Atheism has always been a topic of great debate throughout man's history perturbing the greatest thinkers of their times. Even the most religiously inclined have at some point or the other in their lives questioned and divulged to take an adventure into the realms of atheism. If not as a complete departure that might involve a public announcement or a passport rectification but maybe as an abandonment of certain religious customs.
I have occasionaly mildly questioned the spirit of God. Its surprising though that whenever I have talked upon this issue to others I have almost always reached to a conclusion that I hadnt known before I had started the conversation and have always managed to find myself a tad bit more mature in my understanding of the simplistic but ever so complicated ways of leading a religious life.
Lets concentrate on religion for a moment leaving out God. Yes, for many, this might seem a complete impossibility. But I think otherwise and have felt so always. Let us focus on religion as a way of life. Surely, this doesnt require a concept of God. To live life, what do we need? Happiness, I presume and a mental state of self-contentment and everlasting peace? As a very compelling theory suggests, happiness isnt worth it if you havent felt sadness before. Look at nature for evidence. It is the tree that you see fills with joy when it flowers in spring after having experienced all the hardships of the winter cold and the torment of the monsoon. A special word in Hindi comes to my mind: Yauvan. But ahh, this little excursion has been a fairly unnecessary departure from our main question: does religion give us this happiness that we seek?
I say it does give us alot of happiness. Its indirect ways of making our life more organised, for instance is a good point to start upon. Suppose my religion tells me to not kills animals for their meat if I can avoid it. It tells me to get up in the morning to read my holy book. It tells me to bow down and touch the feet of elders. If you havent noticed but this has inculcated in my life a sense of respect for time and a value for people and all life forms. What does this mean? It means stability and it is a must for my mental peace. So, to clarify, I am saying that this binding that might seem irreasonable to many and questionable at the least has been far thought about by minds who created these pearls of wisdom and is for a purpose most certainly.
What more do we expect of a religion or religious life? Atleast, if a religion guides us to live a disciplined way and to lead a social life teaching us to be kind and considerate to those of our kind (by this I mean human beings and not only people of our religion) and even others, I think it is well worth following a religion. So, in effect, I hope I have justified to many atheists that a religious life is in essence what we all want and there is no harm in practicing such a religion.
But now, let us focus our attention on the crux of the debate, that pertaining to the existence of an influence like God. This is where the levee breaks and all the scientific framework of a religion breaks down. No wonder self-avowed atheists pride themselves on their choice of relying on scientific principles of seeing and believing. But is it really that simple? And, is there something like an instinct that suggests concretely to you that a God or even many of them exist? Or, is this all a game of probability like that depicted by a quantum mechanical world. Nobody has the answer, yet I tell you I know that I am not wrong in believing in a God. I throw this question to my instincts because I believe in them alot. Its the feeling you get when doing mathematics when you know whats going to happen ahead because you have a feeling for the subject and an understanding that is firm footed.
I want to add an almost irrelevant example here of Paul Erdos, the great Hungarian mathematician, the most prolific in terms of publications only after Leohnard Euler, who doped throughout his life on mild drugs. Once, his friend challenged him to sustain without the hypnotic for a month for some sum to which Erdos very zealously obliged. He then went on to win the bet, but his last words to his friend were so beautiful, "The past one month has been the most worthless and wasteful time of my life. When I used to see a piece of paper, my head was full of ideas, but now, all I see is a piece of paper". What I am trying to make you realise is that sometimes instinct and imagination is the way forward.
Nonetheless, I have again not proved anything here and I hardly find myself capable of proving that God exists. Let me just call God a result of the human spirit, in whose arms we find empathy; someone who we cannot ever know or see but still even if foolishly, expect support at all times which gives us courage to continue struggling with our ordeals and reaching an end to our ordinary lives as ordinary people that we are.
Finally, I would like to conclude that I have yet again gained something from venting out my feelings in this form. I hope you have also enjoyed reading this article. I have put some thought into this article unlike the many other posts that I dish out that ever so often.
http://sonbolshoy.blogspot.com/2007/03/just-wanted-to-publish-this-poem.html
The above is a link to a poem that I wrote way back and I felt is a first of my answers to the mind battles that this question always has generated for me time and again. Please check it out as well, as it is a special poem for me.
21 comments:
The topic under scrutiny is far too complicated for me to reason coherently at the moment, just having absolved myself of the beautiful task of proving the eigenicity of a certain spherical harmonic over the angular momentum squared. In simple words, I will have to read your post again and think over it and probably re-comment..
The spirit of enquiry has been a catalyst for the advancement of all sciences throughout humanity. That said, it is impossible to give a logical reason for the origin of this brainwave, this sudden amalgam of atoms in the brain which are responsible for coherent cognition. One school of thought is that since there are unexplicable phenomena in the universe which have a source in time and space that is intractable in science, there must be a higher force at work. Another school of thought is to accept only what is directly observable. Other idealogies may be defined roughly in terms of nonlinear combinations of these two. And needless to say, the latter idea is unscientific: you have never seen an electron, but you know it exists. I think its necessary to critically analyze both idealogies, with as much "science" as possible.
But I would not mix the practice of science or scientific reason too much with things that are as yet hazy and subject to an endless debate about existence and consciousness.
For personal chemical abuse reasons, I cannot possibly comment further on this topic at the moment.
First, you wote it like a debate. Firstly... Nonetheless... Furthermore... I conclude!
Anyways, according to me the terms 'God', 'Relegion' and 'spirituality' are completely different in meaning.
Relegion, agreeable, is a way of life. Whereas, God is in refernce to a supremem power which is the creator of the world. (No scientific explanations. I dunno and I don't care about Brainwave mechanisms and Chemical abusage)
Also, happiness ,being a state of mind is obviously influenced by our pattern of existence. Thus, relegion(in the sense of discipline) does play an important role.
Personally, I prefer to keep the three terms and entities different.
P.S: Did you once call a girl 'marriage material'? Can I knw her name?
hmm, yeah, as I said, one cannot go all out in an attempt to find a scientific reason. Infact, I have suggested it isnt neccessary at all. If a fictitious shape makes us happy, let it be the way it is.
haha... the last part... hmmm...
There is no point in ever debating on the existence of God because HE cannot defend himself in words like human beings and any indication of HIS presence in our life we may call it a co-incidence or natural turn of events.We generally tend to experience the power of GOD only when we are going thru some bad experience and want some power to bring our life back on track.Some may still continue to think that they did it by their hard work or perseverance.To each his own.
I personally believe in the power of God though I feel HE lives in each one of us.In times of trouble we just need to look inside and let our feelings rule over our mind and that eventually helps us to come out of troubles as I feel in distress This is the way God guides us to come out of it.
Religion and spirituality are interdependent as one cannot be spiritual without religion or vice- versa.By religion I don't believe in rituals or orthodox upbringing.Religion I feel brings about a certain amount of discipline and which in turn helps us to be focused and increases our will power to do things even when we don't feel like it.If by deciding to read some holy book for few minutes makes you get up on time ,take a bath and keep a healthy life then where is the harm.Harm begins in any practice if it begins to cloud our rational thinking or prevents us from being humanly.Spirituality comes from religion. Our kindness towards fellow beings,humility etc comes from practising religion as a way of life and that somebody is there to look after us and guide us in good and bad times.Remember GOD takes more care of us when we feel down and out.We may forget him in good times but he never lets us down when we need HIM the most even if we don't understand HIS way of doing things.Nita
The whole debate of whether God exists or not is completely pointless, because this is something that has no single clear-cut answer to it.This question has been pondered long enough by countless people with no apparent results.The very definition of God is vague - what is HE? Something supreme to humans? Something that made up this world? Then to the atheist and the logician physics might very well be the God.God for us is just the embodiment of something that is superior to us - something higher than humans can reach, so it is completely ok if some believe Christ to be the Almighty, or if some believe things like Quantum Mechanics to be the creator of the world.
As far as religion is concerned, it is nothing but a set of rules created for convinience.It has no logic to it - save for the fact, that it makes life easier, more disciplined and organised.The only reason people ever follow the illogical, irrational parts of the religion is because religion is something that has been implicitly endorsed by God (Though we have never seen that happen.We have to take our fellow human's word for it).So, all religion does is to give us a moral code to lead our lives - without it man wil be struggling to tackle even simple questions like whether killing is good or bad! Religion has nothing to do with God - it's just a way of life like you said.But recognition of God is just a recognition of the fact that humans aren't the most powerful things in the world.
I agree with you Aurko. It really isnt neccessary to question God because as long as one is happy to feel protected and encouraged by his presence, let that person be happy.
Just one point: Quanutm Mechanics is not a "creator" of the world. We still do not understand it fully nor its implications in a manner that would make its observations, predictions and axioms immediately obvious. As Feynman said, "...I think I can safely say that nobody understands Quantum Mechanics."
Quantum Mechanics is a model created by humans to describe certain phenomena that could not be described correctly with classical (or non-quantum, if you will) theories. I don't think anyone in the Physics community would believe that quantum mechanics is a creator..it certainly isn't a theory of everything (if a TOE exists in the first place, in which case we would have to define it).
But I do agree with you about the last part of your post, Aurko. Rules define our lives, no matter what we do. We all follow rules, only sometimes they are self-invented...and yes, always for convenience. Having said that, the fact that all our intelligence and accomplishments are nothing but a speck on the galactic scale, that our success tends to consume us and that there may be life out there just as intelligent as we are (if not more) is sufficiently humbling and inspiring to go on.
Whoa, what happened to my comments?
Its human tendency to worship and fear something which we dont understand. Worship of forces of nature was part of all religions because man was scared of fire ,thunder and water. Sun and soil was worshipped for food.
As society was divided into classes people started arguing on existence of almighty for gaining more resources and for mental peace.
In every era society economy and polity defines the path to spirituality. The debate on existence of god changes with time.
Who gave you the right to delet my comments?
Just because it you blog... :x
You bloody, Nine point someone... :x
I say it does give us a lot of happiness.
Yes, & so does an imaginary friend to a 4-year-old.
Atleast, if a religion guides us to live a disciplined way and to lead a social life teaching us to be kind and considerate to those of our kind (by this I mean human beings and not only people of our religion) and even others, I think it is well worth following a religion.
Religion is no self-evident moral compass. Whatever 'good' actions that you do, or want to do, do you do it because of an intrinsic sense of morality (the evolution of which is another topic & can't be elaborated upon here), or just because it's been written in some ancient scripture? You certainly don't follow every single word that's been written in a religious scripture, do you? Otherwise, we'd still be dividing & discriminating people on foolish delusions of caste & what have you, & everything mentioned here -> http://www.humanistsofutah.org/2002/WhyCantIOwnACanadian_10-02.html.
To state that a human being's inherent sense of good & bad is derived from religion (which is little more than a glorified fairy-tale arising out of ignorance, escapism, & the conceited nature of human beings), is a fallacy, since there's no direct cause-effect relationship between something being 'good'/'fair'/acceptable, & it being 'validated' in some ancient book.
And, is there something like an instinct that suggests concretely to you that a God or even many of them exist?
The instinct is one arising out of escapism, & the conceitedness of human beings (a historical example - geocentric universe, & when that was debunked, the 'instinct' that cried for a geocentric solar system atleast; both of which rested on utterly stupid assumptions as if being the 'centre' was something that would give our collective behinds a massive ego-kick. Once again, the assumption that 'centre' be upheld as something of great importance reeking of Anthropic Bias).
What I am trying to make you realise is that sometimes instinct and imagination is the way forward.
Yes, but not delusion, and one that's defeatist at that.
Nonetheless, I have again not proved anything here and I hardly find myself capable of proving that God exists.
That, which can be asserted/claimed to be proven without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
Let me just call God a result of the human spirit, in whose arms we find empathy; someone who we cannot ever know or see but still even if foolishly, expect support at all times which gives us courage to continue struggling with our ordeals and reaching an end to our ordinary lives as ordinary people that we are.
Word. I agree; it's the "opiate of the masses".
Finally, I would like to conclude that I have yet again gained something from venting out my feelings in this form.
Likewise, cheers.
Dear Ipopp, thank you for commenting on my blog.
First of all, let me make it clear, and as you said, I have no intention of proving "God". I for one, consider him an imaginary entity that guides me (yes, my escapist, dillusionary trendency), and I feel I should not dissapoint him in life; that I am answerable to him if I do wrong/ hurt someone.
God is more like an extension of my moral values for me.
I really dont know how you concluded that I believe that we derive all our moral values from our religious text. It was actually funny reading your random ranting on that. But I say, I certainly get inspired reading stories of Ramji and I think I should emulate him. Its not easy to be strong enough to do right always ( please think abt this again), and sometimes, a sense of morality builds up when you think about being answerable to God.
The caste system still prevails today in the form of the upper, middle and the lower classes in general. The rich still buy higher education; those days they bought elementary education.
Religious texts were written by man, who obviously, cannot be completely pure at heart. His faults will come through in his text. I was talking about religion as alot of it based on your own moral values and discipline.
If you read the above and understood any part of it, you will have got your reply to your lame comparison of a completely scientifically verifiable fact and proving existence of God ( which again is unnecessary and it hardly pertains to our scientific growth rather is an extension of our moral counscience) ( and even your dellusional aspects) .
Lastly, repect observation and respect imagination.
God is more like an extension of my moral values for me.
A personification, would be more like it. Which is another peculiar aspect of human psychology, i.e the need to personify many abstract concepts; an everyday example would be one of seeing 'faces' in objects (man on the moon), or that of seeing shapes in the clouds. Human beings tend to see patterns where there are none, and the apophenia needn't be up for public debate as long as it's kept personal - which is not the case with organized religion.
I really dont know how you concluded that I believe that we derive all our moral values from our religious text...
This statement of yours seemed to imply that: Atleast, if a religion guides us to live a disciplined way and to lead a social life teaching us to be kind and considerate to those of our kind (by this I mean human beings and not only people of our religion) and even others, I think it is well worth following a religion.
If you read the above and understood any part of it, you will have got your reply to your lame comparison of a completely scientifically verifiable fact and proving existence of God...
Certain sections of religion do claim to have scientific implications (creationism, or as piu stated above about Pagan religions). The 'god' that people have defeatedly invoked over the years, is essentially a god of the gaps, who provides a temporary illusion of having answered the question (and thereby crippling the spirit of enquiry before it could begin - 2 prehistoric humans: "hey, why does it get dark at night?" "there's a man up there who pulls that big yellow ball down, so..."), and eventually facilitates a spiral into an intellectual black hole.
As I've said, it's something that arised out of the ignorance of early humans, & escapism, which was due to our fears of mortality.
and it hardly pertains to our scientific growth rather is an extension of our moral counscience) ( and even your dellusional aspects)
It certainly has no role in science, thanks to it's dogmatic nature. But what about the barriers to scientific & intellectual progression that arise as a direct consequence of religion? (inquisitions, propagation of myths, baselessly & unnecessarily dividing humanity...). Not to mention the atrocities commited in the name of religion by people who merely stretch the delusion to a higher level.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities".
"This sort of behavior is left to the psychotic, dogmatic, fundamentalist 'believers' you see on your TV everyday, letting off bombs & killing people in the name of 'god'. Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning. A non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe nothing."
Might seem like a trivial point, but the use of the masculine pronoun 'he' in reference to 'god' (refer post by nita above, and various examples outside), further vindicates the deep-rooted male chauvinism, patriarchy, & oppression of people on the basis of their gender that was inherent in most religions; thankfully, as far as society is concerned, that has changed over the last century, since people have become more sensible, and the influence of religion has diminished - but the gender discrimination still prevails in religion. I understand that this (the pronoun used for 'god') is something that people don't give much thought to, but when seen as part of a larger picture, it's rather obvious where that comes from.
Lastly, repect observation and respect imagination.
Umm... I'm no philistine by any standards. On the contrary, I'm passionate about most arts, but that's another topic anyway.
But if you meant that in reference to religion...
Absolute & unquestioned respect is the last resort of the intellectually bankrupt. It's a pretty nifty self-defense mechanism inherent in almost all religions. There would be no need to 'respect' the truth - you just have to accept it. While in the case of the glorified fairy-tale that's religion... it's already been taken way too seriously, and I don't understand why any sensible person would be willing to dumb themselves down to swallow it's absurdities.
Most of the religions have Males as creators of their religion like Guru Nanak for Sikhs,Jesus For Christians,Prophet Mohammad for Muslims,Mahavir Jain,Buddha etc.Though Hindu religion believes that Mother Goddess is all powerful and Lord Shiva is lifeless without the female Godess.It was easier for me to refer to God as He for the above reason.God being He or She is immaterial while humans are still debating over its existence.
Any belief that makes a person dogmatic,irrational enough to commit atrocities on fellow human beings cannot be called a part of any religious belief.
It is upto individuals to have faith in any religion out of fear or regard for goodness of humanity.
As I have earlier said there is no point in debating over the existence of GOD,various beliefs.We all are living in a free society .We have a right to believe and live the way we want to, provided our way of living does not cause harm or anguish to others.
We should not cause anguish to anyone with our debate or thoughts.We must respect the views of each other and should not create confusion by doubting the intention of the writer over simple issues and thoughts.Nita
Wow, this might just be a residue of deleted comments ;-)
Keep it up Kartiek!
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