A case for and against God

A recent death in my family has caused me to re-examine my relationship with God. Being an atheist (will get back to this), every condolence worded in clichés like "She's with God", or "She's in a better place", trigger a very emotional and existential whirlwind of a crisis within me. What is the purpose of life if being with God is the end goal? What good are your degrees, patents, accolades, your unnoticed sacrifices, your selfless acts, if you cease to exist? What is the point of writing a book that no body will read in its entirety and then burning the book? Should there be point?

I've been on both side of the isle. I've been a devout Hindu while growing up and been a complete Dawkinian atheist for most of my adult years. However, I find myself trying to go to the temple and think about God in times of joy and sorrow. And when someone asks about my allegiance, I give them a wide range of answers, ranging from the obtuse:"What is God?", to vague:"mostly atheist", to random:"Yes, I'm a pastafarian".

I can't call myself pure atheist, because, well... I like going to temple & praying. I can't call myself an agnostic, because I'm not ambivalent, I do not have any doubts about the existence of God, and I'm not religious as I don't think that reciting certain texts can give me an edge over others. So, what am I? I am all three, and I'm neither of those at the same time. All the three groups approach the concept of God differently.

Credit: Andrea Baldwin (http://6iee.com/378783.html)

Life is an uphill journey that starts with birth and ends with death. That is the undisputed, cold fact. Imagine a life, of just climbing up a steep set of endless stairs, with no guard railing on the side. The sole purpose of life is to thrive and propagate, but how does an animal, who, by the freak of nature, questions the futility of the exercise & the purpose of existence, survive? The first thing, most of us, who are afraid of heights, would do is imagine a guard railing. Is the railing really there? No. Does it help me climb the endless stairs towards death? Yes, of course. That guard railing we imagine is God.

This is where the factions come in. A general atheist with a mouth piece would yell that there is no rail. He doesn't care if the person relying on this mental construct is scared of heights. He doesn't care if he could help pull someone up the stairs. If he is not scared of heights, he rallies that no one else should be either. A garden variety religious person, on the other hand, tries to convince a scared person that the railing is real. He rallies hard to convince others that not only the guard is real, but his stainless steel railing is much better than the plastic railings others have. He convinces others that it is perfectly alright to lean on this railing. He convinces others to fight for his cause. Of course, we need stronger railing to stop us from falling into the bottomless abyss, don't we.

Not everyone is bad though. An enlightened atheist might distract you from the deep abyss and show you the wonders that lie ahead of you. You can always create other mental constructs to alleviate your fears. Even most people who identify themselves as religious, fall into this category. Why else would they believe in the power of small sheets of paper with numbers printed on it? (Money.. in case you didn't get that). Similarly, there are a lot of religious people I know, who would just point to the railing to comfort the scared climber. Nothing wrong with that.

An agnostic, would just give an ambivalent answer. He would look straight ahead and tell that he's not sure if the railing exists. He is not sure, either because he is not sure whether the person is referring to an actual railing, or, he just doesn't care about the answer.

So what am I? I'm whatever the person who needs help climbing the stairs of life needs me to be. My own relationship with my God, or any other mental construct, is my own, and varies with the ebbs and flows of life. Defining any relationship with a single word, will take the depth out of it. Love without devotion is nothing. Devotion without conviction is nothing. Conviction without awareness is nothing. We rise from nothingness and we go back into it. Nothing encapsulates everything.

Humans have had the need to box off their uncertainties in their life and attribute it to a higher power, or a foreign country, or a sect, or anyone but themselves. This disassociation helps them achieve extraordinary feats in life, and has definitely helped the human race progress at an accelerating pace. As long as one knows what God is, and use it to imbue positivity in their own life and in the life of others, God is and will remain, the most redeeming feature of the human race.

You are not special..

Are you from a country that has some sort of currency? 

Now that you are intrigued by my idiotic question, please allow me the liberty of asking another one. If you are filthy rich in one country, lets say that you are a millionaire in US, living in a house that was featured on "Cribs", and you move to country that doesn't recognize your wealth. Do you instantly become poor? The answer is a resounding yes. Then all this proves is that you were rich only because you and other people around you, attached some value to the pieces of paper with numbers scribbled on them. The whole economy functions only because everyone sees some value in those pieces of paper. If I'm able to convince people that my torn sock has some value, then other people will think I'm rich. I'll be actually rich, when I believe that my torn sock is valuable, or if I exchange it for some belief system that I actually believe in (e.g. hard cash) before the reality catches up.

Let's look at social circles. There isn't much disparity between people within a circle, I.e. you wouldn't find people who are a lot poorer or a lot richer than you in your active circle of friends. Money act as differentiator here because it forces a change in priority, e.g. you wouldn't take a trip to Hawaii with friends if you are short on cash, but would definitely go on local hikes because it hardly costs anything.  Gradually friends turn into acquaintances and are sometimes forgotten. Slowly but steadily, you lose touch with people (Note that there are other reasons why people lose touch, but I'm just trying to point out this particular one). If you have lived a relatively fuller life, you'd accept the fact that people move in and out of our lives, just as we move through their's. Without our knowledge, forces of economics drive people closer to each other and rips us apart. All this, because we believe in a common currency!!

Forget money for a second, and think about culture. Think about it as money. What happens when a white catholic from America meets an upper caste Hindu brahmin from India? How does that interaction go? Let's assume for one second that the American has never heard or know anything about India, and the Indian doesn't know anything about America.. what then? Their interaction would completely depend on the place and environment in which they meet. If they meet at the Indian's house, the Indian would probably find the American less modestly dressed, lacking any knowledge of his religion, his traditions, bordering on blasphemy. The American would see the Indian in the same light if the meeting happened in America, he would find the clothes, food, traditions, deities with multiple hands completely weird. Both of them would find each other less cultured. Assuming both of them to be decent humans, the Indian would encourage the American to go to temples and introduce him to scriptures, on the other hand, the American would do the same if he is religious, if not he'd encourage the Indian to watch some opera or Broadway to get some "culture". If either of them disagree, there would be hostilities thrown around. 

Sadly that is how most of the wars start, because of both parties fail to understand the different point of view because it is so radically different. We got around the money problem by having currency exchanges which arbitrarily pits currencies against each other based on supply and demand and not the purchasing power it facilitates in the region where it is prevalent. I.e. if a 1 USD = 60 INR, and a couch costs 1 USD in USA but 30INR in India, who is richer, the guy with 30INR or the guy with 1USD? Still, these currency exchanges allow retention of economic status all over the globe... because everyone believes in some currency and they are more or less inter changeable.

Should we setup a culture exchanges like currency exchanges then ? If you can distinguish between Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, should you be considered a high priest in Navajo? Would you consider Dr BalmuraliKrishna and Puccini similar? Would you see Baptism and Upnayanam in the same light regardless of your religious inclinations?

Of course that would be absurd. Cultural, economical, sociological inequalities are all absurd because they depend on a belief on an arbitrarily defined concept perpetuated by people. These concepts might be bit alien to people who have not interacted a lot with other cultures and have spent their whole life in a cocoon. 

Attacks on our rigidly held belief system tend to anger us. If the belief system is big enough, it might even start a war. A lack of a belief system, however, evokes nihilism, depression and general sociopathic tendencies. This seems to be a catch 22 situation. A belief system has given us distinct evolutionary advantage, even if has been something which defies logic. However, evolution's only concern is the survival of the species, not it's well being. (A recent study shows that chicken taste good to humans because chickens wouldn't have survived in the wild without human help, so humans started rearing tastier breeds of chickens while ignoring the other breeds). It may very well be the case that a fundamentalist faction exterminates all other races (as has been tried multiple times in the past) on earth.. We might end up becoming a paragraph in a grade school book. We might all be doomed to the same fate as Neanderthals when homo sapiens roamed the earth. Of course, the process won't end there. There'll be fractures in the victor's factions, a power struggle between the sub-factions, and eventual destruction of culture and advancement. 

Humanity is stuck in a feedback loop and is shaped by our own intellect, the limits of which, we cannot comprehend. We need a better approach, and we need to shape our own destiny as a race. What matters to you, doesn't matter to anyone else and vice versa. Why shouldn't we accept the disparity in the belief systems without being combative?

Sh*t will always fly

Are you living in the perfect world of your own? Do you want something to change? Chances are that you do. If you don't then you probably have achieved nirvana and are reading this blog from a higher state of existence.

Dial your life back by a few years, dial it as far as you can go, access your oldest memory. What were your problems back then? You were probably not old enough to understand any financial problem that your parents might have, you were probably fed by someone, someone did your laundry, somebody chauffeured you around, you had friends who could play with you, and even a discarded carton was a spaceship to you... but what were you worried about? Grades!! thats right. Even though, your life was perfect, so much so that songs have been written about fantasies to get back to childhood, you worried about that 1/2 a grade that you didn't get in history. You thought that life would be perfect if you could just get that 1/2 a grade. Of course, now you know that, your life was perfect, and it was immature of you to want that 1/2 a grade.. or maybe you think that the want of that 1/2 a grade shaped who you turned out now.

Fast forward a few years now, just before you go to college. You think that you could ace all the classes you took few years back, if you could do it now.. and you'd be right. Now you are hot headed enough to ignore any problems that your parents might have, and think of yourself as a new generation of whatever. Still everything is paid by family so life is good. But you are still worried about grades and the college you get into. You obsess over it for a year or two. And you think that life would be good if you could just get into a good college. Of course, now you know that, your life was perfect, and it was immature of you to base your whole life around the want of the greatest university.. or maybe you think that the want shaped who you turned out now.

Few more years into your life, you are now in your prime, just before you graduate. You have the closest friends you'll ever make in your life close to you, you have a clear goal of what you want to do in life. Your bills are still paid by your family and you are too busy to be worried by any problems back home. And what do you obsess about? Your job.. that's right. You obsess and obsess over finding the right job. Maybe you find it, maybe you don't. You still think the life is not perfect.

A good university, a good job, a new gadget... everything gets old and transparent. We humans are evolved only to notice change, not something that is stagnant.

Few years into the job, your life is still not perfect, you have a good job, but now you obsess over your personal life. You think that your life would be perfect if you just got married. Even with all the accolades you won, all the friends you have, you don't have a perfect life... And of course, we want to make it perfect, don't we.

So fast forward a few years, you'll get married. This is where my experience ends.. of course there are still things in my already perfect life that I need to change to make my life "perfect"... But we as a species should realize that our lives are perfect the way they are. Life changes, and since a non-believer in destiny, you have the reigns of your life in your own hands. Life adds more code to your monolithic operating system, and you should know that more code mean more bugs, but remember that more code also means more functionality. If life didn't have imperfections then you'd not move the train of your life to a better destination.

Don't think about that half a grade, your college search, your job search, your spouse search, or any other imperfections that you handled. Think about your schooling, your college, your friends, your job, your spouse. You'll see that you have a rich life.. enjoy it and be thankful for the imperfections that makes it richer.. cause even if you are billionaire space cowboy with pet unicorns, sh*t will alway fly.