Why do people build temples?

The word temple comes from the Latin root templum which means a ‘sacred place’. A temple signifies a structure that is reserved for religious or spiritual activities and for various other ceremonies. We, as humans, have been building temples since the dawn of civilization. There are a lot of reasons which tell us why we build temples. Some are psychological and others, more pragmatic. People throughout the world have been building temples for centuries and various cultures have their own way of looking at them.

History is a great teacher and a quick look at why temples were erected and then brought down over time acquaints us with half the answer.

A brief look at who is (was) building temples:
The Egyptians: They followed the laws of Maat (their philosophy of what was right and what was wrong). They believed if they did not build temples, their gods or goddesses would wreak havoc on them. So it was out of their fear for the gods that they build temples.

The Greeks: Their temples were built to please their deities. In ancient Greece, each city had its own god so there were a multitude of religions and this phenomenon is called paganism.

The Romans: Although, the Romans were militarily superior to the Greeks, they did not care much about the intellectual matters. They ended up following what ever the Greeks were doing, with slight modifications. They borrowed their gods from the Greeks but gave them Latin names. A famous example this: the Latin name Cupid is Cupido which is derived from a Greek word. The Greeks called this demigod ???? (Eros), which means ‘love’ in Greek!

The Chinese: In the Orient, the Chinese are the oldest civilization. In China the popular religions are Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. There, the temples are known as monasteries and offerings are made to the gods.

In Persia, before the advent of Islam, were Temples of Fire. In India, the practice of paganism continues whereas the Greeks abandoned it a long time ago. In addition to this, there are also specially designed places of worship in other cultures. The temples of the Mayas also served as astronomical observatories; the Incas built temples with roofs at the top!

The impact of the temples on society:
Historically, it has been found that temples don’t leave positive impact on a society. Here are a couple of examples:

In the Middle East:
Among the worst forms of praying is paganism. This form of divinity was prevalent in the Middle-East before the arrival of Prophet Mohammed. He told the Arabs not to believe in many gods but to keep their faith on one single deity – Allah. This was a reform, a small step forward.

The impact: The Arabs were an illiterate society. They were mocked upon by the Christians and Jews for their ignorance. When the Arabs stopped worshipping a multitude of gods, their minds took a breath of relief. They were able to think about other things and the result was that these previously illiterate people conquered much of the known world in a very short span of time. They were once ruling along the Indian borders in the east and Spain and Portugal were a part of their empires in the West. In short, they gave up the temples and then they learnt a lot.

The Renaissance:
This is a recent phenomenon. It occurred just four to five centuries ago. Most of the Europeans were illiterate. The Christian temples (churches) were misleading and exploiting the simple folk. Then some people began to question what the temples were doing. The temples and their monks could not face the questions and began losing their relevance, and, ultimately Europe emerged as the most successful continent on this planet. This hold true even today: there are not many churches (Christian temples) in Europe and there the living conditions are better than they are in India, where a temple can be found at every nook and corner of a city.

If the temples have a negative impact on society, why do people build them?
There are a lot of reasons but a couple of them are valid almost anywhere:

Tops the list is the desire of the ruling class to be in power:

It always easy to rule fools and as long as the people can be fooled that a better future awaits them if they sacrificed their present, they do what they are instructed to do—and the temples are an excellent way of doing that. There, the priests and other pseudo-religious people tell people to do things which will keep them coming to them for every little problem and making them dependent on the clergy. It is a common phenomenon in India, and the game is played keeping in mind the laws of probability. A writer once wrote: “If a hundred people are coming to a temple, for something, say getting a job or a boy child, then there stands a 50% probability that half of the people who came to the temple will have their wishes fulfilled and those fifty percent will again bring with them another fifty, and the cycle continues.

Second comes as a consequence of this. Psychologists would call it a consequence of poverty and insecurity. A person who doesn’t feel secure is more likely to fall into such traps. Poverty is also a big cause. There are a lot of temples in India and they are promising heavens to the poor for centuries and the gullible poor are still waiting.

It is said that the temples were built as places of learning. But they seem to have lost that meaning. And in today’s circumstances, the reasons for why people build temple can attribute to business interests, inability of the masses to think rationally and the desire of the ruling class to be in power.

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