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| God, Religion, Society and Laws, and Life |
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One may put it like this – God is an ‘assumption’ - something that you accept as true without question or proof. Why don’t you ask for proof? Because it is impossible to prove. But, if you accept it, a lot of problems seem to get solved, or at least seem to be clearer than what it was without the assumption.
From the elementary school, people know about how the assumptions help in establishing scientific theories. No one comes up with a proof for an assumption. They just show that if you accept the assumption as valid, then some real-life things can be explained easily.
The human mind seeks to explore the answers to some questions which are not answered by science as yet. The scientists can tell you that the planet earth is just a point in the universe. Well, how big is the universe? Does it have any end? If so, what lies beyond it? Science is yet to tell us these things. Meanwhile we can just assume that there is God, something which has no beginning or end, who hosts the universe. Well, when science itself is based on a bed of assumptions, assuming something like this is also ‘scientific’ until, at least, we have a better answer.
Mr. Newton could give you the value of the force with which two masses attract each other. But, why in the first place, two masses should attract each other? Who set these rules? No answer in science? Fine, let’s assume that there’s an almighty, or God, who set these.
Religion is a way of life. This, too, has some basic assumptions. One of them is that people have to live in a society. To live in a society, there should be certain rules acceptable by all, rules which tell you what you should do (or what is good) and what you shouldn’t (what is bad). Like, one should not kill others (excepting for some barbaric religions, others agree on it), you should be respectful to God etc. But why should a man accept these rules – unless he is tempted or forced to do so? So, God enters the scene. “You do something good and God will reward you. Do something bad, and God will punish you. Never mind who/which/what is God, he keeps an eye on you always.” This shapes it up well. The fear of unknown is the greatest fear. And, there’s a chance of reward, too, if someone stays ‘good’ throughout his life. God is really the Santa Clause for the adults.
Well, are the ones who say they have seen God liars? Not really, for everyone is seeing God every moment. God is the schoolbag on the back of that little kid. God is the tall leafless tree. God is the beautiful full-moon. Need we go to church/mosque to see God? And need we perform ostentatious rituals to bribe God?
We don’t have any clear idea about anything in the universe. What we do in our lives is sort of ‘unsupervised learning’ (in Artificial Neural Networks parlance). We are never presented with what is wrong and what is right – we just assume them. If it seems that what we assumed fits the equation for the time being – we take that as right/truth. The ‘equation’ here can be loosely defined as “living in a society.”
Since our definition, of what’s right and what’s wrong, changes with respect to time, situation and persons, it’s difficult to keep a lot of people under one umbrella (society) for a long time without using some special means. These special means are law and other punishment-reward schemes (like God, hell & heaven). We have assumed that loving is a good thing, killing is bad. Mere assumption – to buttress our original assumption that we have to live.
You may love to love people and someone else may love to kill. No one is wrong – since there’s nothing ‘wrong’. Neither is there anything ‘right’. But, since we all want to live (due to whatever reason); we need to restrict the ones who threat the lives of others. Whether capital punishment is apt for a murderer or not, is debatable. But if living in a society is a basic assumption, he should get some sort of punishment, at least. Two wrongs can never make a thing right, but can certainly lessen the probability of future happenings of similar crimes.
“I don’t wish to kill anyone, nor do I preach universal love – though I’d choose the latter over the former. No reasons for that. I don’t mind letting a murderer go scot-free. Neither do I shout at the one who hangs the murderer till death.” – This is a naïve attitude. If we accept the assumption that we have to live – live it to the full. It’s a huge game. Some rules are pre-set and we can’t break them (no one is a winner). Some rules we set for ourselves.
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Raja
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Nice work Shahriar Khan | Apr 3rd, 2004
Though literally it's not very good, it has strange insight into the things and puts things in perspective without being biased. Nice work.
Introspective Priyanka | Apr 4th, 2004
I like the flat way of telling the things and the simple way in which things have been explained. The article might be more tidy, though. But, nevertheless, it is a nice read.
It's nice to se someone take up this subject and deal with the intricate things in a simple manner. If only everyone could think like this guy, a lot of problems in the world (which invariably involve religion) would have been solved.
Keep it up.
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