Study on Sikhism

While I was having lunch at school one day with several peers of mine, I saw this Indian girl praying before her meal. I asked her whether she was a Christian to which she replied that she was a Sikh. I commented that I did not know that Sikhs prayed before having their meal.

I read up a little about this religion on the internet this afternoon. Apparently, it is a monotheistic religion that features a creator God. And I had thought that only the Abrahamic religions were monotheistic. I wonder whether its scriptural text, the Gurū Granth Sāhib, would share similar story of creation as that in the Abrahamic religion of Adam and Eve. I wonder whether Sikhism would feature a theology based on history, or on philosophy.

It is truly the case that religion is a strongly group-based activity and one finds himself adhering in a particular religion that he finds his culture around him subscribing to. See my entry here featuring an atheist video alleging that adherence to religion is a cultural phenomenon. Now, I would like to think that an intelligent and educated population would be less disposed towards the more mythological religions. I suppose this is true to a certain extent. But I know of a neighbour who is in the law school that I am in who still partakes in the ancestral paper burning colloquial taoist rituals. Heck, US Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney is a Mormon, which seems to me like a cult religion that is deft of possible serious substantiation by an intelligent person. Yet, it seems to me that mankind has not come to a conclusive position on which religion is the truth despite all the intellectual energy that has been put into it. I wonder whether an objective position can be reached in this or whether mankind is truly stuck in a quagmire of inconclusive evidences regarding the truth of religion.

I am not sure whether Sikhism possess a strong intellectual foundation to its religion. I would like to think that the law students around me are more critical than the average person in the way they approach the subject of religion. So when I see this Indian girl who is quite devout to the Sikh religion, I question whether there is a critical attitude towards religion amongst the intellectual class, or are people even at the top rungs of society still very much a follower of the cultural background that they come from. Shouldn't intelligent people in such fields of society have applied their minds to considering the truth of their religion, and also the truth of Christianity? I suppose given the very hectic schedule of the everyday life of a person, it is hard to conduct such investigation. And thus, religious affiliation remains very much a cultural phenomenon even at a field where there are many intelligent people.