God - an investigation - Part 2

There have been many responses to my earlier essay on belief in God. And not surprisingly , all of them( Facebook and otherwise) predominantly fall under two categories. There is one section who wish to call themselves 'Agnostics' and the other believes in some form of 'Deism' with great stress on Faith ( I shall talk about this later..)...

The most striking thing for me is that nobody wanted to be called an Atheist.. Even though, my definition of Atheism was synonymous to that of how an agnostic would want to think of himself or herself; Nobody was blatant (pardon me for saying so) enough to use that "blasphemous" term!!! It seemed from the responses that there is a deep down fear in branding oneself with that tag. The word Atheist appeared to be evoking images of some kind of a horrible afterlife, or even the possibility of a not so benign anthropomorphic God who will take objection to such a stand in the long run. Whatever the reason, it was pretty clear, at least from the written and spoken responses that many wanted to stay away from the term...

Then there is this belief or faith in the "unknown", that many have professed. In other words, they are Deists and passionately want to believe that there is Godhead or a primordial designer who has set the universe spinning and wish to remain wonder-struck in HIS contemplation and righteousness. The other evidence they bring compulsively to force is that science can take us a distance in the "material" world and cannot account for the entire journey or mystery of existence in all its dimensions..

Both the responses are perfectly understandable; and the subtle underlying thread that runs through both these approaches (very subtle indeed!!) is the urge to believe that there has to be something that outlives this temporal clothing of the Body ;and that "Something" will either merge or meet with the "other" in some distant future. And we earnestly believe that the proof of this will either come in due course from the marching crusade of scientific discovery; or that the Divine designer will forever recede from the net of oneself, and under special conditions be revealed to us ;- until that happens we will be in awe : gasping and reveling in this elusive substance of Godhead. The latter is what we sometimes tenuously call 'faith"..

From my next installment , I wish to start exploring the fundamental premise of this entire endeavor. It is my firm opinion that to understand this important ,serious issue, we must begin with ourselves. After all, we are the only species who seem to facing this existential dilemma. And the reason being that we seem to be playing the dual roles of the "Actor" and "spectator" in this Universal drama.

I would like to end this essay with a quote from Niels Bohr, a contemporary of Einstein, and considered to be the discoverer of quantum physics . I read a quote of his in a wonderful compendium of scientific and psychological articles called "The inner Kernel..", where he says :

"For a parallel to the lesson of atomic theory.. We must turn to those kind of epistemological problems with which already thinkers like Buddha or a Lao Tse have been confronted, when trying to harmonize our position as spectators and actors in the great drama of existence."

Perhaps, it is in this direction we may have to look ..

God bless..

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