Wednesday, August 13, 2008

The Hollow Faith

"I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world." - G. K. Chesterton.



The first word that a child learns is "mumma" then probably "papa". Right after these two words we tend to teach the child the biggest hollow faith in the world 'GOD'. I know after reading these two lines some of you might not want to read this stuff. Well thanks for your support, this blog is not meant for the blockheaded people.



Even I was a child like the one I mentioned above. I have had a childhood and teaching like any other Indian kid, and was one of those who used to believe that GOD is actually something more than a word in my oxford dictionary. But only until, I started reasoning with the faith that prevailed. So here is what I think.



It's a common human tendency to tame others with the threat of something, to develop a fear that can control our actions. Its like scaring a baby with the "jhhole waale baba" so that he does not go out. This is the basic behind the evolution of god concept. In the stone age or may be even before that, human beings were amazed to see the power of wind, water and fire. They began to worship these natural forces as they had no answer to the 'threat' of obliteration caused by it. Time passed by and the relentless faith prevailed through generations.



You may term this as atheism, but I term it as logical reasoning.



In my quest for explanations, I came across the contrary. One of them is the 'The theodicé problem' which states "If the evil in the world is intended by god he is not good. If it violates his intentions he is not almighty. God can't be both almighty and good."



Well, this was just the beginning. If for a moment you forget about what has been spoon-fed to you and think rationally you might come across these questions.



If every thing that happens in this world is controlled by the god then he should be punished for all the crimes and natural disasters. This included merciless killing of infants, kids. Either your god had no powers to stop this or he wanted this to happen.



Whenever, we the humans, are in some trouble or pain, we believe in worshipping god to relieve us from that. I don't understand one thing, why does your god need this gratifying. Does it want marathon prayers from a dying man to save his life? In fact, why at all does it need prayers?



If god can do everything, can he create a rock so heavy which cannot be lifted by himself?



We always hear stories about capturing visuals of souls and evil spirits, we hear people claiming that they have seen these spirits. Has anyone ever made a claim that he as seen god? No my friend never.



Well I went a step further. To understand the concept of god I decided to read one of the Hindu epics "Bhagavad Gita". To my astonishment, before it even starts, the prologue compels you to believe in god blindly. If anyone of you has read it you would know what I am talking about. I must confess that after reading a few pages I decided to quit as every line of it compels you to bow down without a reason.



The reasoning is endless. All it needs an open frame of mind and a logical brain. I am not directing you to believe in what I think. All I would want to convey now is that if each one of us does his bit honestly and serves a little bit of mankind you won't find a reason to look for god. Be good to others, never hurt anyone emotionally you would not feel the need to ring temple bells or light a candle ever in your life.



Give it a thought - "We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." - Gene Roddenberry

5 comments:

Mukul said...

Nice outlook....Gaurav....we really need many more people like you...highly imppressed.....by the way...how'z life treating you...!

Ujjwal said...

Agreed.

GRV said...

Thanks Ujjwal and Mukul :)

rshooty said...

Hi, so first off, you mentioned how God is used as a fear tactic to make people believe things. I don't disagree that that happens, but I think that as people begin practicing their faith and start having a relationship with God they realize that they are not propelled in faith by fear, but by their desire to be with God(because God is real). By this, I mean that God is the Creator we talk about nonstop, but God is so much more than that. He fuels everything, sustains us.

You talk of evil being intended by God. While evil does exist in the world, I don't believe God is always intending that it happens. Rather, I believe God allows the evil (which happens because of our choices or the choices of other spirits in our world). The reason God allows it to happen is because we have freewill, which is the ability to choose. So God has His will for the world, but we also are given our own sliver of will to choose how we affect the world. I believe it is because of the latter will that evil exists.

Now, the question of "Why doesn't God just force our will to make things better?" arises in this. The reason is because of love. God loves us, infinitely, but if God makes us appreciate Him (by force) then that is not love by us. So the only way for love to exist is for freewill to exist.

While the popular notion of "God hasn't been caught on camera" is still widespread, that doesn't mean that God hasn't been caught by people in their faith. There are literally thousands of miraculous stories of people coming to faith because something crazy happened (that could only happen because of God). God reaches out to us because He wants us to be good, and He wants to restore the world through us, but the problem is we don't always let Him.

rshooty said...

Also, I've never been, but I love India. I've met a lot of cool Indians in the states who have taught me a little bit about Indian food, which I love.