Why religion is important for most people?

["Rayalaseema Informatics Centre" <ric@nettlinx.com>]

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N.P. Singh wrote on October 27, 2000 under the
Subject: Re. shocking?

> As we have a birth rate of 2.8% over a population of 100 crore,
> it means that 2.8 crore children are born in India every year and
> 22 lakh and forty thousand of them die before their first birth day.

Birth rate in India was much higher in the past . Despite that, population
growth then was very low  owing to an equally high death rate. The present
high population is because of a significant reduction in death rate after
India became independent. Leave alone sanitary latrines, India is unable to
provide basic food and shelter to its entire population. If death rate is
further reduced, conditions turn from bad to worse.

The civilised way of checking population is no doubt by a drastic cutting of
both birth rate and death rate. When birth rate cannot be checked, high
death rate has to check population growth.

N.P. Singh further wrote

> How is it logically a bigger priority to spend so much energy
> on religious conversions?

When death rate is high, the associated misery of death of the kith and kin
is not an easy thing to bear. It is the religion that gives solace to such
victims. The karma philosophy of Hinduism often helps people to develop an
attitude to face such calamities boldly. No religion can provide solace to
all people at all times on a fool-proof basis. When one Hindu god/god man
fails, the sufferer may turn to another Hindu god/god man or even get
converted to Christianity. People who don't require a god to keep themselves
happy may find religion or
god irrelevant.

There is nothing wrong on the part of the religious organisations to use
methods akin to those used in the free-market system to advertise on the
superiority of their system over other religious faiths. There is however
need for them not to follow illegal or shocking methods.

R. Jagadiswara Rao






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