This essay focuses the critical review of the debate on ‘whether we will be better off without religion’. The debate is between two very famous scholars in religious studies, Raza Azlam who is an author of the book called ‘God: A human history and the other a physicist and atheist Lawrence Krauss. Both of them hold two very different opinions as to how religion affects people emotionally and morally while holding the same opinions on matters of religious violence and influence of it in the society.
The debate begins with Raza talking about how religion is both good and bad because its man-made institution and how we are inherently attached to it like a second skin. He moves on to lay the floor for faith and discussion to be discussed as two concrete elements so that it becomes easier to debate on a concrete premise. Raza also talks about how we cannot separate religion as an entity from people’s life as it has become a part of who we are and its so much of an identity to people. He also brings into account that the fact the religion causes conflicts, wars and no other entity does this is completely flawed since people go to war for various other reasons too by quoting the example of world wars. And also, how we shouldn’t categorise Islam as violent force inherently since violence is found in all religions not just a specific one.
On the other hand, Lawrence talks about the idea of accepting reality and how important it is to believe in something that is true and you have facts and evidences on. He completely takes over the idea of Raza talking about divine power by asking him how such a human made institution can proclaim such statements. He talks about how people aren’t identifying themselves with religions as they used to before and even people who do aren’t even aware of the basic doctrines. He questions the idea of God in life and what exactly is the purpose of god or how it has actually helped the world. He brings in an important argument of how people’s morality is connected to religion and they aren’t ready to let go of the wrong side of it.
What is fundamentally wrong about this debate was that it failed to reach a consensus or give us a basic idea of which would be the best option, the idea of the debate was to understand if religion is needed or not and this was something that wasn’t addressed at the end of the debate. Problems of individual identity and group identity weren’t discussed in wide scope and questions based on the scared use of Quran and Bible addressed to Raza did not really have a concrete answer. In so many ways questions of absolutism was also not answered by Lawrence. Both the sides failed to grasp the fundamentals of the debate taking it to extremes
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