Friday, April 2, 2010

Confuzzled

Confuzzled:

If there be God please forgive me. I have been experiencing a “crisis of faith” on and off for many years and strained every nerve to have faith in God: but in recent past my endeavors to have faith in God had gone astray. The vicissitude of my views is certainly not because my wishes have been rebuffed or world has been unfair to me but for the very reason that I see the world around me and try to think through my mind.

I have been a fervid Hindu all through out my life and like most of the Hindus I am receptive of other religions. I am not skeptical about the veracity of any religion, but the very existence of the man upstairs. I understand the solace one gets by feeling the presence of God in one’s life and appreciate the importance of religion in keeping up the morals of people. But, I am a law abiding citizen, I surely know what is right, what is wrong and definitely do not want “men or women of cloth” preach me (often they don’t follow themselves) what is righteous. Truth of the matter is my resentment towards these God men/women exacerbates when the very existence of God is oppugned.

My common sense and little knowledge in evolution biology mock me every morning when I keep the sacred mark on my forehead. “Do you really have to fool yourself Kiran? Your mother is not here, she would not know whether you are praying every day or not, why do you care? ” is what I hear my mind saying. The answer is I am at logger heads about the existence of God and to which I can no longer turn a blind eye.

I think it is perfectly normal for every adult to have this crisis of faith, whichever religion he/she inherits from parents. It has not spared Mother Teresa, who was a sacred cow and an epitome of compassion and humanity. In one of her letter to a reverend she writes

“as for me, the silence and emptiness is so great that I look and
do not see, listen and do not hear”

In the later half of her life she claims that she felt no presence of God whatsoever. Although I do not agree with atheists who say she was sailing in false colors by proclaiming herself pious, but I reckon what probably she did not know was that even the reverend must have had the same crisis of faith. She had the strength and courage to convey her feelings about God, where as the reverend had not.

A posteriori argument is that humankind has witnessed so many atrocities being committed in the name of religion. If there is God, who proclaimed to have mighty powers or these phony-baloney religious leaders bestow God to have these powers, what was it doing all along? My Hindu friends would bring in the concept of karma, a self fulfilling prophecy. Pardon me my dear brothers and sisters, how does it matter to me what I did in my past life (if there was one). If I helped out someone in crisis, I want to be bailed out when I am in trouble----in this very life. I have swallowed many good things all religions says hook, line, and sinker, but you do not need to scare the daylights of me in the name of God; what world needs is the moral fiber and humanitarian attempts to love and respect fellow human beings.

In all honesty, just because I have crisis of faith does not mean God does not exists, for me he does not seem to exist; but if you feel the same way as I do, think about it, you are doing no favor to yourself by living in the religious world of fabrication.

3 comments:

  1. I didn't now about this side of you!
    Very well written!

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  2. it is a challenging argument which ages all history of mankind... but i have some ideas on this ground:
    first when you talk about "the moral fiber and humanitarian attempts to love and respect fellow human beings" it's like oversimplifying the notions of morality and humanity... it's easy to say it but in practice when it deals with human beings who are all in evolution, gets of great difficulties as it does now in the world... i think human being by nature has the ability to understand so many things but he cannot understand things he doesn't know... then a question may arise to say "then who knows?!" well, at this time so many claimers would show up while there is no proof to judge who is right! however i do agree that preachers,too, are human beings and they don't know everything... so there's no priority for them except for the notions they are aware of and can guide as a professor at university does for his students... they can be wrong, too...
    on the other hand we have the notion of evolution, i don't see any contradictions between this theory and religions... they go their own ways to justify the world like other fields... and i think, as far as i know, evolution has nothing to do with the divine source of creation, it just tries to answer the way it happened... i mean it doesn't deny god as the source of creation because it deals with materials and experiences which are not related to the essence of god...
    the need to have a god is an archetype or instinct (you can put so many words here according to your accepted philosophy of life)which exists in every human and there should be response for it in the outside world... how to find the response depends on the worldview and our presuppositions...
    but all in all i take the right to choose and justify god and religions for granted as you did...

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