Wednesday, December 01, 2004

God and other stories

"Do you believe in God?" they ask me...

Over the years, I have answered that question in various tones ...as a kid I used to say "yes" coz I was a scared little brat...scared that I would have to pay for all my little "misadventures"...after a while, I got smart and arrogant...I used to say - there is no God! Darwin's theory of evolution is the only explanation!

Then you go through life's little "surprises"...the tragedies, the comedies and you start feeling that there is a superior being watching over you...punishing you for your mistakes and rewarding you for your hard work...in your own weird way, you start worshipping "Him".

Then you start reading the really philosophical stuff...start reading abt the true human spirit and ask yourself : what is God without human spirit....isnt it the human spirit which can keep believing blindly in something that it cannot see or touch or smell?

But I digress...of late, I have been influenced heavily by the writings of Bhagat Singh...His philosophy was simple : when you believe there is God and that by doing good and avoiding/opposing evil, you can go to heaven, you have a motivation for being righteous...but when you believe in no life after death, then everything righteous thing you do is out of pure intent to doo good to humanity and with no ulterior selfish desires...no desire of heaven or of the fruits of virtue.

Now that may sound like crooked logic, but it takes some amount of openness to digest this thought.I await challenges to this theory...

For now, I do not think the real question is whether there is a God...that I think, is immaterial...what is more relevant is whether we BELIEVE that there is a God or not. Where do we derive our desire to do good ? what gives us our daily comfort and solace?


1 comments:

Murali... said...

I basically feel that two types of theories can never be challenged by anyone.
1.One type of those are Mathematical Theories (I love Mathematics very much. This necessarly does not mean that I am a stud in that!!!)
2.Other type of theories are those told by Lord Krishna in his Karma Siddhantha.

Millions and millions years back itself Krishna told/preached to do the righteous things without any desire of fruits of virtue in return.

I am getting some wierd thoughts to answer this:
Krishna told to do things keeping in mind that there is no Newtons Third Law. Dont mind. PJ!!!