NOTE: This is continued from my previous post.
Religion was never meant to happen, and it isn't meant to be. All the laws of nature go against it. Whenever we see how people from different religions can come together and be happy, more than they can with people of their religion, it goes to show how pointless it is to classify people according to religion, and to provide them privileges for just belonging to some religion.
The worst part about religion is how you have no choice. You are born into a religion no matter what. And it becomes a part of childhood listening to stories of how some god killed some demon and made the world a better place, and other stuff like that. The growth of religion can be pinned to how we need some restraint to stay within the lines of the greater good. We need something to hold us back from hurting others; because given the chance, we all will kill someone. We all have someone in our minds every time we think of murder. Someone specific, someone we truly hate (that is if we understand the gravity of the committing of such a heinous act). Now, in order for us to know what's right and what's wrong, we need a yardstick. This is where the concept of God became important.
Let me give you an example:
We have all seen kids, we have all noticed how tender their minds are, how quickly they can grasp things, and how easy learning is for them. But we also know how immature their thinking is, and how they need a basis for thoughts, even though the abstract is closer to their reach than it is to a 40-year-old's. Imagine a kid is doing something wrong- like hitting a friend or something of the sort. The parent will obviously want to get rid of such a violent tendency when it's easiest. Now, to make the kid realize he's wrong, the parent can't obviously give him a lecture on Rawl's Theory of Justice, and the relative system of justice, and tell him about how it's wrong by both to hurt someone else (duh!). That will only disgust the kid, or just irritate him more and drive him to commit more such acts of unhindered violence. Nor can the parent just leave it to the child's imagination and sense of judgment to decide for himself whether or not it's right. Such a judgment requires proper understanding and sound morals in the kid's mind, neither of which comes with birth. When we are born, we are all the same, born without morals, without anything except a clenched fist and a shine in the eyes. Morals need to be inculcated in the kid's daily life for him to realize and see for himself how he's right, and how he can do better. There are many ways to do this, as an old Indian adage goes: "saama, daana, bhedha, danda". The most noble of all is persuasion and reasoning ("saama"); an incentive ("daana") is next as it may give the subject an insight into his wrongdoings, and provide him a chance to make amends and get something out of it; a slight scare provided by feeding it into his head that not doing the right thing will earn him something he does not like, usually something he dreads or is disgusted by, is also effective to some extent ("bhedha"); and if none of these work, physical (or) mental punishment is the only way to make him listen. Persuasion is by far the noblest, and the most time-consuming, and punishment is the most effective in a short-sighted perspective. But the most effective are bhedha and daana (in that order). This is because while one creates a fear in the mind about not following the rules laid out, and keeps the kid from venturing on to the "dark side", the other succeeds in making him do the "right" thing because it's more logical, and earns him a reward. This is exploited by parents, who tell their kids stories of the Lord's powers, scaring the shit out of their heads and keeping them from trying such things, until some anarchy is introduced (in this case, me). They also tell kids about all the nice things one gets out of being good, and this is also where the concept of Hell and Heaven comes in, as does the concept of Afterlife.
Now imagine the same kid without any of the God crap. It becomes very difficult for the parent to keep his behavior under control, without anything to convince him with. This is precisely how religion grew: through the public's fears. It's more like a child's fear of the dark: the fear grows out of the lack of knowledge of what lies beyond the dark, not of the dark itself; people believe in God because He's made out to be this angry guy who punishes people that don't believe in him. The belief in most of us is mostly fear, not faith. And that is why I have used the word "belief" till now, and never used "faith": because faith is too strong and too complex a word to describe what most of us feel.
So, disregarding my comment on faith, it's pretty clear now how we have been led into this shit. But what makes us stay? The answer lies in our heads.
"Why do you believe in God?", I asked my dad. He said "because not everything can be explained using just known facts" and that "we all need to accept the presence of some supernatural power". When you listen to him talk, you'll be elevated to new heights in his own theology and his arguments about the existence of such a being. And then, I asked him how he can believe in many forms of God (he's Hindu, yes). He says something like "You can believe in anything you want to, but they are all the different forms of one thing. It's like how water exists in three forms: ice, steam, and liquid vapour, while chemically it's the same thing all the time". It's amazing how well my dad can speak at times.
That is until you realize how all his arguments are invalid statements based on pseudo-facts. First, let me talk about this whole "logic can't explain it" shit. All through human history, we have fallen for the unknown, and called it God. The ancient Romans did this with lightning, which they thought was the manifestation of God. Now, we know it's just charges flying around. The same thing with Sun, the moon, the stars, snakes.. and everything that seems mystical. At different points of time there have been these things that science at that time couldn't explain, and at that point, they were Gods, or their manifestations. And when their true nature is discovered, all these people proclaiming the existence of God go in search of something else that isn't explained. So, in that light, I'm actually surprised people haven't called dark matter a proof of the existence of God. People come up with arguments very frequently about how we don't know how the Universe came to being, and say that's because science will never know that it's God who created it. That's just bullshit. It's just a matter of time before scientists come up with some theory to explain everything, without there ever having to be any unknown factor, called God. But until then, believing in some dark mutant sheep with scuba glasses that lies outside the universe and plays thief-and-police with the particles in the universe is just as reasonable a belief as that in a God.
And about the "supernatural power" shit, it's because any observable force needs to be felt in the area of observation for it to be documented. It's like not believing in black holes just because we don't see our friends getting spagghettified everyday. Nature works on the interaction between the basic forces: gravity, magnetoelectric force, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force. Recent developments in science and technology seem to show a connection between these basic forces too, opening the doors to discovery of things way beyond the comprehension of unaccustomed minds. So, the point is, just because some force cannot be documented or measured doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
The multi-dimensional theory that most of these Hindu "scholars" seem to be encouraging is just absurd, if you think about it hard and for long. I'll leave it to you as an assignment. Leave your thoughts in the comments section about it.
Now, what other "basis" do you have to believe in God? Leave those in the comments too. I'll be glad to bust them, if I can. Or ponder over them, in the rare case that I'm not able to.
And yes, I do understand that I've only talked about the reasons for the existence of religion. The impact, importance, and other things will be covered in future posts.
Ciao
Religion was never meant to happen, and it isn't meant to be. All the laws of nature go against it. Whenever we see how people from different religions can come together and be happy, more than they can with people of their religion, it goes to show how pointless it is to classify people according to religion, and to provide them privileges for just belonging to some religion.
The worst part about religion is how you have no choice. You are born into a religion no matter what. And it becomes a part of childhood listening to stories of how some god killed some demon and made the world a better place, and other stuff like that. The growth of religion can be pinned to how we need some restraint to stay within the lines of the greater good. We need something to hold us back from hurting others; because given the chance, we all will kill someone. We all have someone in our minds every time we think of murder. Someone specific, someone we truly hate (that is if we understand the gravity of the committing of such a heinous act). Now, in order for us to know what's right and what's wrong, we need a yardstick. This is where the concept of God became important.
Let me give you an example:
We have all seen kids, we have all noticed how tender their minds are, how quickly they can grasp things, and how easy learning is for them. But we also know how immature their thinking is, and how they need a basis for thoughts, even though the abstract is closer to their reach than it is to a 40-year-old's. Imagine a kid is doing something wrong- like hitting a friend or something of the sort. The parent will obviously want to get rid of such a violent tendency when it's easiest. Now, to make the kid realize he's wrong, the parent can't obviously give him a lecture on Rawl's Theory of Justice, and the relative system of justice, and tell him about how it's wrong by both to hurt someone else (duh!). That will only disgust the kid, or just irritate him more and drive him to commit more such acts of unhindered violence. Nor can the parent just leave it to the child's imagination and sense of judgment to decide for himself whether or not it's right. Such a judgment requires proper understanding and sound morals in the kid's mind, neither of which comes with birth. When we are born, we are all the same, born without morals, without anything except a clenched fist and a shine in the eyes. Morals need to be inculcated in the kid's daily life for him to realize and see for himself how he's right, and how he can do better. There are many ways to do this, as an old Indian adage goes: "saama, daana, bhedha, danda". The most noble of all is persuasion and reasoning ("saama"); an incentive ("daana") is next as it may give the subject an insight into his wrongdoings, and provide him a chance to make amends and get something out of it; a slight scare provided by feeding it into his head that not doing the right thing will earn him something he does not like, usually something he dreads or is disgusted by, is also effective to some extent ("bhedha"); and if none of these work, physical (or) mental punishment is the only way to make him listen. Persuasion is by far the noblest, and the most time-consuming, and punishment is the most effective in a short-sighted perspective. But the most effective are bhedha and daana (in that order). This is because while one creates a fear in the mind about not following the rules laid out, and keeps the kid from venturing on to the "dark side", the other succeeds in making him do the "right" thing because it's more logical, and earns him a reward. This is exploited by parents, who tell their kids stories of the Lord's powers, scaring the shit out of their heads and keeping them from trying such things, until some anarchy is introduced (in this case, me). They also tell kids about all the nice things one gets out of being good, and this is also where the concept of Hell and Heaven comes in, as does the concept of Afterlife.
Now imagine the same kid without any of the God crap. It becomes very difficult for the parent to keep his behavior under control, without anything to convince him with. This is precisely how religion grew: through the public's fears. It's more like a child's fear of the dark: the fear grows out of the lack of knowledge of what lies beyond the dark, not of the dark itself; people believe in God because He's made out to be this angry guy who punishes people that don't believe in him. The belief in most of us is mostly fear, not faith. And that is why I have used the word "belief" till now, and never used "faith": because faith is too strong and too complex a word to describe what most of us feel.
So, disregarding my comment on faith, it's pretty clear now how we have been led into this shit. But what makes us stay? The answer lies in our heads.
"Why do you believe in God?", I asked my dad. He said "because not everything can be explained using just known facts" and that "we all need to accept the presence of some supernatural power". When you listen to him talk, you'll be elevated to new heights in his own theology and his arguments about the existence of such a being. And then, I asked him how he can believe in many forms of God (he's Hindu, yes). He says something like "You can believe in anything you want to, but they are all the different forms of one thing. It's like how water exists in three forms: ice, steam, and liquid vapour, while chemically it's the same thing all the time". It's amazing how well my dad can speak at times.
That is until you realize how all his arguments are invalid statements based on pseudo-facts. First, let me talk about this whole "logic can't explain it" shit. All through human history, we have fallen for the unknown, and called it God. The ancient Romans did this with lightning, which they thought was the manifestation of God. Now, we know it's just charges flying around. The same thing with Sun, the moon, the stars, snakes.. and everything that seems mystical. At different points of time there have been these things that science at that time couldn't explain, and at that point, they were Gods, or their manifestations. And when their true nature is discovered, all these people proclaiming the existence of God go in search of something else that isn't explained. So, in that light, I'm actually surprised people haven't called dark matter a proof of the existence of God. People come up with arguments very frequently about how we don't know how the Universe came to being, and say that's because science will never know that it's God who created it. That's just bullshit. It's just a matter of time before scientists come up with some theory to explain everything, without there ever having to be any unknown factor, called God. But until then, believing in some dark mutant sheep with scuba glasses that lies outside the universe and plays thief-and-police with the particles in the universe is just as reasonable a belief as that in a God.
And about the "supernatural power" shit, it's because any observable force needs to be felt in the area of observation for it to be documented. It's like not believing in black holes just because we don't see our friends getting spagghettified everyday. Nature works on the interaction between the basic forces: gravity, magnetoelectric force, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force. Recent developments in science and technology seem to show a connection between these basic forces too, opening the doors to discovery of things way beyond the comprehension of unaccustomed minds. So, the point is, just because some force cannot be documented or measured doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
The multi-dimensional theory that most of these Hindu "scholars" seem to be encouraging is just absurd, if you think about it hard and for long. I'll leave it to you as an assignment. Leave your thoughts in the comments section about it.
Now, what other "basis" do you have to believe in God? Leave those in the comments too. I'll be glad to bust them, if I can. Or ponder over them, in the rare case that I'm not able to.
And yes, I do understand that I've only talked about the reasons for the existence of religion. The impact, importance, and other things will be covered in future posts.
Ciao
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