setting the premise

Having talked about reason, I am going to over the next few posts place the concept of god that I am supposed to have imbibed thus far in life at the altar of reason. I am going to use the knife of reason to dissect the flesh of god and religion and see what makes it tick. I accept that things are likely to bloody. I do not know what it is that I am going to find. I do not know what it is that I am searching. All I know is that I am looking for something and I desire to find it.

What I intend to do is think of all the various reasons that religion may have been thought up of and see which of those reasons hold true today. I plan to think of all the situations that may have led to the god, as we know it. At this point, I do not want to talk about the immortality of that god. I shall start with the assumption that god existed forever, is going to exist forever. However, religion cannot be something that existed forever. The reason being that religion is nothing but a set of beliefs about that god. The god on which the beliefs are based can be always present; however, those beliefs will be formed only when we begin to see the presence of that god. Unless the first man realized god and began thinking about the beliefs that surrounded that god, religion could not exist.
Therefore we will start with the premise that god existed and religion was thought up.

The next necessity is to decide about which religion we are going to talk. The reason this is paramount is that there are scores of religions that co-exist in this world (they at least make claims of co-existence). It would not be fair to pick a religion and then proceed to show that it is a façade. For this purpose, whenever I use the word god it means all of the following

• Omnipresent
• Omniscient
• Omnipotent

In addition, please note that I shall refer to god as he in most cases. This is along the norm that is followed while referring to god in general. Even though there are female gods, for some unknown reason the word she is not associated with god. Therefore, if you are a person who does not want god to get chauvinistic, I request you to replace “he” with either it, to denote the lack of a gender or he/she to render the question of gender unimportant.

I guess that most religions make these claims of this god. They claim that the god is present across everything and across every period. It is as on a vector scale, god extends from plus infinity to minus infinity on all possible dimensions.

The omniscient god is all knowing. He has the ability to tap into all thoughts of all the people and is in a position to distinguish between good and bad. He is capable of listen to all the prayers as well as all the questions.

He is omnipotent; he has control on everything. He created the universe and therefore has the power to destroy it. He created the world we live in and has the power to make it all go away in snap. He gives reason to everything and he is the one that decides what the purpose behind everything is. Ultimately, everything is because he wanted it so.

Now we have god, we have reason. We still need religion. I will talk about religion in the next post. I hope that when that is done, we can get to business and put religion and god to the test of reason.

definition of reason

Many of us believe that we are just actors in the play that is run by the almighty. The beliefs dictate what we do and what is going to happen. People call this by different names. They call it fate, something that is preordained, something that was written and so shall be done. They call it destiny; something that they are progressively working towards.

Along the same lines, I believe in reason. For me reason is the one thing that makes sense when nothing else does. It is what ruled what happened, it rules what is happening and it is going to cause what is going to happen tomorrow. Just as the believer says that tomorrow is controlled by fate or destiny, I believe that my tomorrow is controlled by reason.

When I state that reason controls whatever happens in my world, it becomes imperative that I define that reason, thereby enabling easier understanding of that term. Word Web, the dictionary that runs on my laptop, defines reason as

1. A rational motive or belief
2. An explanation of the cause of some event
3. The capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination
4. The state of having good sense and sound judgment
5. A justification for something that occurred

Of all the above, the closest that I am looking for when I talk about reason is the third one, “the capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination”. Please make note of each word, for they carry enormous significance. The key word is rational. The word rational means using the mind. Therefore, in short, reason is the capacity to use the mind to come to conclusions, which are logical and reliable. I refrain from using the word consistent on purpose. The reason is that rigidity of thought can be mistaken to be consistency, which I do not want to seep into the fabric of thought. Therefore, reason is the ability to use the mind to arrive at logical and reliable conclusions.

I guess this is the start of all the fog, which has enveloped my mind, the desire to apply this reason to religion, as we know it and god, as we do not know him. It is only when I am able to understand rationally the presence or absence of a god and the purpose of religion, will I be able to come to terms with what I am. This desire to understand something that has remained so elusive to so many has created the fog in my head. There have been so many who have traversed the same path that I am treading on. They have searched for reasons and many have been termed heretics. Many have been crucified (I am not referring to Jesus Christ), burned at the stake, buried alive, exiled, driven to madness, just for asking the question “Why?”

I could have done two things from here. Firstly, I could have driven away all the fog by just ignoring it. This does not mean that the fog is gone. It just means that I do not wish to see it anymore. This act would have likened me to the child who closes his eyes and believes that the entire world has vanished, when the truth is that the child is not seeing the world anymore.

The second option was to run into the fog and light a fire in it. The fire will create smoke, which can intensify the fog. However, it will also create heat, which will lift the fog. This is what I plan to do. I plan to create the fire to reason the religion and god, so that at the end of the day I have better vision of what I am, who I am and if there is an answer to the eternal question, why I am.

I would like close this post with a Tamil song

Enge kaal pogum pogavidu (Where the leg wants to go, let it go)
Mudivai pathuvidu (Wait and watch the results)
Kaalam oru naal kaikodukum (Life will give a helping hand one day)
Adhuvarai poruthuvidu. (Wait for that to happen)

disclaimer

Before I actually start, what it is that I plan to do, I must state something. This is not an effort to make one religion appear better or make another appear smaller. I am not preaching one at the expense of another. All I am doing is taking all religions and gods as one and trying to make sense from them.

If in the course of this blog, or the discussions that it may spark, I state something that is contrary to your belief, I request you to understand that I have said something that is my belief. I am not questioning yours. You have all the right to follow what you want to. I request that you allow me the same privilege.

All I want from you as a reader is to tell me if something I state is wrong. I wish to discuss and thereby understand better. I agree that I am swimming against thousands of years of well-formed opinions. However, I request you to bear with me. For it is my wish that in discussing with me your opinions are strengthened. It is my wish that in the course of the discussion, I will be able to better comprehend structured religion, as we know it.

I request you to keep your god. All I request you, is to let me look at him. Then may be I will be able to find my own god.

genesis

I am not even sure if this line of thought deserves another blog. I am not even sure that I am going to be regular when it comes to this blog. However, in the last few months, I have gone from being a strictly religious Brahmin to someone who has no clue what religion is all about.

In the following series of posts, I shall try to clear my head over what the term god means, what is religion, does it have a purpose and finally, hopefully, I will find that all elusive god. This blog is more of a peek into my head and I would appreciate it if anyone could throw light into the darkness that is now my head.

I have used the black template to show the fog in my head. I hope to, as I move along in the series, come to light. The color of the blog will correspond to the clarity.