Monday, August 14, 2006

Re: God is real...unless declared int

Before starting I owe an apology to Sandy for 'lifting' the title from his blog....http://rock-shasa.blogspot.com
But, the blog is totally a response to his!! (so I guess this is justified)

What/who is God? Is it a He/She? Does He/She have a form? Does He/ She belong to a religion?... And many more such unanswered questions!
Accepted, we are the children of a scientific upbringing - we are taught to question everything - never to accept anything at its face value. And I must say, for the lack of ability to ask pertinent questions in other abstruse areas, we keep jumping back to the one area where everything is foggy - even to the greatest of the greatest minds!

To me, God signifies Hope and nothing else. Just think, how many times have we faced situations where we've felt the greatest urge to be reassured - let me describe typical scenarios:
* Your semester results are out and you are glued to your screen, the page is downloading - tell me if you call out to some force then?
* If the above doesnt appeal much to you - imagine the case of a loved one being missing for quite some time - your parents have gone out shopping; they said they'll be back in an hour and its already three hours and no sign of them - do you wish for something then? - dont you say 'let them be back asap and I'll give them a major dressing down'
The hope that you nurture is God. The shoulder to cry on, the solace that you are provided with in times of need is God. The reassurance that you are seeking is God. You might argue that a friend could provide you with all of these and more. But, when you are really down and your friend is trying to cheer you up, dont you feel 'What can he/she do except say all these soothing words? If only it had happened this way' or 'I'd give anything to make this happen'?...If you do, this lamentation of yours is addressed to God.
It is just that often we feel more at ease when we think that 'things cannot be this bad; there will be better times ahead because there is a supernatural force watching over me' and we name this 'guiding/protecting' force 'GOD'.
Is there any religion associated with God? I dont think there is. It is a make-believe world that we create, in order to give our aspirations more credibility. How is it that when JRR Tolkein builds a whole plot as intricate as The Lord of The Rings, with so many fictitious characters, we are ready to buy it, but when the same kind of stories are spun around 'Balakrishna, Kamsa, Rama, Jesus' we question their veracity? Neither is true. The only difference between the two is that the first one is proclaimed to be fictitious while the second one is not - Why? Cos people need to feel secure - It is the inherent need for comfort that makes us cling to our Father - God.
Now, dont say that I am an atheist - I am NOT. I understand that I derive my comforts from the existence of this omnipresent force - I WANT to believe that such a protective armour exists around all of us - I do PRAY every morning and I DO thank Him everyday. I thank the force for not making me one of the many who dont have loving parents and friends, for not making me one of the many who dont get a full square meal everyday, for not making me one of the many who are deprived of education and most of all for loading me with sooooo many good wishes and keeping me safe, secure and comforted. Infact, many of us do this - Does this mean we fear God?
Is there any need to fear God? Is it bad if you are NOT God-fearing?
Lets just take a look at when we DO fear Him - Most of the times it happens when we do things that go against our value system. Have you ever thought how it is that a thing that appears so wrong to you (and merits punishment) is being done with such a free conscience by someone else? It is because the other person has a different set of values. And every time you go against your values you fear that you might be penalised for this - how exactly you do not know - but think again, the fear that you have is NOT that you will be meted out some corporal punishment, your fear is that the next Hope that you have will be crushed. Both are your own creation - the Value System and the Hope! (Is it a math relationship of positive and negative cancelling to give zero? Could be!)

Coming back to Sandy's qn - 'If there is God, why is He letting all these horrible things happen to everyone?' - God CANNOT stop all these calamities, He can only provide you with the Hope that you will escape unscathed.God is a positive ray of hope and nothing more than a force we wish to believe in - Often we need to rest our worries on something more stoic than your friend/parents' shoulder.

Another qn: Does God have a religion? Given my opinion, you shouldn't have a doubt about my answer to this question. The fight over religion is as absurd as a fight over the superiority of Hermoine vs. Harry!

I have a question - Why is there ANY NEED to prove that God exists? If you feel that none of my arguments make any sense, I just ask one question in return - Why do you want to quantify God? Is it necessary that he should be described by an equation ? Is everything scientific out here? Doesn't science itself use the concept of uncertainty - The 'probability' that you will be able to read this blog is 0.7 (just being +ve, lol!) Who is responsible for the remaining 0.3????

- Chandri

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Intersting, Intriguing, In your face...:)) ....I wholly subscribe to your point of view and will in fact continue the same thought in my blog ...:)) with due credence to you and Sandy ofcourse...

Cheers

Anonymous said...

http://thelampros.blogspot.com/2006/01/religion-and-relationships.html

1. Check that link out. It is in the Jan archives titled Religion and relationships.
2. Do not put God through the sieve of your rationality. Anybody's for that matter.
3. To state that hope and fear are our own creations would be a crude oversimplification. Faith transcends hope and fear. it transcends all.
4. Why does he allow all this to happen? I do not want to enter into a discussion on theology but there is a concept called free choice. Suggest you read the Walsch trilogy - Conversations with God.
5. Screw organised religions - more of this in that post. Pl do not equate religions with god. Unfortunately ppl equate the two which creates problems.
6. Can the word of god be called fiction?

Anonymous said...

Btw just click on the hari thing in the previous comment. It will take you to the link I want u 2 read.

Anonymous said...

my gawd children! what is my b-school turning into? A regular Noah's Ark.
Please please please please please! Why dont you not believe in a No-Gad instead, instead of believing in a God?