God Religion : Why we are confused?

At present the major threat to the world is terrorism. And unfortunately, the major reason behind terrorism gets attributed to god. In the name of God, people are massacred mercilessly. The most affected people in this are the people on the street, who work hard to earn their living and has nothing to do with these extreme philosophies. They do believe in God and religion, but it's a private affair for most of them. God and religion is a personal affair for them, which provides them with mental solace and has nothing to do with bombs and bullets.

It is a paradox that such a noble concept like god is tarnished with the blood of the human. Why time and again, people use the name of God for killing people and not building the life of people? I believe the true nature of this problem lies in mixing the concept of god and religion. Most of the world follows religion as if it is god, but it is not.

Let's first understand what god is? I think no one knows what God is or who God is. Personally, I do not agree with anyone who says that he or she has seen or talked to god. Yes, but there is a god or something like a god, but it is unknown. It is too grand a concept for us humans to understand. When we humans could not understand each other, how we can claim to understand God? The earth is a tiny speck in the scheme of the universe and a particular individual is even tinier. Still we humans feel so much proud of ourselves and our achievements. The achievement might look grand, but they have no importance in the grand scheme of the universe. Let's get back to our question, who is the god? I wish that I would have a simpler answer to this question, but I do not have. God is beyond our comprehension. The common underlying theme is however that there is a power that is beyond us. The moot point here is that this sense is common in all religions and sects, theists, and atheists.

Now let's understand what is a religion? Religion is a much simpler phenomenon as it is created by humans and anything created by a human is simple to understand. Religion is a simple body of rules and regulation which tries to govern the life of a human. In fact, there is nothing godly about it. Each religion is a perception of god by the originators of that religion. And that perception was influenced by the contextual environment, which includes social, political, economic situations and also the psychology and personal belief of the originators. Let's do an analogy here. We all understand the concept of a country. A country is a geographical area. But each particular country is different in itself. No one can say that one country is better than the other. On a bigger time scale, all countries will even out in terms of comparison. In one century, one country was better but then in a couple of centuries, others become better and this cycle will go on. Similarly, God relates to the concept of country, and religion is the perception of that country converted into rules and regulations governing that country. And we live, love, and die for our country as if this is the ultimate phenomena. Think in a little different way, it is just a geographic boundary, which actually isolates us from folks of neighboring countries. The concept of a country is again a convenient notion to divide the people and maintain the power for some people similar to religion. I am not saying that we stop loving our country, but we should be more understanding of the people around us. Similarly, we can follow our religion as a culture but can be more accommodating with the people around us.

Once this differentiation is clear, it will be easy for us, humans to discern the difference between god and religion. All the infighting that we do has to do with the thinking that religion is ultimate, and which is not. The ultimate is the god, which no one of us understands, and let's not fight for what we do not understand.

The reason in religion