Monday, October 3, 2011

Different religions

I'm officially off hiatus now.
To start it off, I want to talk about a book I've been reading. It's called The Life of Pi, and most people would say it's about a boy stuck on a life-boat with a tiger, which it mostly is. But the first part is all about religion.
The protagonist, Piscine Patel is a boy growing up in India who is rather undecided about religion. He gets into his native Hinduism, but later in life he meets a priest who introduces him to christianity, a baker who tells him about the muslim faith, and even his science teacher who tries to convince him there is no god.
He actually takes all the teachings to heart, except the atheist science teacher (Although he still considers him a big figure in his life).
The thing is, each figure who introduces him to the religion is completely ignorant of the two others. One day, all three of them corner his parents asking them about him. His parents believe him an atheist and were unaware that he subscribed to any religion. But the result is a heated debate between his three religious figure and his parents utterly confused how you can worship three religions and consider them all true, and Pi stuck with the image of his the priests fighting each other with angry, fiery words, each condemning the others religion as foolish and stupid.
I think I can understand what Pi is getting at. He saw what you are supposed to see in religion, love and theories. If there really is a god or multiple gods for each religion as  Pi believes, why should they be mad at each other? Because they wouldn't be. If god or the gods are really immortal and forgiving, then why would they condemn others? Because they don't. What causes the anger and angry debates are the people.