Is Philosophy Synonymous with Religion?

The moment someone mentions the word philosophy, a lot of people think it is related to God and his work. Actually, it is not. In fact, a lot of people would be surprised to know that God is not the focus point of philosophy. A lot of philosophers over the years have completely denounced the concept of God and yet have successfully managed to explain the concept of philosophy.

Philosophy is a way of thinking which tries to answer a lot of questions related to our existence in this universe. While some think that the concept of God is absolutely necessary for people to understand this universe, some people think the concept of God is completely irrelevant to philosophy, and some other people think that God is actually a hypothesis created by people in the early days to reduce the confusion related to the existence and the functioning of the universe. In fact, a lot of philosophers in the past and in the recent times have completely denied the existence of God and have been atheists. So, there have been theist philosophers, agnostic philosophers, and atheist philosophers all over the world.

Human mind is usually conditioned during childhood and it has got a lot to do with your parents' faith. If your parents are theists, you will obviously be raised a theist, if your parents are agnostics, you will be raised an agnostic and if your parents are atheists, you will be raised an atheist. However, a lot of people don't conform and they usually think on their own. Philosophers have always been people who have thought on their own and have never conformed unless they know what they are doing.

One of the famous philosophers, Frederick Nietzsche, is famous for stating that 'God is dead, and therefore from now on, man is free'. Most of the philosophers around the world were not comfortable discussing God, as it immediately brought upon questions related to orthodox religions. Their way of thinking was beyond the reach of institutionalized religions and this is the reason why they refrained from using the concept of God.

The only thing that everyone agrees upon is the limited ability of human mind to comprehend things around us and that the universe cannot be fathomed by the ordinary perception that we have about things around us. This is also the reason why a lot of philosophers talked about understanding that human mind is not a separate entity unto itself, but a part of the cosmic consciousness.