The more I think of it ... the more confused I become. I think it is designed that way - if you believe in God, that is. Or it merely reflects my lack of confidence in myself - if you do not believe in God, that is. Or both.
The idea of God has existed for so many generations. It has changed form though. It all obviously began as God(s) being controller(s) of natural elements, such as rain, thunder, lightening, earth, sun, ... , you get it. Then at some point in time, a more 'human' form took over. It was definitely easy for humans to imagine God as another human or at least human like. Some of the Gods even had imperfections. The next natural step was organised collation of idea of God and a user manual - religion stepped in. And with that the God(s) became perfect. No more human like failings for them.
The organised religion was flexible enough to absorb perturbances. Witness, Hindu religion soaking up Buddhism by declaring that Buddha is Vishnu's ninth avatar (even though the Buddha revolted against the Vedic religion), or the use of science to justify the ancient scriptures, by both Hinduism and Christianity. Flexibility is one of the reasons why religion has survived. The another is, of course, critical mass. It is like tipping point. Once you have enough followers, it is difficult to dislodge. Moreover, the numbers in religion only grows as human population grows.
Quantum Mechanics came as a boon for religion. Just when science threatened to know it all with its determinism, Quantum Mechanics provided a base that could not be beaten - there is no way, one could know it all. All events are probabilistic and not deterministic - it didn't matter that the principles of Quantum Mechanics could not be extrapolated from one context to another. The conclusion was sufficient.
But religion became a weapon. To be wielded for political gains. Sane people needed to shun the concept of religion but could not let go of God. At some point spiritualism came in. As spiritual beings, we could easily say that we do not believe in religion but still believe in a superior force that governs. It also becomes very personal. And politically correct. Borrowing the concept of energy from physics, God was now explained as an energy source, all pervading, existing but since energy cannot be defined (except in terms of itself), God also could not be. It existed. That is sufficient. How else could one explain the natural order the prevails. It could not have been an accident.
You see, if you ask enough how's and why's, at some point of time all arguments against God breaks down, one cannot keep explaining the natural world as our knowledge is still limited. No one can explain away belief with arguments. And this is quite convenient for the believer but very inconvenient for the non-believer.
So, does God exist? I need to make up my mind. Cannot keep arguing back and forth for ever, can I? So here goes ...
Close your eyes (I mean after reading this blog) and imagine in your mind the expanse of the universe we know. Just think of the vastness. Our galaxy is a tiny bit of that universe - very tiny, tiny bit. Besides, it is an ordinary galaxy - nothing special about it. In that ordinary galaxy, our Sun is a very ordinary star. If someone were to take a snapshot of the Milky Way, the Sun would not stand out. We are still talking of size, of course. In the Solar system, the Earth is a ordinary planet, in terms of size. And on the Earth, whose diameter is roughly 12800 km, we humans are, on an average, six feet.
See how tiny we are? So, if the universe is a Blue Whale, we are like microbes - or even smaller.
Perhaps, somewhere in this universe or a parallel one, there are other intelligent creatures like us or more intelligent than us. They may or may not believe in God. But they would be of the same scale. Tiny little things in the vast scope of their universe.
Now, why would God - if s/he exists in whatever form - waste time to create and to entertain - such tiny creatures?
Isn't it more likely that life is just an accident? It just happened. And we are just trying to justify our invention - the Idea of God.
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thanks for the comment on my blog.. :)
btw, the reflection is my brother's..
This question has raged for long in my mind... Is God the answer to the unsolved mysteries in this world? While I personally "try to" believe that there has to be an explanation to each and every thing that goes on around us, there is still that ambiguity or uncertainness about very many things which reduces the validity rating of my belief to .. I am ashamed to say.. 1%. Like, for example, I believe that there is a very very complex system that successfully balances each and every activity that goes on in this world. While many may disagree about this, but heres my viewpoint about a very known fact. This may seem stupid especially with my limited experience on this earth (I have just witnessed 26 revolutions of the Earth) but here goes... For every person enduring a painful moment at any given instance of time, there is another person who has had an equally joyous moment. On a more serious note, for every creature that dies there is an induction of life onto the earth. While some may argue about the population explosion, please note that I am not talkin about humans alone.. Animals still outnumber humans, but the pulse of life is one and the same for all. Back to my example list, for every good deed committed there is a crime committed. Some may argue for this also, but I say that most of the crimes are reported and the news spreads like wildfire but of the equally numbered good deeds very few find its way through to the newspapers or through to people. But I believe that a lot of good things do happen in this world. Enough of all the examples cos there are a lot more, now let us refer to some of HIS creations... Can anybody even think of creating a piece of flesh that has the power of electricity generation with electric conductivity + electric pulse decoding features (to name 3 of the other thousands of features) and also has the ability to bring about physical, biological and chemical changes to its surrounding environment ??? Co-incidence I think not... Its all a part of a master plan... We humans have progressed very little finding our way to find out this master plan.. But personally I feel there is no hope... HE would kill us all before we cover even 1% of the distance to reach this ultimate truth...and by "we" I refer to the entire human race.. right from Adam to the baby who was born a millisecond ago... The truth shall never be revealed.. Unless HE/SHE/IT chooses to do so... Hope HE/SHE/IT 4gives for me this comment ;-p
Amitabh
All the why's and how's are a part of Man's inquisitive nature. If we demand answer for every act and event that occurs, we would prolly become insane unable to grasp the vastness of the information, let alone process it and come to any conclusion.
Have you noticed how the atoms with nucleus in the center and electrons revolving around it, are so similar to our sun and the planets around it? So, the solar system could also be the atom(s) for some other vastly bigger living or non living thing!! That makes us smaller than the microbes!
Maybe, the intelligence given to us (by the energy we call God) is just short of the ability to understand such concepts. Maybe there is a fourth or fifth dimension, which has been deliberately kept away from us?
The possibilities are infinite. And I don't think anything is an accident. Things work too precisely to assume that way. Your point of view was interesting to read, on this subject.
Destination Infinity
I went through your post. But I am afraid that I don't understand one thing. Are you an Atheist or a Theist?
great post!would like to give it a thumbs up on bloggers helping bloggers! if there is a post you would rather share with our readers just email us @tothewires@yahoo.com
p.s. this is lawman2
now tothewire and i are at odds on which post should be posted!they are both great post.so i leave it up to you.
lawman2
Interesting stuff!
I can't comment here as me, but it was my blog, zenandtheartoftightropewalking.wordpress.com you popped by on a ew days ago.
cheers,
v
Regardless of if there is a god (of any sort, or type), to my mind some sort of god (and therefore religion) is needed by the human race to keep them in check. Religion (and therefore god)has both an Evil side and a Good side, therefore religion is both God and Devil. Proving this is easy. Religion (and therefore gods) has been, through the ages, one of the reasons that man has killed his fellow man, all in the name of his god. On the plus side religion (and therefore god) has helped to keep a huge number of us on the "path of good" both through fear of god and love of god. It`s not important if there is or is not a god, what`s important is that the human race believe in a god, and in a god that forbids any evil act, even against people who believe in a different god. We will only see peace on earth when everybody`s god forbids any sort of evil act, and, more importantly the, mostly, self proclaimed voices of god (in other words priests of all types) preach love of mankind and not hate as happens now.
Just for the record I was bought up as a Methodist and now I`m an atheist.
nice post amitabh..the comments on this post were same hackneyed arguments I have heard at other blogs. Anyway my ideas about God are similar and I agree with you when you say
"Now, why would God - if s/he exists in whatever form - waste time to create and to entertain - such tiny creatures?"
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