This my response to my friend karthik's post here http://karthiknaga.blogspot.com/2007/12/oh-my-god.html . I have to applaud his insightful writing. before i comment, i have to say i am certainly not well read as some of you(those who have commented) seem to be and my ideas are quite raw. esp. i enjoyed the discussion between nk and sabresan and the short excerpt from kay-k is eye opening and somewhat close to what I think, unfortunately i dont know what/who H2G2 is, i would certainly love to read.
I have always believed Agnostics/Atheists are always so by choice, but being religious or to have faith in a "Personal God" as u name it is often not by choice. It is either by birth or some form of proselytizing in the modern sense. As richard dawkins bravely responded to a college student's simple qn "what if what you are saying is wrong? what if god exists" he says "u r a christian by chance because u were born in england". So to say we are hindus cos we were born in india. I'll leave him at that, I am not a strong advocate of the theory of evolution either. Our faith in a personal god so to speak is purely by chance. If the BJP were in the US they would be the republicans or if they had been in germany they would have been religious fascists.(ok that was a bit too much). So as such it doesnt seem fashionable to stick to a particular belief and all the customs tagging along. So you say you want to defend your faith with the placebo effect: faith is a psychological game. So in effect the existence of faith and god is to just induce a positive effect, to me that is not substantial. I cant believe the majority of the world has to have faith to do that. Esp. when most of us can understand and give fancy names to these "effects" why should we still have faith?. Oh! so everyone needs to be positive and make an effort. So umpteen religious therories evolved to establish this. If thats the case then it has all gone the wrong way. I dont think religion is doing anything good to the world. To state it more clearly, is man incapable of positive thoughts and deeds without the idea of belief or faith? Just because we can't disprove that god exists as we are flabberghasted by the wonders of t(his) universe and we are making an audacious "scientific" effort(that fails) to understand it, does it mean something inexplicable exists ? It could be that our methods to explain are false. We think the way we are trained to think, therein lies the paradox. I also believe religious faith exists to establish discipline in an uncivilized unsociable scenario. It was more likely created for small societies and all the problems started when cultures interacted when each culture defended its own beliefs and the allying benefits. Voltaire said "if there is no god, create one". Such a simple yet profound statement asserts that faith is a good placebo. But what actually matters to the intellectuals who are willing to ponder over this is, do we need a placebo? Is it still relevant in the modern world when education and knowledge of various cultures are vastly interconnected? Can everyone defend their faith or should they?; now that it has gone to ridiculous extremes. Or is the placebo effect just a makeshift theory? It is a constant battle between our undiminishing faith in a superior miraculous existence and the intellect. However the intellect and faith are friends between themselves, the battle is only in our minds. You can say the world is a paradox, or you can be humble and say we are jack asses.
--Guru
Monday, December 24, 2007
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14 comments:
nice thought provoking blog da... Even I share ur opinions. you could see that I have made an assumption that God's prime duty is to save us and then proceeding to conclude that faith helps us. It does not necessarily represent the truth. I don't entirely agree myself on that assumption and I have deferred its discussion to my future blogs.
(what i have said is similar to what a traitor says in the matrix film. 'I know this is not real. But I want to enjoy by believing it' )
of course i dont mean to contradict u , my comments could not be fit in that space there. so i posted separately and took the chance to create a post. :)
http://krishashok.wordpress.com/2007/12/24/merry-sabari-christ-ul-zuha/
wow! what a coincidence! Both of u writing about the same topic on the same day. There's certainly more to life than just science.. :P hehee.
ensoyy..
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
-- Oscar Wilde
:-) guess i am tired (of arguing).
Actually I hate arguing these days. But it does give you a lot of ideas and information.
IMO 'god' is the perfect metaphor for the inexplicable, however this 'knowledge' hasn't stopped me from praying(in other words sending SOS signals) to 'god' during times of distress. Although, this makes me look very much like a hypocrite, I am least bothered for every time I 'pray' it gives me 'hope' which alone is enough to brush aside the conflicting opinions that i have about 'god'
@naveen
that guy's writing style is awesome..and a picture is worth a 1000 words. please all check out the chennai map in that blog....its f***ing hilarious. arun thanks for reading my post even tho its bs; the others are supposed to.
http://krishashok.wordpress.com/2007/11/09/head-deepaavalis-a-tale-of-promotions-and-bussvaanams/
http://krishashok.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/orkut-profile-exchange-meets/
Although most of his posts are very good, I find these two to be the most hilarious! you should read them too..
now if GOD is a belief, we can all accept He is a figment of our imagination- the trust in which makes it real. and that would bring us upon to a question about reality and perception, but i'd leave that to a different date.
then again, imagination is the influence of locality and the immediate environ. and thus this He tends to personify differently to different peoples.
it is not God, the person, that is as important as God the purpose. and this little obscurity in meaning is the reason behind the riots, religious extremism, arab-west conflicts and our own million local examples...
Amen!
guru, dont mention it. I like the way mark iv has put it "imagination is influence of locality and immediate environment". I usually defer by saying "we cannot think/imagine beyond what we cant perceive and comprehend, even the most fiction stories for example... the characters have the usual sense of smell, taste... they can fly, x-ray, camouflage bla bla.. its just a mixture of already seen/existing things... just the best in all creates the uber-strong superman!!
Arun i concur completely. i completely agree and in fact this very post is based on that fact isnt it? If you are referring to the statement about my thoughts being raw , i was trying to say its not refined
no i dint imply that. your post had more clarity than mine on a relatively similar topic. i got confused half way through coz of my disability to match my thoughts with writing... (with my very-short short term memory) and ultimately had to end it prematurely... :)
poor me !!
i just felt that sentence "imagination...." explains differently what i say otherwise concisely and more simply.
-- arun.
all this philosophy and yet guru bhai u say " man y=utd fans goto hell".. that is what i do not understand..:O
@mark iv : i do see the difference between god as a person and god as a purpose. therein lies the difference between religion and spirituality. I am just going one step furhter to leave god out of the purpose aspect and say we can be spiritual without god and that means leaving faith out of it. If this is what you intend then yes I do believe in god.
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