Post-theism: An impossibilty

Crutches of a crippled society

Prof. Vasant Natarajan’s post-theistic society (Open Page, Sept 22) may be as impractical as zero poverty, but let us not rubbish it merely on the grounds that it lies in the realms of the Utopian. It would be far more useful if we realize the premise on which he bases this society. Let us first take stock of our position today.

We must first realize that whole generations have been tutored and fabricated to believe in the existence of a Supreme Being, who sits in the sky and keeps an eye on what everybody is doing. He has a checklist of things that are “bad” and some that are “good”, each action supposedly earning you either punishments or brownie points. All religions in the world are permutations of these basic rules. The sheer number of religions speaks of imbalance, confusion and ignorance. So we cannot expect the masses to ever be able to think freely, for they stink of religious perversion.

Those few, who realize the ludicrous nature of the dogma that is prevalent, are branded as heretics, non-believers and blasphemers in an effort to discredit their views. Ignorance and blind belief are widely considered as things to be “achieved”! Religion has stripped the vulnerable of their ability to perceive and logically understand their environment based purely on observation and deduction. Can we ever treat religious tenets as a part of some fantasy tale told to amuse but never instruct by our predecessors? Sacred, infallible and also unverifiable, these rules baffle our senses and assault our intelligence. Somebody said, “The first step in the process of inventing a God is to claim that he is invisible, omnipotent and omnipresent. Otherwise people tend to wonder why their God is so impotent!”

Religion was the old way of understanding the world. It is primal, ignorant and should be a part of history, but it is not. Prof. Natarajan’s claim that “modern science has been able to explain almost all natural phenomena so that the purview of the unknown has shrunk considerably” may lead one to conclude that it is an arrogant one. To clarify, he refers to all the “observable phenomena” in the world. All the hype created around dark matter and dark energy being mysterious entities is because it is directly “unobservable” and therefore forms no part of this discussion. Miracles are another major irritant to scientists, and rightly so. We all know what happened to Sanal Edamaraku when he sought to expose the lies and the ignorance behind the weeping statue of Jesus!

Let us return to Prof. Natarajan’s premise. Imagine a world where worship is replaced with inquiry, fear with knowledge and ignorance with curiosity. I personally cannot, because I feel we are still a primal society. We still seek external solace, we seek some divine assurance that everything in the world is taken care of by a God! Thus we are fallible and ever reclusive from ideas that destroy the need for such a God. The next time you find yourself in an adverse situation; you have to rely on yourself, there is no God to pray to. Scary, isn’t it?

Prof. Natarajan, you are light years ahead of us.

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The original article-

( http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/lets-aim-for-a-posttheistic-society/article5154603.ece )