Hey! Welcome to my blog.
Now that the introduction is done lets get down to a topic that has haunted me since childhood.Does god exist?
People in school will remember as an atheist,practicing a rather militant form of it, and people in college would consider me a staunch theist!And now, though not too many people know it, I am back to being an atheist,but unlike my childhood self,I hope that god exists. So I guess I will have quite a bit to talk about god's existence.
At the very onset I find the battle between the atheists and theists extremely skewed.On one side you have the oxford-harvard educated grads who make there make their case vociferously and convincingly and on the other side you have sparsely educated godmen(!) who think they can get people to believe in god by telling them that they need to have "faith",somehow anyhow. Despite this a large number of people are theists maybe because they like the notion that there is a meaning to there lives or they find comfort in not being entirely responsible for things that happen to them .So there faith is more about a convenient concoction as opposed to a rational conviction.This leads to a very precarious situation.On side you have a convincing argument and on the other you have an unintelligent but a convenient one!The god men are fine with it as long as they have a following and they can hold on to it,even at the cost of intellectual defeat at the hands of the atheists.How else can you explain there low blows while taking questions about transubstantiation or the geocentric system.
Honestly I dont have anything against religion or the god men,I just believe that for a person driven by reason and curiosity atheism is the only conforming option.Almost all religions have faith as a corner stone which can merely be a euphemism for "believe all that i tell you(even if it's nonsense)".I hope there will be a day when religion guided by intellectuals will be compatible with skepticism!
4 comments:
lucky conincidence i was watching devils advocate and got the site
hey come on dont be so harsh , but really thought provoking words ...
Faith is begining of anything material or spiritual , proof comes only later ( later means in one context now or before or after death ) . Every rational concotion begins with a frame work based on faith .As far as i know there are ample proofs showing presence of god ( very rational and resonable) coming from the greatest scholars and ............. Problem is either it is not known , cannot be understood , you dont want it to be known or never tried much. Just like if you want to know if theory of relativity is true or false ( which actually i dont know but a crude analogy) you either have to just accept it as truth , meet a physicist and learn proof from him , or refer good texts on proofs.. It may not be wise to reject the theory because u never came in contact with above nor understood the proofs or got some bogus or misleading proofs. The purpose of human life is to understand self and these proofs .. And it is a long time ( actually very short) .But you should put efforts to understand it and then if it wrong reject it . It all begins with faith . ( donot give up cntng , u will be glad someday). This is most important matter and cannot be neglected.ALso the example of diseases , where you dont belive you can be cured because of all the wrong medicines given all the time and you dont want to put ur faith in right medicine which a right doctor is giving . All he is saying is have faith take the medicine.. proof of cure comes only later...may not be immediate.....and maybe u may not understand the medicine but it is end that matters more..
The very question of denying god shows his presence. A very interesting path ahead and i m lookng forward ....WELL and i have not found a single nonsense yet in BGAII and SB , i would be glad and will give serious thoughts if any found... correct me if i m wrong anywhere
u said ull come after convo.. come here .. atleast come give a treat..
Couldn't have hoped for a better first comment on my blog!
To answer the question of faith consider an analogy put forward by Bertrand Rusell,
I quote
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time
I unquote
Most material things have greed as their beginning,hence the saying necessity(no matter how unreasonable) is the mother of inventions.Rational concoctions have a framework based on faith but the concoctions themselves have been shaped by intelligence,a quality which is inseparable from curiosity and skepticism(the same one's that breed atheism)!
Actually I dont deny god's existence,I merely believe we need better answers than those that condemn us to eternity in hell.Asking people to have faith is easy(even people who believe in flying teapots can ask that),god deserves a much better explanation than that.
And hence much of my animosity is with religious god men who instead of meeting scientists half-way have receded into their cocoon playing the faith and intangibility trump cards.
I guess(and hope) that u you will come here before I do there.You are coming for vacations rite,we will meet up then.It will be great hearing from someone who advocates my old school of thought so passionately!
how long youll make me wait for next post....
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