The Inevitability of the Notion of God

The Inevitability of the Notion of God

     Swami Vivekananda says “as long as there is fear of death and fear of loss, the notion of God will be alive”.

     If you look at the studies made by Anthropologists all over the world, in all tribes in every corner, there is the notion of a God like deity and rituals associated with that belief [refer author Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape, The Human Zoo].

     Now, like the theme of marriage, family, education of children, native medicines for treating ill health and other practically evolved beliefs and customs, God is ubiquitous.  The level of “Violence” of the God is lesser with more evolved civilized societies and more with aboriginal societies.

     Coming then, to the question of whether “Your God is better than my God”, [the question asked to Guru Tegh Bahadur (the martyred Sikh Guru), the answer is, “it is a different spiritual plane we are comparing and only the actual experience can be shared which is indescribable”.

The Guru paid with his life for that answer. He refused to perform a miracle to prove that his God is better.

     

So much for religious bigotry. The proselytizing religions have propagated over the centuries, their religions through guns, swords, deceit and by appealing to greed using money. That doesn’t mean that they are the only ones worth following by humanity.

     We often forget that as in other things in life, “the proof of the pudding lies in the eating”. It is not by the notion of a God who terrorizes,  through heaven and hell or the proclamations of “love of humanity” that religions shall be evaluated, but by observing how actually, those human beings professing the religion behave to fellow humans. 

     As author Randy Pausch said in another context “see what they do  ,and not what they say”, the record of popular religions is invariably poor.

     The conclusion then, lies in identifying one’s own shortcomings and spiritually cleansing oneself [with or without the help of other people or organized religions)

The Computer Aided Thinking [The folly of]

The Computer Aided Thinking

[The folly of]

     When I was studying in the Engineering College, during my undergraduate days, there was a postulation that AI (Artificial Intelligence) will be the “be all and end all” of the future.

   I am now seeing such developments in many areas in my own lifetime (like air traffic controls, airplane flight navigation, data mining and Business intelligence etc.)

     I am also seeing that nowadays due to the development and mass penetration of the communications and Information Technology developments (ICT), youngsters (and some older people too) abdicate their thinking responsibilities and expect the computers to do their thinking for them.

     In my opinion “clear thinking” is the most difficult thing in life and most of us do that in a “foggy” manner. The modern gadgets have made this “foggier”.

     Anything in our life should be analyzed from first principles and we should “think them through”, to their logical conclusion. We are mostly too tired or too lazy to do any sort of ‘thinking” and we leave it to others to do the thinking.

     Elders of valuable experiences who have lived a “full-life” are our best guides in this matter. We will never get that guidance from the internet or from any computerized DATABASE.

     For this, we should seek out and cultivate their company. Reading of biographies, listening to their speeches, discussing with them in person etc. Most of them , will not misguide us and also in case we have any such doubt, we can always cross check it ,with another well experienced persons also.

     Interact with worthy elders and derive the full benefit of their experience. You will get an asset for your whole life time. You may never get a chance to know about what they know and that will make your life poorer .