector changes without warnings and explanations. Who is to believe then?

Stubbornness

Science nudged it, challenged it, elbowed it. But religions dug themselves into a pit of sand, believing it was all temporary – just as the communists thought the industrialisation was a temporary phenomenon.

Instead of giving people a meaning to their lives during a crisis, religion confused individuals when they were the most vulnerable – in their youth, when redundant, on their death-beds. Collectively, these confused individuals robbed the society of its peace – creating narcissists and demagogues.

Instead of taking the mantle of leadership, religions became the followers of the pied-pipers. And are paying the price.

Internet

Geographic isolation kept people blissful in the past. The advent of sea-faring may have caused havoc in the form of colonisation, but the laying of fibre optics in the sea-bed was a hard hit on the authorities mind-controlling religious beliefs.

No longer a religious leader can have a following based purely on their beliefs: they have to piggy-bag their stupidity to science, or to tribalism, nationalism or racism.

IMPACT

What follows in the sub-sections is the struggle of religions to be relevant. Can we learn anything from their failures?

—> Judaism