Man's Fate and God's Choice by Bhimeswara Challa (ereader for textbooks TXT) 📖

those who want to decry divinity. They ask for scientific ‘proof’ for the existence of God. While they accept many things on hearsay and on ‘best belief’ basis, when it comes to God they settle for nothing less than absolute evidence. They do not accept deductive dialectic; they want direct proof like mathematical formulae or the properties of physics.

They dismiss arguments like ‘nothing else explains the existence of the universe’ as a leap of blind faith, but they invoke as high a leap of faith to deny God. Richard Dawkins wrote the bestseller The God Delusion (2006), and included in that a chapter tellingly titled ‘Why there almost certainly is no God’. Dawkins seems almost not sure. Almost is the operative word.

The gap between the almost and the actual is the widest in the world. With that kind of caveat, one can, without the fear of contradiction, rewrite that title as ‘Why there almost certainly is a God’.

 

Whether the rewards of reason or the benign fall out of faith is more enduring has been a subject of much philosophical inquiry from the Greeks down to the moderns. Each has had its own ardent, if not ‘fanatical’, defenders and detractors, often with very little ‘faith’ or ‘rationality’. The fact is that neither of them is an absolute, wholly autonomous of the other. Indeed, the human mind is incapable of functioning wholly either on unquestioned faith or on pure reason. Most of the time, perhaps all the time, we wander in the twilight between knowledge and ignorance, faith and doubt, and no one knows where and when they meet or clash. It is part of the eternal play of dwandas or duality, between pairs of opposites. We think we are free only until the next minute; we are bonded-slaves of the senses and confuse shadows for the substance, and, as Vedanta tells us, as long as that doubt remains we will never be free or know what is real and unreal. Most of us are not what we want to be, and our mind proffers many explanations and excuses. And despite all the negatives associated with it, doubt is essential for any introspection or inquiry or creativity; it can be the beginning, not the end, of wisdom. Only the ignorant and a fool are soaked in certainty. But for doubt, we would all be dead by now. Whether it is divine design or Nature’s way of retaining its mystery, human knowledge and intellect do not lend themselves to infallibility or even definitiveness. And faith provides, despite all the absurdities and incongruities of life, hope that the dawn can be better than the night. Reason itself is based on faith in ourselves, if in nothing else; and if rationality is something like conforming one’s beliefs to the highest norms of thought, then faith is the highest kind of rationality. Whether one calls it faith or rationality or the lack of it, the fact is that both are branches of what man is capable of understanding, and that understanding leaves gaping holes; there is much that cannot be explained away by either of them. We need to combine faith and rationality, and in so doing, transcend both to make some sense of our lives; but the human mind seems congenitally incapable of weaving them together into a fabric. We pursue parallel tracks that got twisted with time, faith increasingly a hostage to ribald religiosity, and rationality becoming a tool of self-glorification. Our unflinching, some would say ‘irrational’, faith in deductive reasoning and logical thought that is itself beyond reason, has given us many false gods and goddesses. Luck has so far held faith with us but that seems to have run its course and now, we are on our own. As chance comes in at each stage in the progress of our knowledge, we are likely to be unaware that we are on the brink of a deeper level of reality of uncertainty which will make us more prone to error. If we continue on the same path with the same mindset, chances are we will make catastrophic choices that could drastically shorten the life span of the human species on earth. St. Teresa said that when one experiences the highest states of ecstasy, “intellect and senses both swoon away.”554 For ordinary living, they need not ‘swoon away’ but they ought not to shun higher varieties of awareness. Whether or not man had an ‘untainted mind, heaven’s first gift’ (Aeschylus) which got tainted through culture, or if mind itself is a latter-day alien intrusion, the source of mischief and malaise is the mind, a ‘sort of Trojan Horse or Pandora’s Chest,’ which is adept at offering explanations and excuses for inaction and wrong actions and does not let us stay on the straight path. It creates in us, a paranoia of persecution, of being a victim, that everyone is ‘out to get us.’ It enables us to do horrible things to another human and still ‘sleep like a baby.’

Faith, Jesus said, can move mountains (Matthew 17:21). And, belief it has also been said, makes faith a fact. For Tolstoy, faith is the force of life; and for Tagore, faith is the bird

 

 

 

 

554 William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience: a Study in Human Nature. 2008. Arc Manor. Maryland, USA. p.302.

 

that sings when the dawn is still dark.555 The bird knows it by instinct; we do not, because we rely on reason, and reason wants to see ‘bright light’ before it lets us wake up. The power of faith, like the power of thought, is immense; but it is a power that is barely harnessed by mankind. And just as the power of thought, if misguided, can be our worst enemy, similarly the power of faith if misdirected, like the modern-day religious fanaticism, can destroy our very soul and make us a monster... Faith, in short, is one that you trust but cannot prove, but that must be well harnessed. Usually, the word ‘faith’ is used in the context of God, religion, and theology, but not exclusively; we have ‘faith’ in people too. Some view faith as the logical, natural progression of good reasoning, while many others call it superstition, a ‘soft option’ to life’s challenges. But faith has to be tempered by questioning; and questioning should be able to throw light, not enable evasive action. In the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna not to blindly accept what even He tells him, but to reflect upon the advice given, use his discretion and make his choice. The Buddha told his disciples not to accept anything because “some great man said it or because it is found in a book or because the majority of people believe it.”556 The truth is that, there is no magic formula or method to mix faith and doubt, because faith is, in the words of William Wordsworth, a passionate intuition, while doubt is the driving force of reasoned certainty. They do not easily blend; indeed, they are two shades of the same light. Paul Tillich said doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith.

Within the contours of consciousness, doubt is a product of the mind, and faith that of the heart. Only when they both occupy equal but connected parts in the consciousness, will it be possible to have faith-based intelligence. So far, they have remained disparate and hostile to each other and have forced man to choose between the two. One of the mysterious things in Nature is that belief in anything, be it magic or logic or God itself, is transformational, a prerequisite for the success of the instrument as well as the intended effort. If you do not believe in God, for example, He cannot help you even if He wants to. And if you believe with a pure heart, He will have to ‘do something’ even if you do not worship Him. Belief leads to passion, and passionate effort enhances the chances of success manifold. Indeed, compassion is nothing more than passionate concern for someone else. It is based on the moral premise that if we have in our power to abort something bad from occurring, without giving up something nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so. It is to try giving more than we take in every situation, when that giving does not affect our vital needs. It is to feel morally and collectively responsible for the persistence of scourges like mass poverty and pain and suffering due to material want. How do? we earn our living and how much are we entitled to keep, for the pursuit of comfort and pleasure and avoidance of pain, when what we save and give in the process helps other people lead better lives? How do we balance our own happiness (and that of others we love and value), with the happiness of strangers? We must make sharing a default mode in everyday life. At the most fundamental level, we must review what is meant by ethical life, being a ‘good human being’, and about things that make us ‘feel’ good — or bad — about ourselves. But in our lives today, instead of a heart of compassion we manifest ‘hard-heartedness’, which both the Old Testament and the New Testament often speak about. We must believe that if we sincerely seek His help, it will surely come by. It is a message that resonates through all the scriptures and epics. In the Ramayana, the demon Ravana drives his brother Vibhishana away from Lanka because the latter had dared to suggest reconciliation with Rama. Vibhishana then crosses over to take

 

 

 

555 P.D. Sharma. Immortal Quotations and Proverbs. 2003. Navneet Publications. Mumbai, India. p.35.

556 I.V. Chalapati Rao. Triveni. India’s Literary and Cultural Quarterly.Chikkadapally, Hyderabad, India. Vol. 74, no.2, April-June 2005. p.5.

 

refuge in Rama’s camp, but is stopped at the gates by Rama’s aides. Rama, deemed as a dharmic incarnation, signals them to let Vibhishana in, and proclaims in crystal-clear words that he [Rama] will not abandon even the murderer of millions of Brahmins (considered to be the highest sin), if he seeks refuge in Him and says, “the moment a creature turns his face towards Me, the sins incurred by it through millions of lives are washed away.”557 The message is repeated by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bible says: “if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire.”558 What must happen might happen, but what has not yet need not, at least until it actually happens. Ignorance can be bliss, handicap, or even hope. According to the Biblical Book of Revelation, at the end of human tenure on earth, the epic battle between good and evil will take place, and beasts would appear in the heavens and wage war on God and His angels. Revelation puts God on the winning side — the human experiment would draw to its finality. The scripture tells us that the way to avert or abort the Apocalypse is to ‘turn,’ repent, and return to God, the Jesus way. Some theologians say that it is man’s separation or alienation from God that has precipitated all the human misery. It is sometimes said, particularly in Islamic theology, that sincere prayers can change the way events unfold, and that true worship and sincere submission to God can raise the believer above the normal ways of Nature. It is also viewed as the deepest fulfillment of the human spirit. It is the same promise that Lord Krishna makes to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: “Merge thy mind in Me; be My devotee; sacrifice to Me; prostrate thyself before Me; thou shall come even to Me; I pledge thee My troth; thou art dear to Me.”559