Throughout high school and college, I was amused by complaints made by some of my born-again Christian peers with regard to 'Imagine.' According to them, John Lennon was such a blasphemous person because, not only had he said that he was bigger than Jesus, he sang the lyric 'imagine there's no religion.'



Actually the song does not say that. First he and Yoko Ono, whose poems inspired the song, wrote the line 'Imagine there's no countries' and then followed this up closely by writing 'It isn't hard to do; Nothing to kill or die for; [...] and no religion too.'



Before religion, Lennon and Ono blamed country as the reason for which people killed and died. It was the time of wars in Vietnam, Nigeria, and Northern Ireland.



Perhaps the offending line is the opening of the song; 'Imagine there's no heaven' and consequently, 'no hell below us'. For billions of non-atheists, the afterlife decides how we live and also how we relate to our families and our societies.



The fear of hell tempers wicked acts and a belief in heaven encourages us to live a positive life and provides comfort that our parents and those we love dearly are living a better life, in the afterlife.



Indonesian legendary singer Chrisye and Ahmad Dhani questioned the relationship between the afterlife and religion a decade ago; asking if people truly worship God or if they only worry about hell and wish to live in heaven.



All cultures have religions; our ancestors lived by the mercy of nature. Even now we still cannot prevent earthquakes and volcanic eruption, manipulate drought and rain and we have not learned how to defeat death.



Humans thanked the unseen and yet potent forces for giving them rain, sunlight and bountiful harvest. They asked for mercy and salvation from plague, drought or invasion from other tribes. They wished for the deceased to live happily rather than merely think of the departed as a discarded pile rotting flesh and bones, or worse, being a tortured and lost spirit.



Millennia later, religions are still with us and define our national and communal identities. Personal views that there is no God (and thus no religion), that religious belief is not important and that spirituality is greater than being religious, are common only in developed nations.



Even so, religions still influence politics in United States and Japan, where again religions are tied to communal and national identities.



Religions served important functions for republics, kingdoms and empires alike. Forbidding the consumption of certain kinds of meat served as health and economic policy in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.



Religious conversions expanded trade, linguistic and cultural networks across the oceans, including in the Indonesian islands.



Pursuit of religious obligations also drove scientific breakthrough, from the study of celestial movements in all farming societies to the anthropological studies of remote societies by European missionaries.



It is true that following the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, European scientific progress could separate itself from Christianity. Indeed, Christianity had become the enemy of progress and knowledge.



At the same time, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist and Confucian civilizations stopped further scientific and economic evolution, probably since further change demanded institutional change with violent and unpredictable results, like what happened in Europe in the 17th century.



Religious identity often accompanied nationalism in the 20th century, before and after World War II. Well into the mid-2000s, the question of sharia law inclusion in the Indonesian Constitution lingered and, of course, it is still law that all official religions in Indonesia have to conform to the Abrahamic monotheistic design. Most of our neighbors guard their religious identity jealously and today religion remains a very sensitive topic in Southeast Asia due to the history of communal conflicts in the region.



Isn't it better to do away with religion? Some online commentators proudly identify themselves as atheists or humanists and they state that religions make people dumb and murderous.

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The absence of religion does not prevent humans from being diabolical.



Certainly, we can be annoyed by the sharia offence of the month in Aceh, as the cloud of an alcohol ban lingers above us and, among the non-Muslim Indonesians, eat pork as a political statement.



When reading international news we shake our heads seeing American presidential candidates vow to combat abortion and gay rights (and currently to keep Muslim refugees away), while Islamic State (IS) murders innocents in Beirut and Paris in the course of imaginary holy wars.



Hindu and Buddhist hardliners in India and Myanmar respectively claim that they are defending their lands from Muslim incursion.



Unfortunately, the absence of religion does not prevent humans from being diabolical, as testified by 20th century communist regimes ' from Stalin's purges to the Tiananmen Square Massacre ' and by the ongoing madness of the Kim dynasty in North Korea.



On a lesser degree, the superstars of modern atheism such as Richard Dawkins have lost followers, having repeatedly made fun of women and people of color, who they have deemed to be less intelligent, witty, and rational than they themselves are. Many supporters of Donald Trump call themselves humanists or even atheists and have no qualm in expressing their hatred for women, African-Americans, Jews and Muslims.



Countries like Canada, Australia, and Denmark prove that it's possible to be secular, multicultural, and relatively safe. On the other hand, aggressive secularization, such as that which France has reportedly been carrying out, can be politically and socially costly. Like al-Qaeda members before them, IS members in Europe believe that, as Muslims, they are dishonored and violence is the right response.



The attractiveness of IS is the promise of glory, pride and power ' the realization of a twisted video game or Hollywood epic. If its followers really wanted to fight injustice against Muslims, they could have organized rallies, published articles and podcasts and went into politics with the agenda of economic and social improvements in the inner suburbs of Paris' or Brussels.



But it's not the road they took and mocking Islam online would not make things better. Every day a miniscule but growing number of Indonesians are happy with their own moral compass, respect other beliefs and try to improve lives in this corrupt and dirty country and not because they reject religion.



It's because they have chosen to become better people and ask others to follow their example. Their imagination is bigger, with or without religion.

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The writer is a columnist for feminist website magdalene.com and a founding member of mini blog Ideapod.

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