Is God The Richest & The most Selfish being on the planet?

The Fragile ground, God's been occupying for 5000 yrs

Human Race and all other living beings were pretty much content with foraging sleeping and procreating for millions of years till God arrived and changed every single order that existed since last 2 million years, made us all useless, allowed us to comfort and bask in the warmth of its existence and the proverbial eye that it kept on us.

We Human Beings found solace in our hopes and beliefs because our focus shifted from the just the next meal and safety from adversaries & superior animals in food chain, to future comforts, education, aspirations, ambitions, greed, career, outperformance among the same species (highly characterised among the human beings of the present day mostly measured by solitaires and purses among women and cars and homes among men).

For the longest period of time we found comfort in deriding and under-appreciating Darwin and refused to believe that the fittest survive and organisms evolve and the weak perish. Because God came in between. As God was really the ultimate saviour from all known and unknown perils so far.

And God took advantage !!

The politics of white smoke over The Vatican, the hindu belief of karma etc, Islamic belief of shahada sanat zakat sawm hajj all made the human mankind dependant on the emotional crutches of the mind and faith and belief in the unknown and unseen.

All this while, in the human memory (average life span 70 years and active memory 50 years) people remembered what was convenient and passed on what was even more convenient. And God survived and thrived because we became slaves of the future aspirations for ourselves, for our progeny and started believing in God as the protector and the provider.

God has also been terribly lucky for an infinitely long time. Everything that is known to and seen by man has a limited lifespan. Take the strongest of edifices, the largest of corporations, beliefs and ideologies – irrespective of the robustness in those times - these had limited longevity. The largest corporations have hardly been able to survive more than a hundred years, East India Company was really more an Empire rather than a company and yet perished.

And God lasted the longest !!

Because humanity never lost faith.

Divide and rule came to be believed to be more of a modern day adage but it always existed. It always was what drove the world based on difference of opinions and beliefs and created just about enough conflict to maintain a balance in-spite of the religious holy wars. And agree or not, different Gods, through their self anointed representatives, tried hard to use this tool to control their respective fiefdoms.

Vagaries of nature in the form of Tsunamis, Earthquakes, Diseases, Floods, Droughts were never global, so-far, and we could always blame on the collective karma of the region.

The Tsunami of 2004, the hurricane Katrina (even though hurricane Galveston of 1900 was the most severe) were all severe but isolated events and we humans spared a thought for the fellow humans who lost their lives and were in the middle of such adversity but moved on with our lives the next day as the world moved on and the global economic engine moved efficiently. Deaths owing to these adversities became sad statics after a while.

Corona perhaps is the most secular event that has ever happened to Earth and all the purveyors of religion stand exposed because while the world waits for the vaccine to be discovered (which some say, is 18 months to 5 yrs away) the Gods have abandoned their posts, through which they used to instil hope and fear, and are suddenly missing in action.

Why else could such a scale of trouble not be sorted out by God. Most of us have resigned to our deservingness bias or the Just-World theory because “God is Great”

But one hypothesis definitely stands theorised – “God is only our fair weather friend”

Because the rapidity with which God deserted the guardianship of human race, its own places of worship is rather alarming. I was surprised recently, that the representative/incarnation of God was too angry to shake hands with a young lady.

Now lets look at the God’s PnL and Balance Sheet

Between the top religious organisations (links to research on their assumed wealth below) this is one corporation of religions that seems to enjoy all authority and no responsibility. Sift through the articles and the God’s (all of theirs) Balance Sheet could well be over 50 trillion dollars. About 2-3 years of USof A ‘s GDP.

This is just the declared wealth. In addition to available data, each of the top 50 religious places of worship earn over 150 million dollars each per annum. A temple in India annually earns about 27 million US $ from just the sale of human hair that are given there as offering.

Bottom line – These numbers are staggeringly unfathomable. And enough to remove all miseries from the planet.

The Associations, Trusts and Bodies that control these religious institutions should now rise to the occasion and open their coffers and allow the vast quantum of wealth collected from the contributions of the very people who are in peril.

Governments through their powers must exercise their right to make these religious organisations responsible, in the national interest, for the greater good of humanity and nations. National treasures must be used and monetised to manage national and global calamities. The gold reserves of religious institutions that are off balance sheet items, off the reserves of the central banks of respective countries across the planet must be used to alleviate the suffering (financial and hunger and medical)

Why else are we all paying annual premiums (through our pilgrimages and offerings) to God if it’s not buying the mankind any insurance.

God isn’t represented by a place, person, shape or festival. God is and should be a way of life, conduct character and compassion towards the beautiful planet and its habitants, where we got a chance to 'BE'.

"Rise up Oh dear God and demonstrate Your benevolence and open up Your coffers, for You haven’t been on a more slippery slope in over 5000 years."

Follow manu on twitter

References

Vatican Roman Catholic Church

Padmanabhaswamy Temple, Kerala, India

Tirumala Tirupati Devastham

5 Richest Religious Organisations in the World

Shridi Sai Baba Trust