Skip to main content

Does God exist?

Why do people believe in God?

Is being religious tantamount to believing in God?

Does God exist?

These are few questions which have kept many philosophers and thinkers busy since ages, and often at loggerheads with each other and with the society. I am no philosopher, nor a great thinker. But yes, these questions do arise in my mind, and too often especially when I see the countless customs and traditions, which often overlap with some superstitions, when I am told to perform rituals or puja, when I am criticized for being an atheist as I am unwilling to indulge in sycophancies to please gods for favors and often here and there. I am not an atheist. But I am not a great believer either. Actually I am a terribly confused person.

I am not sure why do people believe blindly in an all powerful supreme being without questioning, and accepting (or pretending to!) everything that comes their way – good or bad as the will of god. Maybe it is just because it is convenient to do so. It often becomes a lot convenient to pass the hard time with blindly accepting them, rather face it. Also, more often than not, it frees them from taking responsibilities and gives them someone to blame with things not going that way and accepting everything as will of god. With so much suffering and injustice all around it may be too comfortable to say them to be will of god, and ASSUME that justice will be done sooner or later. This may not be true, but it is definitely an assumption which would make most of us a bit more comfortable, rather than facing the fact that we are helpless or we would rather not take responsibility.

But the question is that is god really all that great? One of the main arguments against is that if it is true, then why is there so much suffering all around? Why is there so much inequality? If god is all powerful why doesn’t he do anything to stop it, or why does he allow all these to happen? Why does he live like king (in many cases it is true), while much of the mankind is still poor.

Many religious interpretations ask us to serve god selflessly. Though much of us serve him mostly out of fear of going to hell, or in a hope to get a undue favor, or to have a better life after death. Most of these motives are selfish. Why does god need so much sycophancy to be pleased and so many dos and don’ts (some of which may not be related to morality at all).

Often the problem may lie with interpretation of religion, especially by religious leaders. Most people in this world have been killed in the name of religion than anything else in history. Also a lot of superstitions are promoted by claiming it to be ultimately sourced from god. And so are many of the caveats. For example I once sat in a Satyanarayan puja (often these pujas are showoffs than real feelings) . In it was mentioned repeatedly the consequences of not performing that puja. More than a puja, it seemed like a threat to perform puja!

God is said to be all powerful. Still there exists concept of heaven and hell. If you serve lord well, remember him endlessly (maybe, investing time for primary education would be a better idea), serve Brahmins well (is god a believer in caste system?), or do good deeds and are moral, you will end up in heaven, else in hell. However, god being all powerful controls everything. So, are the ones going to hell paying price of the mistakes made by god? Probably yes, if we consider most of the religious beliefs.

Maybe someone would argue that I’ll be condemned to hell after writing all these, but if god is really that great (if he exists!), he would definitely understand my cynicism and respect my doubts and opinions.

(These may just be few of the points in my mind that I can remember. Such opinions were in my mind since quite long, more in last few days. However, I couldn’t write them. But today, I read an article by Bhagat Singh - http://www.boloji.com/spirituality/051.htm

and its contents were somewhat similar to what I believe, and this became one of the main drivers for this being written)

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Shop @ Amazon

Popular posts from this blog

An area of darkness ?

The title of this post finds its origins in a novel with simlar name written by VS Naipaul. Set in India, some 40 years ago or so, this is a kind of travelogue of author's brief stay in India where he found it to be full of superstitions, ignorance and darkness! Many decades and many MNCs and malls later, few parts of India seemed to have chucked off that tag, but there are many places that haven't and continue to remain shrouded in ignorance. Move few hours away from a city, travel in a second class train compartment or a dilapidated state transport bus and you get to see the dark underbelly of India Shining. As one of the characters in the movie Rang De Basanti says "Yahan zinda rehne ki jung mein logo ki zindagiyan nikal jaati hai" . So true it seems! My day today was spent being kind of lost in similar thoughts. To start with, I when I boarded the ST bus, a woman was wailing. She may be in her 20s or something, but she was crying in some peculiar musical tone. At...
13 comments
Read more

The Detour

The 7 year old girl walked from school to her home. This was the first time she was walking alone on that route. On any other day, her mother would have gone to pick her up from school, but not that day. She was not aware that schools were declaring holiday an hour and a half earlier due to trouble in the town owing to some agitations and protests. Only few parents could be intimated about this. A friend’s mother accompanied her to the lane leading to her apartment, from where it was just a minute’s walk. But that day, for some unknown reason she decided to roam about a bit and take the longer route. It is not always that she gets to roam about, and no one would know about it. After all she wouldn’t tell her mamma about that. The road was almost deserted. It was usually the case around the noon time in this part of the country. She walked ahead leisurely, singing and dancing all along as if she owned the road. But this was short lived. In couple of minutes, the scene changed....
7 comments
Read more

Cycle

After a failed attempt at jogging, I roamed about aimlessly when an idea struck me to have a ride in a cycle, couple of which is lying in the “recreational area”. I was longing since long to ride a cycle sans motor. There was no particular reason for this feeling; it was that just I wanted to have a ride. The 2-3 km ride was a tiring experience, especially for one who is having this after a long time; but I was gleeing all along. As an infant, I loved going about in a tricycle. Then I became too big for it and got a cycle. After several attempts and many falls, I mastered the art. I used to flaunt it in front of my friends, who flaunted theirs. As I entered teens, the bicycle seemed smaller; so I got a bigger cycle. As years progressed, I learnt to ride a 2 wheeler. Now I started to find the bicycle too childish for my tastes. I tried to reason out why I should get a 2-wheeler to go to a particular place. Sometimes I succeeded to get it, and sometimes I didn’t and had to go around in...
5 comments
Read more

The Forest

The Toyota Qualis and the Chvrolet Tavera stopped after a long journey. It was almost 9 in the night and it was pitch-dark. Night times in a forest are always pitch-dark. Adding to that it was a good `thirteen days since the last full moon day. Adding to this, the cloudy weather made visibility close to zero. Later in the night the forest would be engulfed in a fog making it nearly impossible to see. The only noise audible was that of silence, few random insects and that of a train going at a distance. After a long journey they all were quite weary and all they wanted was some rest so that the next day morning they can head for tiger and rhino spotting among many other species of flora and fauna in the wildlife sanctuary. Right now it was time for some parathas, maggi and booze. All fifteen of them headed for the cottage which they had booked, sat near the fire place relishing food, chit chatting about college life, universe and everything. But chit chatting wasn’t what they came ...
10 comments
Read more

K-eediyot box

(Disclaimer - Please do not think that I don't know spellings ... my numerologist told to use the above spelling for eediyot and add a k before it, this will help generate more TRP and comments for the blog) Time 7 : 30 - 8 PM, 8 - 8 : 30 PM .... 10 : 30 - 11 PM Venue - Zee TV, Star Plus, Sony entertainment etc. etc. Figure this - A family drawing room belonging to an extremely rich business house occupied with a mixture of emotional and scheming characters - 1 saas, 2 bahus, 1 son (+1 who makes an entry unaware of what is happening), 2 random distant relatives, 3 random cousins, all mouthing dialogues that have earlier been said by actors ranging from Nirupa Roy to Rajesh Khanna, followed by a long silence, 13 camera angles for same scene (top view, side view, cross sectional view, lateral view, 45 degree elevation view) , flashbacks and memories that last few episodes, good people becoming evil, evil people actually being un-evil, rebirths, amnesia, a background score that often ...
11 comments
Read more