Religion God and Blind Faith

Religion God and Blind Faith for Blog:
Religious faith is embraced without questions or doubts, based on the belief that religious messages have come from the God. The religious-faiths are based on thousands of years old phenomena or stories, and we are asked to put our whole faith on them without question or doubt. This proposal certainly undermines our human intelligence.  In my view, religion must have spiritual, logical, and philosophical basis, and it should be established through self-understanding and self-experiences, not through ignorance.
Religious faiths dominate our lives, and interfere with our daily affairs. Such interference often create various practical problems in our societies. The reason for this contradiction is the fact that – we have too many competing religions on earth, promoting contradictory guidelines that often clash with one another. People have been using God, and religions for various personal, political, social, and financial gains. In fact, religious-faith is the most exploited, distorted, manipulated, and misunderstood subject in the human history.
The ancient Indian spiritual/philosophical scriptures (Veda, Upanishad, Puran, etc.), address to all human-beings, not a particular sect. They were written long before Moses (1300 – 1150 BC), and there were no other known organized religions on the earth at the time, meaning they were written for the entire humankind.
There lived in North West Part of India then called Pear shaped Peninsula lived people who were guided by Wise-men. No ruler or king existed then. No religion or religious leader. Hindu Legend says; they were perhaps whispers of God, or maybe insights of the wise. They gave the world meaning and life a purpose. These chants relieved vedana, the yearning of the restless human soul, hence became collectively known as the Veda. Those who heard them first came to be known as the Rishis. Based on what the Veda revealed, the Rishis created a society where everything had a place and where everything changed with rhythmic regularity. The Brahmans were the teachers of this society, the Kshatriyas its guardians, the Vaishyas its providers and the Shudras its servants. Thanks to the Veda, everyone in this society knew that the life they led was just one of many. In other lives, past or present, the Shudra of this life would be a Vaishya, and the Kshatriya would be a Brahman, or perhaps a rock or plant or beast, maybe even a god or a demon. Thus everything was interconnected and everything was cyclical. The point of existence in this dynamic, ever-changing world then was not to aspire or achieve, but to introspect. It is a way of life and no clear religion. It was called Dharma way of living.
 According to this faith, God established the religion on earth for humankind and He is the protector of his religion; humankind is asked to propagate His messages only. This faith espouses all embrace doctrines – such as – As many views, as many ways, and all paths lead to the same destination.
 Preachers, Sadhus, Gurus, Sannyshis, etc. took advantage of this view and started to propagate their views or interpretations in their own ways, creating various sub-faiths within the umbrella of Dharma. Self interest of those propagators – superstitions and ritualistic practices have taken hold, and Dharma lost its central theme of self-liberation through spiritual knowledge, yoga, meditation, etc. Even though a few spiritual branches of Dharma exist in the world, primarily it is practiced as various sectarian ritualistic faiths, filled with superstitions.  As one of the oldest religious faiths on earth, containing all  views, Dharma could have been the faith of all human-beings. I believe – it did not happen that way due to the self-interest and sectarian politics of various propagators.
As per Darwin’s Theory of evolution (1859), the human race descended from the animal species, meaning human species are improvised animal species, evolved over millions of years. Therefore, it is natural that humans may still possess/share some of the animalistic characteristics. Humans have given up many animalistic characteristics as they evolved. We can find many in the society, who look just like human, talk like human – but behave like animals. Therefore, our behaviors can only differentiate us from the animal. The basic human characteristics that distinguish us from the animal are the tenets of the human religion (humanity).
 All living beings play certain roles in maintaining the ecological balance, meaning we all have certain purposes as well as responsibilities on this earth. We need to respect the rights and privileges of all living-beings on the earth. The essence of a religion, is to provide knowledge and guidance to find our rights and privileges, and purposes of our lives. We should seek God through our intelligence, not through our ignorance, superstitions, and blind-faith. After all, God is a concept and religion is a practice.