Penned Thoughts

The debate between evolution and intelligent design is as old as civilisation itself, or at least as old as the birth of the theory of evolution. There are two kinds of people in this world: the believers, who have faith in the existence of a superhuman being, called God, that gave birth to life on Earth and is omnipotent and omnipresent; and the atheists, the disciples of science who claim that the idea of creationism has no merit and have scientific facts to prove their point.

Since neither side can fully convince a skeptic that their side of the story is true (because how the pre-cambrian stromatolites, which predate all other living organisms on planet Earth, first came to be is just as much of an unknown as the presence of God), a third group of skeptics was formed and they call themselves the agnostics—people who neither believe in the existence of God nor are thoroughly convinced by evolution and the process of natural selection.

Where I come from

For the longest time, I thought of myself as an atheist. I belong to the Arya Samaaj, a rebel group within Hinduism that believes in one God, criticises idol worship and preaches the equality and empowerment of women, and have therefore always placed more faith in science than in the preachings of the holy scriptures. I do not believe that Raam, Krishna, Shiv or Vishnu were any more God-like than Jesus was and the last thing I would ever do is sit in front of a stone statue, believing it to be God itself (or even an embodiment of it).

I have faith in science and believe that evolution is a fact. I do not consider it a matter of debate that we share our prehistoric ancestors with the gorilla and the bonobo. There is no afterlife and I wasn’t born as a human in a middle class family because I did good deeds in my previous life, nor am I going to be rewarded for my good deeds in my next one. I do not believe that praying to God or visiting some sacred place or observing some ritual grants you your wishes. I do not believe in destiny.

I was born in a very orthodox Hindu family and my parents are the very embodiment of the orthodox Indian family stereotype. All of the things that I said that I do not believe in, they do. They’re Arya Samaajis, of course, so they do not believe in idol worship and those hundreds of Gods that practically define Hinduism, but believe in God they do. And as someone who’s had a very sheltered childhood and been relatively faithful to his parents’ principles, my beliefs have mirrored theirs for the better part of my life.

I have had some disagreements, of course. My biggest gripe with the Arya Samaaj is that although they so vehemently criticise the practice of idol worship in our religion, they organise and participate in the ritual hawans with the same blind fervour. I’ve questioned some of the most accomplished Arya Samaaji aachaaryas about its scientific significance and they all tell me that it purifies the environment. My next question is how and they tell me it’s because of the saamagri we burn during it and its ingredients.

Till date, not one person has been able to convincingly tell me how burning any of those ingredients could possibly eliminate germs from the environment. I’ve sat in hundreds of hawans and it’s indisputable, at least to my mind, that all they do is create pollution. There is absolutely no point to it! And then there’s the way Arya Samaajis speak about other religions, lying about their practices and promoting ugly stereotypes. Their methods may be a little less ancient but their beliefs are just as dogmatic as those of every other religious group in the world.

So, I guess all of that makes me an atheist, huh?

Well, not entirely. I do not believe in the existence of God but I do believe that it was created for a very good reason. Yes, God is an invention of man but I believe that the people behind the invention were foresighted and intelligent and they did it knowing full well what its consequences would be. I’m wandering into the territory of guesswork and hypothesis here, so bear with me for a while. You’ll get your turn to speak.

The hypothesis (a.k.a. the meat of the matter)

Let me start with an anecdote. Once there was a priest who offered his morning prayers on a daily basis. There was this cat in the temple who used to wander around and disturb him while he prayed and so he decided to tie it a pillar before sitting down for his prayers. Eventually, this became a ritual—he would tie the cat to a pillar, place a bowl of milk in front of it, offer his prayers and then untie the cat once he was done. He lived in that temple for several decades and this ritual went on, progressing right through generations of that cat’s offspring.

When the priest died, the task of tying the cat took on a life of its own. It became so much a part of that temple’s daily routine that people kept doing it for centuries, thinking it to be a part of the holy ritual. The cat’s food kept becoming more and more extravagant and they started worshipping the cat itself. Eventually, the temple was named after the cat and the whole thing just kept spiraling on.

The point of the story is that even though no one in the cat temple can give you a rational explanation for why they are worshipping a cat, tying the cat to the pillar serves the same purpose today as it did all those years ago. Even though the people doing it have no idea why they are doing it, that cat would still have been a nuisance during the prayer ceremony if it wasn’t tied to the pillar while it took place.

That is just a fictional story but history is littered with similar examples. Praying to God to get your wishes fulfilled was invented because that’s the only way you could get the ordinary unwashed masses to meditate, an activity which has actual scientifically proven benefits today; old Hindu saints preached that the cow was a sacred animal and that keeping one in the house as a pet would get you to heaven (and killing it would reserve you a seat in hell) because they knew how essential milk was for our health and wanted to ensure that we would have a constant supply of it; they also declared the neem, peepal and tulsi trees sacred because there are scientific benefits to keeping them around.

Even when we are performing the hawan, there’s a ritual just after lighting the fire where you spread water in a tiny crevice running all around the vessel and doing it is considered an act of purity, but the real reason it was put in place was to prevent ants and other insects from approaching the base of the hot hawan-kund and getting fried.

It is my belief that God first came to be when some of the earliest humans devised a language to communicate with others and the first civilised human societies were born. In those times, I think they needed a way to discourage people to do acts that would hurt others in the society—things like stealing and murder—and they invented God as a way to convince people to behave themselves. If you’d told someone in one of those early societies that they should not kill others for personal gain, I’m sure the first question he asked you would have been, “why, what’s in it for me?” And maybe it was then that someone came up with the answer, “God will punish you if you do.”

I’m a very techno-savvy person and my mind is scientifically inclined. No one is ever going to convince me about the presence of God but I still innately believe in a justice system beyond our control. The Internet, with all its powers of persuasion, hasn’t been able to convince me that my wrongdoings are not punishable by some power beyond my control. And before you chime in and say, “yes, they are, and it’s called the law,” you should know that there are many things that are wrong but not illegal.

There are two very good non-God-involving reasons why a person does something good—to stay on the right side of the law and to maintain their standing in society. But there is a third reason too. Why would anyone return a wallet they found on the street or donate to a charity anonymously or help a wounded animal? These are things that you do not receive any rewards for (unless you start boasting about them) but there are people who still do them.

Why? Sure, it’s not necessary that they do it because they believe that they will be rewarded by God—there are atheists who do good deeds too, after all—but it helps to have that incentive in mind. In essence, we are all selfish beings. The only way you can get most people to donate to a charity is by giving them tax cuts and public recognition in exchange. So maybe the forebears of human civilisation realised that they needed to incentivise doing the everyday good deeds as well and make people fear doing anything wrong and that’s why they invented God.

For that reason, I believe in God, even though I don’t.

[Image via TOONPOOL]

-Aayush