“Imagine there’s No Heaven” is a letter written by Salman Rushdie who is a British Indian novelist and essayist. He is an atheist and is known for his unflinching criticism of religion. Rushdie contributed this letter to a UN-sponsored anthology, addressed to the six-billionth human child who was expected to be born that year. He attempts to discuss and answer two fundamental questions of life. “How did we get here? And, now that we are here, how shall we live?” However he diverts from his central thesis and most of his text malign and smear all religions while the two questions go almost completely unanswered. His tone is demeaning, scornful and he presents religious beliefs as being ridiculous. He makes absolute statements without any …show more content…
What he fails to mention is the purpose of the so called rituals of worship. Every religion entails some methods of worship but their purpose is to express reverence, praise and adoration for the creator and to get solace and comfort in it. People choose religion not to get ‘imprisoned’ by its teachings but to be ‘guided’ by its teachings and to live a meaningful life by following something they believe in. Mr. Rushdie claims that, “In the opinion of religious people, the private comfort that religion brings more than compensates for the evil done in its name.” First he fails to clarify the evil that is being done in the name of religion. However it needs to be understood that when people use religion as an excuse to justify evil than it’s not the fault of religion. Christian, Muslim, Jewish Buddhist, and Hindu teachings all emphasize peace and goodwill toward others. When people commit horrible crimes and then try to hide behind religion than this just means that they haven’t understood and are not practicing the true religion. It in no way implies that religion preaches and is responsible for evil. Consider the case of suicide bombings that are being primarily blamed on Islam. Rushdie share this view and says, “For years now, the air has been full of the battle-cries of the faithful as they turn their bodies into God’s bombs, and the screams of their victims too.” The global Muslim population is
Master Fard Muhammad is Allah in person. His father knew of a message that had to be delivered to his people, but he knew that as a black man he could never just come into solid white America with no problem with the authorities. He knew that he need to go to the caucasus region and find a pure caucasian woman to give birth to his son, so that his son could deliver the message to his people. Some may say that Master Fard Muhammad can’t be God because his mother is white, but that is fallacious. Dr.Wesley points out that if you plant an apple seed in Africa, Asia, Or Europe it will still germinate as an apple tree. Just like Fard was the seed of his father and his mother was like the soil.
The Middle East has a different outlook on Terrorism. The term Middle East does not offer the reader to a specific area as we might think of. The book refers to many residences of the Middle East all of them is not Muslim. It also mentions and discuss that all terrorist groups in the Middle East are a violent terrorist organization. Furthermore, there are peaceful and organization such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
After reading What’s Heaven by Maria Shriver, I got the opportunity to realize that talking about heaven can be difficult—especially when a child’s grandparent passes away or loved one passes away. For instance, as a child I always thought that human beings live forever; however, as I got older I began to realize that human beings cannot live forever. Nevertheless, as a nineteen-year-old college student, talking about death and heaven is tough and emotional for me; I cannot imagine myself mourning the death of a loved one—specifically, my mother, brothers, sister, aunts, cousins, friends, etc. My mother attempts to have conversations about death and heaven with me: “Kevin, my son, human beings get the chance to live a long-life here on earth;
He argues that it is man’s responsibility to use this freedom to search for knowledge and enlightenment in order to get higher. It sounds as if he was saying God would be happier to see man reach perfection and would even admire man for being the creature who works on the creation of God the architect, and bring about changes.
I agree with him in that the primary employment of religion now is to change our serious sentiments of fear, ghastliness, and supernatural happiness into ecstatic religious feeling. The pessimistic emotions here included are strongly individual: the self feels little, wiped out, and unnerved, and religion's cure includes utilizing their exceptionally savagery and abundance to break them free from the self. We should live in time, which implies that we should be liable to possibility of mortality. The great questions of life, the overwhelming, fearsome riddles that encompass our lives, need to do with the way everything comes to be and passes away, and everything is subject to time and chance and
The essay “There is no God” by Penn Jillette is a controversial essay due to his believe that there is no God. The author in the essay declares, ” I believe that there is not god”(129), this statement can be considered as an offence for many people who believe in any kind of god or religion. Furthermore he writes, “No god means the possibility of less suffering in the future”(131). The statements may offend different religions because they believe that God will come and he will save us from all the suffering. Also he says “ Just the love of the family that raise me and the family that I’m raising now is enough that I don’t need a heaven”(130), He is going against many believe of some religions due to heaven should be the place that Catholics and other religions wish to be when they die.
In the event of the terrorist attack on the newspaper Charlie Hebdo, instead of protesting or taking legal action some decided to kill innocent people to get revenge. It was religion based and when they started killing all those people, it made what they stood for look ludicrous. We are seeing this happen in our own country as well. I think about all of the shootings that have been arising and about innocent lives being taken, most of which have occurred recently because of a group of Islamists. This doesn’t mean that every person who is involved with the religion of Islam is that way, but it makes a lot of people skeptical and judgmental because that is what the media highlights, focusing on the fact that it is indeed about religion.
“Worship is the believer’s response of all that they are - mind, emotions, will, body - to what God is and says and does.” Warren Wiersbe
Wherever we are and in whatever time we happen to live, we cannot avoid asking the basic questions of who we are, where we came from, what we are doing here, and where we are going. In everyone's life, especially when one is young, these basic questions arise in the mind, often with force, and demand answers from us. Many simply push them aside or remain satisfied with established answers provided by others in their family or community. In traditional societies such answers always came from the teachings of religion, and to a great extent they still do for the majority of people in many parts of the world. But there have always been and still are today the few who take the question "who am I?" seriously and existentially and who are not satisfied with answers provided by others. Rather, they seek to find the
In the first chapter of Terror in the Mind of God it goes over a few terrorist incident examples. There were ethnic shootings in California and Illinois, attack on american embassies, abortion clinic bombings and other terrorist acts. All of these incidents and other violent attacks are associated with American religious extremists. So these are attacks by groups named Christian Militia, The Christian Identity Movement and Christian Anti-abortion activists. For many people in the Middle East terrorist attacks have become a way of life. All of the Terrorists attacks have two similar characteristics, First they have been very violent and terrifying. And second they have been motivated by religion. So the attacks are by people that think they are doing good for their religion.The fact that violent acts find their justification in religion can be studied by analyzing the deeds of those terrorists. The definition of a terrorist attack is that people are terrified not the people doing the acts. People and the media talk about the public acts of destruction which causes mass sense of fear. Most people feel that religion should provide tranquility and peace not terror and violence. For the terrorists attacks that are mentioned many of the cases religion has supplied the motivation for the terrorists. So in this first chapter in relation to ethics it says that the people thought they were doing the right thing. For example since they were blowing up
In this article, Oliver Thomas discusses how important it is for people to have a religion and why religion is much needed in everyone’s life. He informs people that the answer to this question could be just to worship, but at the same time he believes that there is an answer that deals with a person’s deepest concern in a spiritual sense. He also discusses the idea that religion makes us want to live; in addition to, Viktor Frankl’s research conclusion of the Nazi death camp and how it was not the youngest, strongest or even the smartest that survived, but it was those who had found a meaning to their lives. He believes that religion makes things easier to become a decent person. In addition, the positive core values and the constant striving for self-improvement that religion push people to look for actually help them to be
The religion of Islam garners large amounts attention. Many believe it is a violent and backwards religion. Since 9/11, "Islamic reform" has become an all-purpose phrase: equally a western impulse to protect itself from Muslim violence and a humanist notion aimed at assisting voiceless Muslims (Eteraz1). Extreme displays of Islamic faith such as the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 have generated negative stereotypes about Islam as a religion. These stereotypes of violence and backwards thinking have been further perpetuated by even more recent examples of extremism by Muslim terrorists. Although most Muslims are peaceful and do not endorse the violence of their Muslim brethren, there are some who believe it is their
On that same note, religion has nothing to do with the actions of terrorizing people; it is the actions of the person that is committing the deed held responsible. So the real question is who gave people the right to accuse the Muslims for committing the actions of terrorism, if an individual from a different faith can do the same. After the tragic day of 9/11 a lot of the blame was turned upon the Muslims. You would have to stay in the back of a class or keep your name hidden just because so many people would harass you. People believed these acts of terrorism were to be dealt with once Osama
Todd Cagle DeGraffenreid English 102 5, October 2015 Synthesis with "Why We Are Infidels" and "Imagine There's No Heaven" In the essays "Why We Are Infidels," By E.L. Doctorow and "Imagine There's No Heaven" by Salman Rushdie both authors give hidden meanings when reading between the lines of each essay. The authors Rushdie and Doctorow might have completely different writing styles, but they both focus on humanism when it comes to these two writings. With the idea of humanism both writers heavily use logos, pathos and ethos to obtain the deeper meaning.
Salman Rushdie's "The Courter." is an example of a story that uses popular culture references to address the events and the feelings of characters of a particular time. In "The Courter" Rushdie uses references of culture from the early 1960's, such as pop-songs, television shows, and movies, that help readers understand and relate to the characters of his story. These references are also of a historical orientation and help direct the time frame of the story. The style that Rushdie uses for each reference help give "The Courter" its own individuality and clarify the true essence of the time.