Volumes have been written with this single word as the focus. Starting from books expounding the knowledge of Him (knowing Him, as well as instruction on how to know Him) to the rivers of ink that have run dry exploring the philosophy of religion, the need for a religion, life without a religion, life without a particular religion et al. Not to mention the 'n' number of preachers and teachers who have found the Way (which goes to say they were as lost as the rest of us are, so at least we are in the 'right' lost path!!!).
The whole course of arguments about the nature, existence and need for Him (or is it Her? If there is a Him must there be a Her?)
Discussions from religious and philosophical forums to internet chat rooms to dorm rooms.
The staggering logical claims the athiests make, hard to refute if one has even the slightest twinge of reason twanging in one's nerve endings.
The same mind, crying over the poems of Rumi, the verses of Kabir, the Sowndarya Lahari, the Nalayira Divya Prabhandam, Tagore's passionate songs about the Gardener, Bharati's Kannan and Kannamma, wonders, what madness, what method, drove these men and women to write thus? Did they make these unassumingly selfish declarations of love to "fictional constructs invented by clever humans for purposes, a variety of purposes, ranging from psychological comfort to entertainment"?
I should say I am amazed, either by the capacity of the human mind's imagination, or by the capacity of the human heart for love of such proportions, if I can scale either, that is. In either case, I seem to have more affection and respect for the Man than his (or is it His?) God.
Theism, Atheism, Agnosticism, any other -cism you might bring up on the table, all seem to be foolish 'roots' (as in beliefs...rooted in a belief, you know) to me, unless you tell me what it is we are talking about. When four people sit around a table and discuss their belief systems, more often than not, the discussion is no different from one about the sights and scenes of New York after a verbal lecture about the city, which none of them have visited. Each man has a different mental visual picture of what Fifth Avenue or Wall Street looks like, partly gleaned from the lecture, partly from the images formed from what he has read or already heard about, partly what his mind chooses to provide. So, assuming none of them have seen a picture of the Statue of Liberty, how different would each of their perceptions be about the monument? Is it possible for them to come to a consensus on, say, the colour of the Statue unless it was explicitly mentioned in the lecture? Think of the complexities involved when we are going to discuss a concept as abstract and as fundamental to our existence (perhaps holding the key to the 'other' questions like 'Why are we here' 'What is the meaning of existence' 'What is the purpose of life' and the other stuff we spend the nights before exams ardently discussing) as God. Add to it the fact that this concept is something that has been drilled into our heads in some form or the other since our most impressionable ages by the people who make maximum impression on us. Garnish it with the tangy spice of fact that at times the religion we claim to profess might actually have a say on whether we have guarantee on our life or not, or at least the quality of life. So is it not important to know what we claim to have faith in before we announce that we are 'believers' or 'atheists' or whatever?
In this piece, all mention of ‘God’ goes by the following definition: ‘That in man which can know the highest it can know, and recognizes it for what it is’. It is more in the spirit of what Ayn Rand said: “The highest thing in man is not his God. It is that in him which has the ability to conceptualize a God’”
They say there in 'One God'. I'll say nothing could be further from the truth. If God were a distant star in the sky that we have set our sights on to discover and unveil, it would not be all this difficult actually. Because, since there IS only one star that we are reaching towards, the goal becomes objective! With an objective goal, all the appurtenances we have come to associate with religion such as a social set up, morality, the purpose each religion affords also become disparate objective goals. But think about it, isn’t God more a reflection of whatever it is that we hold highest and purest and greatest in each one of us? Isn't that what the teachings of almost every religion want us to do...'REALIZE' God?
The God is not in the chiseled features of the stone idol, the God is in the emotion the sight of those serene features brings out in me. The God is not in the stone, the God is in that feeling of imperturbable calm I sense when I behold the stone. The God is not in the atoms of silicon and iron that make up the stone, the God is in the sense of wonder and awareness of precision one feels as they realize just how the world around them, probably a serendipitous accident, probably not, is still organized like a jigsaw puzzle, with one lock functioning as a key somewhere else. To yet others, who don’t see your God in idols and conceptions of virgin births, what is the sense of peace when you see the smile fleeting across your sleeping daughter’s face? To the sculptor, is his God in the statue of God, or in HIS work that made the statue? To the scientist, what emerges out of the objective, rational column of figures that he writes in his notebook, but the truth that he pursues? Whether one calls these emotions that strike root in us, ‘God’, (from whatever source they may be from), one cannot deny the fact of their existence.
The ‘oneness’ of God lies in the fact, in only the fact, that there is no man alive who does not have a conception of something that brings out a sense of beauty in him, or a sense of awe and reverence, or a sense of sanctity. Something that he can hold apart from the rest of the mundane-ness in his life to visit whenever he wants that metaphorical breath of fresh air. It is as customized as he wants it to be, as wide and broad as the limits of his imagination, as much cherished and loved as the contours of his ego stretch. It is what makes him play a particular song when he is down, revive a particular random memory on a starless night, or return home to set eyes on a particular face. So long as a man has that, I don’t think I can call him God-less.
So, each one of us has a ‘conception’ of God, if you will, an idea, an ideal. And what that God is, to each one of us, is as different as each one of us is. My God needs me to exist, and in some strange way, I need my God, to be. When my God is as personal to me as my toothbrush, how religion can be something that is an en masse ritual is beyond me. The term ‘organized religion’ seems to be as much of an oxymoron as ‘Valentine’s Day’ or ‘Friendship Day’.
Organized religion seems to be nothing more than capitalizing on the capacity of the human mind/heart to ‘feel’ a God and use it to inculcate a sense of oneness and brotherhood among human beings. A necessity for survival. Capitalizing on perhaps the strongest and most mysterious of human emotions; selfish love and the pleasure of giving of oneself.
Sure, God is a unifying force. 'Sab ka malik ek hai'. Since we work for the same master our solidarity and sense of brotherhood increases, the probability of human beings (of the same religious ilk, at least) slashing each others' throat for the pettiest reasons goes down because, in the end, we report to the same Master with a cane who presents our all-important report cards to us. Sure, God is better than your psychiatrist's couch. If your God can take you to it, He can take you through it. Sure, your God gives you a purpose to life. When all else fails you can look at your guiding star and believe that as you live, even if you 'Stand and wait' as Milton put it, you are still moving towards Him.
But these ‘functions’ man has attributed to God is not what makes Him great, the fact that you can actually attribute all these functions to Him and only Him and none other, is what makes Him ‘God’. Remember, the ‘Him’, even here, is not the ‘One God’ of your so-called ‘organized religion’, it is your God, the you of you inside you.
In most cases, atheism seems to be outrage, not against the concept of the abstraction of God, but against the unrealistic expectations and ‘extra fittings’ attached to that God that the rational human mind cannot accept. It is not that God does not exist. It is just that the kind of God who, if benevolent, is powerless, if powerful, is unwilling to exercise His will, the ‘omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent’, apparently benevolent, mostly tyrannical, usually just, sometimes unjust, random God, this bundle of contradictions, it is this kind of capricious, illogical God that every atheist refutes and denies. Organized religion needs ‘such’ a God if it has to make that God functional. By denying such a god, I think the atheist is proving that there can be no truer theist than he is. By equating one’s own God, THE God, with such inanity, the so called ‘theist’ is championing atheism with amazing alacrity.
) It is not such a big sin to want a lucrative career and money and playstations and Gucci handbags.
) but that does not mean they are not valid. But, please, don’t labor under the delusion that some mahapurush is going to come down to effect changes. It is frankly painful to listen to a question like ‘When will india get an obama??’ We badly need good leadership, yes, but instead of emptily wondering about it, we need to feel more, act more. (And, frankly, what’s the brouhaha all about? I don’t think the gentleman’s really done anything yet except win an election. Yes, he is inspiring, but like I said a while back, action we what we need. We need change, not a promise of one.)
