Dear All,
When I was in Paris, I stayed with a guy who had an excellent collection of books on history, religion and war. The cold air only forced me to stay indoors with the valuable books. I was left with an interesting thought after I finished a book. "DOES GOD HAVE A FUTURE?". Will be back with more on this. No takers for the provocative statement from the Bhagwad Gita yet??
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5 comments:
i personally believe that with advancement, we will slowly tend towards a time where the major part of the world will not believe in the concept of God. In the future we will tend to rely more on empiricism and this will give a many of us a good reason not to follow religion as we may not have had positively reinforcing experiences in the past
This hypothesis, of coarse leaves out orthodox people and communities which run by a strict rule governed system. These communities, in great quantities in India, may end up "forcing" people to give God a "future"
Belief in God gives one a way to rely on someone in times of distress and dismay. It makes one dependent on an unknown force and thus at times we tend to rely too much on God for our actions. Therefore giving importance to fate and destiny.
Contrary to this, I believe that "I am a man of MY actions". I shape my reality and I am what I am because of my actions. In my life, I give little space for God (as the stereotypical image).
I consider the idea of having a God inside everyone of us, and in that area, I believe that God does have a future. In the future, people will come to think more about God to being within them and not an external being. This would happen because of a shift in thought process, where people would like to believe that they can achieve greater goals with the help of this special "being" inside them
Good job Adhip. I liked the bit where you spoke about God continuing in every one of us , which is the reason why he has a future..........interesting.
i think i would agree to both parts about what adhip said. about god's role slowly being taken over by science, this is actually an idea that dates back to Nietzche, in his books The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. he felt, and i agree with him, that as science increasingly found explanations for the 'miracles' in the world, we would slowly turn away from spiritualism to give us all the answers. this would eventually remove god from our minds entirely. of course, as adhip also said, fanatics would remain, but the vast majority of ordinary people would have been converted. this can especially be seen today, in the declining levels of spirituality in christianity and other major world religions, especially among the younger generation, who would be more enamoured by science, as well as more exposed to it.
Nietzche explored two possibilities - that on the discovery that we have killed god, we would either fall into despair and angst, and he quotes this as his reason for labeling christianity as nihilist. the other is that we would feel that the deed is to great fr us as mortals to have accomplished, and so we would 'invent sacred games' etc etc to make ourselves worthy of it - in essence, make ourselves gods, which again i thought has parallels to adhip's 2nd paragraph, of finding god(s?) within ourselves.
also, it is important to consider the circumstances under which god arose. humanity was taking its first tentative steps, and found a world in which there was much that could not be explained. they attributed things that they could not understand to a higher power, in order to preserve their ego and soothe their curiosity. also, in times of fear, distress and vain anger, it was far more comforting that the onus of protecting what was right(or whatever the society proclaimed to be right) did not solely lie on the shoulders of a group of humans, but was in the able and capable hands of a higher entity who would take care of all problems. this also provided pack leader - and subsequently kings - with ways to control the populace - the divine kings of ancient civilisations are testamony to the statement that royalty did use divinity to enforce laws that may have seemed (or been) arbitrary.
now, however, many things are changing. we have come more to terms with our own limitations than ever before at a time when we are also able to explain more than ever we could. the world has also become far more open, and human rights and equality are now seen as important issues. no longer can a family or group claim divinity and get their work done, because they would have to do more than simply attribute their divinity to events that people now have 'rational' explanations for. scientists, on the other hand, can make outrageous claims, and as long as they re not proven wrong, they are often taken seriously. a good case in point is the dot com boom of the 90s, which showed exactly how tech-devoted and yet tech-illiterate most people remain. science is now providing easier explanations, and even solutions to problems that mankind classified for years as 'the gods being angry'. people have no more need for god, because we have science.
science IS the new god.
I have a feeling that God has no present, no past, no future. He is everything. This is on the basis of my post on "time". I have a feeling that God is time...and so the entire world runs because of Him, since time is the driving factor of all space. I have elaborated on this in my post.
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