Over 65 years ago, when I first started to understand little by little about life, living and livelihood, I remember being told by mother that we are created to love and serve an all powerful, and all knowing creator, who, if made angry, would punish me into hell for eternity. This concept of serving God was drilled into me at school too. Even at that age, I was extremely perplexed and confused, unable to understand, why an all knowing and powerful creator had to punish his own creation! What irritated and confused me then was the stories my mother told me of Queen Elizabeth of England and the richly comfort enjoyed by Prince Charles.
I questioned my mother as to why God did not give us the palacious life style and put Queen Elizabeth in our dingy house. My mother shrugged me off saying God was not discriminatory and knows what he was doing. I must work hard and be good or else I would be punished in the eternal fire. It was fear, and work for me to attract the love of God, through sacrifice in my childhood years that left me confused and my curiosity for knowledge grew.
For the last 65 years, neither my mother nor my conscience was able to satisfy my quest as to why I should pray to the all knowing God who I felt, best knows my needs, I being his creation!
All said and done, the fear generated love, brought out in us respect and concern for feelings of others and dignity to our lives. There were no crimes, racial or caste discriminations, suicides, drug abuse, divorces, murders, thefts, etc during all my formative years, and I accepted that the Almighty must be controlling everything perfectly, inspite of me and my siblings growing up in difficult conditions.
Now I am on the other side of 70 years and I find there is an abject transformation in the thinking philosophy amongst people. There is a growing population who believe that their God requires protection. The all powerful God is today reduced to a creature requiring protection, appeasement and a bit of bullying by sacrifices and prayers designed to hurt others. No doubt politicians in power organise free pilgrimages to Vailankanni, Shirdi, Mecca, Varanasi, etc not only to appease devotees but to buy votes with blessings from above through appeasement.
In the name of religion, societies are evolving the wrong concept, that terrorism involving suicide bombers, killing innocent people is a sure way to please God, and attain heavenly rewards.
The human weakness for self gratification has been exploited by skilful religious fanatics and bigots, by convincing the common laity that the keys of Heaven are now with these "God Men", who mould the minds of impressionable youth towards terrorism.
No doubt, exploitation of the masses, across all main stream religions is the order of the day. The one upmanship across religious practices is conspicuous in what one should eat, what one cannot drink, how one must behave or dress, where one must be buried, who should be lynched, which religious structures should be raised/razed, etc.
Today, where mankind is exploring trillions of galaxies, trying to understand black holes, dark energy/matter and discover intelligence beyond earth, we in the developing world are throttling creativity, research and scientific temper by imposing beliefs on societies and killing rational thinkers. Be it Narendra Dabolkar, Govind Pansare, Kalburgi or Lankesh Gauri who were killed for their counter view on societal beliefs of fundamentalists. How can a country surge forward in scientific temper if the murderers of intellect are still at large? India has sent rockets/satellites in to space and is even exploring Mars but we have failed to understand and explore the growing gap in our society. Should we kill or lynch people to appease and protect a God? Specially a God, created in your own thinking. In fact, we are fast moving backwards. Our fore fathers rightly worshipped nature and cherished sustainable livelihoods. Today, we are destroying nature, polluting rivers, threatening biodiversity and the gene pool in the garb of development. Whose development are we promoting? It pains me to discover that faith has been exploited and misused to deceive man and destroy mankind. The malignancies where in man is destroying man had to be ripped in the bud, with sound scientific temperament. The concepts which stunt scientific creativity must be questioned and peacefully addressed to fuel holistic development with sustainability.
There is no; as it was in the beginning, is now and forever the same on our earth and in the universe. Every second there is a change, not only in the sky, where stars are born or die and everything is in motion, but even in our bodies, wherein millions of cells are regenerating or degenerating by the second. Though we may see stars as stationary and human body as static, molecular life is on the move; moment to moment and with our conscious intellect we must live and let live and derive the best for ourselves and our environment.
Both science and religion are being misused by the political class across nations, be it the atom bomb, biological warfare or polluting industrial growth. Similarly religions are meant to usher peace, understanding and brotherhood and not terrorism and hatred. Let us learn to harness peace as an all-inclusive society for eternity, promoting quest for scientific empowerment, creativity, equality amongst people and discarding blind faith which divides societies and retards reasoning, creativity, scientific temper and overall sustainable and holistic development.
I questioned my mother as to why God did not give us the palacious life style and put Queen Elizabeth in our dingy house. My mother shrugged me off saying God was not discriminatory and knows what he was doing. I must work hard and be good or else I would be punished in the eternal fire. It was fear, and work for me to attract the love of God, through sacrifice in my childhood years that left me confused and my curiosity for knowledge grew.
For the last 65 years, neither my mother nor my conscience was able to satisfy my quest as to why I should pray to the all knowing God who I felt, best knows my needs, I being his creation!
All said and done, the fear generated love, brought out in us respect and concern for feelings of others and dignity to our lives. There were no crimes, racial or caste discriminations, suicides, drug abuse, divorces, murders, thefts, etc during all my formative years, and I accepted that the Almighty must be controlling everything perfectly, inspite of me and my siblings growing up in difficult conditions.
Now I am on the other side of 70 years and I find there is an abject transformation in the thinking philosophy amongst people. There is a growing population who believe that their God requires protection. The all powerful God is today reduced to a creature requiring protection, appeasement and a bit of bullying by sacrifices and prayers designed to hurt others. No doubt politicians in power organise free pilgrimages to Vailankanni, Shirdi, Mecca, Varanasi, etc not only to appease devotees but to buy votes with blessings from above through appeasement.
In the name of religion, societies are evolving the wrong concept, that terrorism involving suicide bombers, killing innocent people is a sure way to please God, and attain heavenly rewards.
The human weakness for self gratification has been exploited by skilful religious fanatics and bigots, by convincing the common laity that the keys of Heaven are now with these "God Men", who mould the minds of impressionable youth towards terrorism.
No doubt, exploitation of the masses, across all main stream religions is the order of the day. The one upmanship across religious practices is conspicuous in what one should eat, what one cannot drink, how one must behave or dress, where one must be buried, who should be lynched, which religious structures should be raised/razed, etc.
Today, where mankind is exploring trillions of galaxies, trying to understand black holes, dark energy/matter and discover intelligence beyond earth, we in the developing world are throttling creativity, research and scientific temper by imposing beliefs on societies and killing rational thinkers. Be it Narendra Dabolkar, Govind Pansare, Kalburgi or Lankesh Gauri who were killed for their counter view on societal beliefs of fundamentalists. How can a country surge forward in scientific temper if the murderers of intellect are still at large? India has sent rockets/satellites in to space and is even exploring Mars but we have failed to understand and explore the growing gap in our society. Should we kill or lynch people to appease and protect a God? Specially a God, created in your own thinking. In fact, we are fast moving backwards. Our fore fathers rightly worshipped nature and cherished sustainable livelihoods. Today, we are destroying nature, polluting rivers, threatening biodiversity and the gene pool in the garb of development. Whose development are we promoting? It pains me to discover that faith has been exploited and misused to deceive man and destroy mankind. The malignancies where in man is destroying man had to be ripped in the bud, with sound scientific temperament. The concepts which stunt scientific creativity must be questioned and peacefully addressed to fuel holistic development with sustainability.
There is no; as it was in the beginning, is now and forever the same on our earth and in the universe. Every second there is a change, not only in the sky, where stars are born or die and everything is in motion, but even in our bodies, wherein millions of cells are regenerating or degenerating by the second. Though we may see stars as stationary and human body as static, molecular life is on the move; moment to moment and with our conscious intellect we must live and let live and derive the best for ourselves and our environment.
Both science and religion are being misused by the political class across nations, be it the atom bomb, biological warfare or polluting industrial growth. Similarly religions are meant to usher peace, understanding and brotherhood and not terrorism and hatred. Let us learn to harness peace as an all-inclusive society for eternity, promoting quest for scientific empowerment, creativity, equality amongst people and discarding blind faith which divides societies and retards reasoning, creativity, scientific temper and overall sustainable and holistic development.
