Disclaimer :- Any views or opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author and they might differ from the actual facts.
How many of us get up in the morning, have a bath and head to the pooja room to say a little prayer to God? I remember I used to do it before I started wondering what the purpose of doing all that is. I realised that the only reason I used to do it was to be relieved from any kind of stress. And so now the question was that why should I have to stand in front of the idol of "God" to do that. More importantly, how did the idols of god come to existence in the first place. I thought long and hard about it and then I came up with my own theory of God.
Before I get into my theory, I'd like to reiterate that this is solely my view of how the Gods that we pray to everyday came into existence. So, all those ardent followers of God, this is probably the right time to close this tab. Also, since I have no proof to say that Iam right, I will entertain all kinds of comments. Now that I have hopefully saved myself from e-bashing, I'll put forth my theory of God.
Instead of explaining how the already widely popular gods came into existence, I'll explain my theory in futuristic terms and then you can probably draw the analogies. Lets assume a hypothetical situation where almost the whole of mankind is wiped out all of a sudden due to some reason. (There are so many possiblities, pick one!!). So now the Earth is left with a few brave survivors. (I would've wiped out the entire life on Earth but then I'll have to explain the reason for the presence of life again in the future). Anyways, due to these survivors, life still exists on Earth and so lets fast forward to thousands of years in the future. Clearly, it is in the nature of humans to not sit down and do nothing and so they dig :P. And what do they find? They find the Harry Potter series at many different places of the world :D (Not a Harry Potter fan. Its ok. Replace Harry Potter with your own hero. SRK maybe :P). I have not read too many novels but from whatever little reading I've done, I've realised that unless you know apriori that a novel is fiction, there is no way for one to figure out that it isn't. So, this future generation, lets call them "The Future Morons", read al the wonderous things that HP does and how he saves his people by fighting the most evilest of evils throughout his life. They might also find posters of "HP-the God" if they are lucky!! Similarly, they might find statues of Gandhi if they dig deeper. In Gandhi, they find another God. In this way, "The future Morons" dig themselves into a spirtual pit. I mean, what other reason could they have to explain the presence of statues of the same person at many different places in the world and also the miraculous things that they did.
This is my Theory of God. Well, it might have sounded lame to most of them but I hope atleast a few of them find it interesting. I hold this theory very dear to me because, well its mine for one, but also since I strongly believe that this will act as an eye opener to those who blindly believe in their "Gods". Believe in the existence of a superpower, but please don't try to give names and idolize it since it will only create differences among people.
So close, yet so far
9 years ago
What if the concept of God itself was eradicated with the people who vanished like a (excuse me for the gross simile ... Ive wanted to use it since a long time) fart in the wind? Hypothetically speaking, if the survivors were atheists, then the concept of God wouldnt exist at all in the future you imagine. Or are you saying that the origin/development of a God is independent of apriori knowledge that something like that exists? What is the probability that a future race of humans, totally ignorant of our own and separated in several dimensions, would come up with the concept of God on their own?
ReplyDeleteinteresting write up...
ReplyDeleteI'm an atheist.. :)
You are merely attempting to thwart the idea of idol worshipping. There are many religions which don't follow it in the first place ( Islam, Buddhism ) and many more. Most of the debates about the existence of God begin at a level higher - questioning the concepts of a superpower. And chuch, IMHO it is very highly probable that any such future generations will come up with their concept of GOD ( or existence of a eternal being ) to explain away the unknown.
ReplyDeleteIf you take a look at our history of the evolution of Gods, you will find plenty of evidence. Greek Gods, for example, symbolized sun, rain, water, war etc all of which were integral part of their civilization. Crudely put, "if you are unable to control an important force which could adversely affect your people, name a god after it and attribute the unknown to him/her".
If you move to right of the timeline, Christ, Prophet Mohammed, etc came into existence to preach their ideologies to masses, and people blindly followed. Their purpose was to unify as many people as possible to peace can flourish. They basically wanted to control everyone's mind, make them fear the unknown, make them do the right thing ( hell, heaven ), perhaps with noble aims. They realized that the only way they can control people is to make them genuinely believe, or otherwise eliminate. ( You go against the Church and you are dead. - Galileo ). Basically kill free thought. Read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
What was I talking about ???
Yeah, Idol worshipping. That's just the tip of the iceberg. You just got your feet wet. Delve into the depths of the ocean to find more answers.
i.e if you have more questions :)
@chuchu - well, we discussed abt ur quests so i dont wanna say anything here...
ReplyDelete@minu - thanks
@uncle - this post was abt idol worship only.. and i was not in any way challenging people's beliefs ... i was merely trying to come up with a theory that explains how some of the gods might hav come into existence.. iam not saying that the future generation is wrong in assuming that Gandhi is God coz most of them in the present generation itself believe so.. i hope u get the difference..
Theory is good. But incomplete, there's a difference between idol worship and diety worship.
ReplyDeleteDiety Worship -
The worship of forms of God as he appeared! ( where and how - ask the acharyas/ refer vedas).
Idol Worship -
Creating a pseudo form and worshipping it a God.
For example, Romans worshiped a golden lamb as God before Christ. Thats useless!!
But worshipping ( ofcourse to eliminate stress and to remove the material bondage!) Diety is necessary. Thats what the shastras say and people have followed. But somewhere, they wanted a change and started speculating ( may be!) and thats the reason for so many weird idols all around.
Its same as the caste system in India. Previously people used to be Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya or a Sudra by his Profession. Now, I guess politics is taking over! Cant help ( Kali Yuga ;) )
By the way your theory is also a speculation :D.
Apologies if I hurt anybody's feelings!
@sharath - ur classification of the types of worship isnt very clear to me... r u saying that worshipping christ makes more sense than worshipping a lamb jus coz thr r "theories" abt jesus... in that case, iam quesioning the truthness of these theories...
ReplyDelete"forms of god as he appeared"??!!.. who saw them? :P ... moreover, my whole point is that u dont need a "form" for god... newayz, this post was just a light hearted attempt so i dont want to get into any more serious e-battles :D
thanks for the reply.. i do accept that it is incomplete and i've already made it clear that iam just speculating :) ..
I attempt to answer point by point anaya -
ReplyDelete1 - Consider an orphan. He/She has not seen her parents as they died because of Rat Flu ( hypothetical situation ;)). So will he have to believe that he came into existence because of some vast expanse of energy which condensed to form his body? Or will he be told that he had mother and father but unfortunately, they are no more. Same applies there, just that God on the other hand is eternal. How will be the question, I cannot answer now, but will do shortly ;)!
2 - We never saw our great great great grand parents. We never saw the universe forming via Big Bang. We never saw Einstein. So that should explain the part 2.
And yeah I took it that way. But then it was interesting point to debate. Cant deny that kada! So yeah no battles, just exchange of ideas
Ok i got ur point and i'll like to say just 1 thing here... i hav, at no point denied the existence of god... all iam saying is that u dont need a form of god... i hope that answer all ur questions :)
ReplyDeleteGood that you arent a total atheist!
ReplyDeleteSo when you accept the existence of God things can be carried on to the next level!
I do not need you to have a form either. But that doesnt stop you from having a personal physical form. Does it?
So its as simple as that. Let us read what God has to say about himself! Why interpret that in so many ways!! Its there in the Srimad-Bhagavatam and the Bhagavadgita. So yeah lets see what he has to say about himself and then understand and not speculate ;)
To all of those who have held the idea and have very effectively discussed that idol worshiping is wrong or in a way needs amendments......... i only want to say that it all only started by ppl themselves and not that God himself descended and gave it to them........ It has always been human psychology that they feel secure when they can convey their words to someone and when they wanted to something to God, they simply couldn't bear the fact they were talking to literally no one but air and themselves....... so came the idea of an idol which represented God and it was not God himself but someone some close friend who they could talk to even with out moving their lips who could ultimately call it a prayer........ let us say it came in to existence just to reduce the stage fear of ppl among others and cud say what ever they wanted to convey to "God" just because it would reduce the heaviness in their hearts so that they felt better........... ne ways a very good post chuck so that we cud express and discuss our inner most feelings about God
ReplyDelete@Harsha (above):
ReplyDeleteI think the introduction of idol worship in our lives is more than "just to reduce the stage fear of ppl among others and cud say what ever they wanted to convey to "God" just because it would reduce the heaviness in their hearts"
I personally think branding it that way in some sense demeans the intellectual capabilities of our ancestors. I think it is inherently very difficult to "worship" something that is formless.
Then, that takes us back one more step to "what exactly is worshipping?" Is it just chanting praises of someone? Is it just about fascination? Or is there something more to it that that.
Agreed that this is a light hearted attempt at philosophy :P, but yeah, it actually is more complicated that what it is made out to be. In short - you might want to rethink your dear theory.
:D