God and Religion have been with us since the beginning of time. While religions claim to have civilized the primitive cavemen to civilized and cultured gentlemen, the detractors – rationalists and scientists claim that the religion is the root cause of evil – strife in society, religious wars, persecution and inquisition. "Imagine a world without religion " - no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Iraq war, no Afghanistan war etc.
However, if you read the history of the world, you will agree that the concept of God and the institution of Religion have uplifted mankind - values of life like love, charity, brotherhood etc.can be traced to religion and to the idea of God ; on the other hand, it is also true that organized religions with their religious orthodoxy, hierarchy, structure, rituals have led mankind to many irrational things like wars, persecution and apartheid.
The God Delusion
The book, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, a well-know biologist and an author of many books, takes a critical look at the concept of God and the religion from a rational or scientific way. He has put forward many facts and arguments to prove that there is no God. However, they do not convince a common Hindu like me.
It is my view that reason and science cannot explain everything, and they have some limitations. Mahatma Gandhi had said long ago that faith and reason are complimentary and where reason ends faith begins. " There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy," says William Shakespeare ( Hamlet, Scene V). Rationalists and scientists can easily point out many faults and foibles of the organized religions. However, they cannot comprehend and explain the concept of God as they do not have right tools to understand God and the right attitude to know God.
Dawkins has discussed many issues in the book – deeply religious non-believers, the God hypothesis, arguments for God's existence, why there almost certainly is no God, the roots of religion ( religion as a by-product of something else ), the roots of morality – why are we good?, the changing moral Zeitgeist, what is wrong with religion, childhood abuse, religion, a much needed gap ?
Let us try to analyze and understand a few important issues the author has raised and the explanations he has offered.
The God Hypothesis.
In the chapter, The God Hypothesis, Dawkins states, " I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensively : there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it including us. This book will advocate an alternative view : any creative intelligence , of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution."
However, in this chapter he discusses the God of the Old Testament ( the most unpleasant character – jealous, petty, unjust etc.) ; polytheism ; monotheism ; mystery of Trinity ; list of 5120 saints in the Catholic Community Forum together with their area of expertise which include abdominal pains, abuse victims. He mentions many superstitions believed by Christians and many stories and fables in the Bible.
Even the believers in God would dismiss these tales as irrelevant. Many of these may be interpolations by many imposters for centuries. They are not authentic documents which could be relied upon. This shows how organized religions have allowed themselves to become subject of ridicule of rational people. No wonder, Jefferson observed that Christianity has promoted " pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." Benjamin Franklin was more damning, " Light houses are more useful than churches."
God's Existence.
The next chapter, Arguments for God's existence, has a discussion on the five proofs for God's existence put forward by Thomas Aquinas – (1) Unmoved mover – nothing moves without a prior mover; (2) Uncaused cause – nothing is caused by itself ; (3) cosmological argument – since the physical things exist now, there must have been something non-physical to bring them into existence. Dawkins comments are rather illogical : " All three of these arguments rely upon the idea of a regress and invoke God to terminate it. They make the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself is immune to the regress." We all know that the computer was invented by an engineer and can we ask, who invented the engineer ?
Later, in the same para, he admits that there could be a power which could be called God but disputes the other attributes associated with God in these words, " Even we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name, simply because we need one, there is absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God : omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, creativity of design, to say nothing of such human attribute as listening to prayers, forgiving sins and reading innermost thoughts."
A reading of the book, An Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhamsa Yogananda who came from India to live in USA in the 20th Century provides some answers to the above doubts. He was a mystic. There was another mystic – Ramakrishna Paramhamsa in the 19th century India. An unlettered priest in the famous Kali temple in Kolkata who had visions of God as Mother Kali. He also had visions of God conceived in other faiths. He once said, " A crystal of salt cannot measure the depth of ocean as it will be dissolved as it enters the ocean." All mystics – Hindu yogis, Sufi Muslims and Christian mystics - have had this experience of God. Scientists and psychologists have dismissed these experiences as hallucination, illusion and even madness rather than practice the regimen of yogis and understand it.
Darwin's The Origin of Life.
The most important point that Dawkins makes in the book is that Darwin's theory of the origin of life, evolution of life, natural selection and the survival of the fittest to explain the whole complexity of life – plant, animal and human – in the world. Once Darwin's theory is accepted, Dawkins feels that there is no need for a God at all. While 'creationists' in the West deny the validity of the evolution of life, we Hindus have no problem in accepting the theory. All that we say is that it is part of the divine scheme of things.
In Hindu religion and thought, there is the concept of God descending on earth to uphold Dharma – righteousness – when the earth is overwhelmed with evil forces. It is said that that God comes to earth 10 times in an era. They are called Dashavatara (ten incarnation of God ). The ten incarnations are : Matsya ( The Fish); Kurma ( The Tortoise); Varaha ( The Boar ); Narasimha ( The Man-lion ); Vamana ( The Dwarf ); Parashurama ( The Man with the axe ); Rama ( The Perfect Man); Krishna ( The Philosopher-King); Buddha ( The Liberated One) and Kalki ( The Destroyer of the World). With this God ends the world and he begins a new cycle of life. These incarnations indicate the evolution of life. Some have interpreted it as the evolution of life from conception to death. This is something for believers and non-believers to think it over.
For Hindus, evolution of life is not a negation of God but an affirmation of God. In Hinduism religion and science are not contradictory by complimentary. Both try to find Truth – one by delving deep into their own self ( meditation, breath control) but the other through microscope, telescope, experiment etc. The yogi and the scientist are bound to meet one day. Hindus have not punished any scientist and no Galileo has been imprisoned for his discovery or invention. The arts, architecture, poetry, drama, literature, medicine, statecraft ( arthashastra ), moral science ( nitishastra), ,philosophy ( theism to atheism) sexual science ( kamasutra ) flourished during the early part of the Indian history. Vedas said let noble thoughts come from all corners.
The roots of religion and morality.
In the chapter, Roots of Religion, Dawkins presents the case of rationalists and scientists very skillfully. Religion provides consolation, comfort, fosters togetherness and satisfies the yearning to understand why we exist. This is fair enough and then proceeds to explain the Darwinian evolutionary point of view thus : " Could irrational religion be a by-product of the irrationality mechanisms that were originally built into the brain by selection for falling in love ? Certainly, religious faith has something of the same character as falling in love ( and both have many attributes of being high on an addictive drug)." Religion is an accidental by-product of something useful for the gene, says the author, and goes on to illustrate it with the example of moth flying into a candle flame mistaking it to be a star or moon. In this chapter many things like indoctrination of children by their parent's religion and religion as placebo are discussed at length. While the author takes great pains to explain the attraction or affection to God and religion as a misguided psychological need, believers consider it as sublimation of love - for God and His creation. If sexual love is all that matters for the survival of life, we can as well ask the question, " man cannot live with sex alone " just as Jesus said, " man cannot live by bread alone." Man has been created in the image of God and he is creative as well – man's creativity is the history of mankind.
Dawkins takes up the issue of morality – roots of morality and why are we good – in the next chapter. He presents " four good Darwinian reasons for individuals to be altruistic, generous or 'moral' towards each other ." First, genetic kinship; second, reciprocation; third, acquiring a reputation for generosity and kindness; fourth, generosity as a way of buying unfakeably authentic advertising. He finds similar traits among the animals as well. Then he adds that our moral sense, like our sexual desire, is rooted in our Darwinian past, pre-dating religion, we would expect that research on the human mind would reveal same moral universals, crossing geographical and cultural barriers, and also crucially, religious barriers. He reinforces his argument with a quote from the Harvard biologist Marc Hauser who said that the principles of moral grammar, like language, fly beneath the radar of our awareness.
The roots of morality may well be with us since our birth but they were sharpened and moulded by the society we live and the religion we follow. What is moral in one country/ religion may be immoral in another society/religion. However, all religions and societies have some moral values which could be called universal – love, brotherhood, restraint on desires, respect for others etc. Unfortunately, Abrahamic religions – Judasism, Christianity and Islam – have restricted these values to their religious followers, not to all mankind. In fact, this is one of the main reasons for the conflict of religions and religious wars. They have restricted the domain of God to their own followers thereby belittling God. It is the greatness of Hindusim that it believes and advocates universal brotherhood. Its message is, universe is my family ( vasudaiva kutumbakam). It does not say, my way is the only way, all other ways lead to perdition.
Atheist Crimes
Stalin and Hitler did extremely evil things, says Dawkins, in the name of dogmatic and doctrinaire Marxism, and an insane and unscientific eugenics respectively. While Hitler might have used religion to cover-up his economic greed, political ambition, racial prejudice, deep grievance or patriotism, Stalin, along with Mao-tse-Tung are prime examples of atheist crime – killing millions of people in the name of communism which includes atheism as its integral part. Marx's declaration that religion is the opium of the people could be taken as the banner of atheism. Dawkins defense is feeble and not very honest, : " Individual atheists may do evil things but they don't do evil things in the name of atheism."
Can we not say the same thing about religious bigots ? Let us admit that there is a dark side to the human beings. Man has a choice – to do good or bad, to be good or bad. All religions ask him to choose the good and be good because of fraternity of mankind – we are all brothers and we come from the same root or the same stock – as Hindus would say, spark of the same Divine Flame.
The ten commandments have tried to tame the evil tendencies of man. The Sermon on the Mount has given positive values to by. The Bhagwad Gita says do you duty ( Dharma ) without attachment and your destiny is in your hand (karma - you reap, what you sow). All these have helped uplift man from his animal self ( selfishness and self-perservation).
When atheists decry religion and God for the umpteen crimes committed in their name, they forget the positive values enunciated and promoted by them and they were the steps of the ladder by which humanity come up to this level of culture and civilization. If you throw out the ladder, you are stultifying yourself. The need is to purify religion from its orthodoxy, rituals, institutions and emphasis its humanistic values. It is not an easy task. Easy task is to throw the baby with the bath water.
Zeitgeist (Spirit of the Times).
The world has changed massively in its attitude to what is right and what is wrong, says Dawkins and then adds, that in any society there exists a mysterious consensus, which changes over the decades, and this could be described by the German word Zeitgeist ( sprit of the times). He gives the example of female suffrage which spread to all western countries over a short period of 80 years – New Zealand (1893) to Switzerland (1971). During this period it was adopted by Australia, Finland,Norway, USA,Britain,France and Belgium. Though Abraham Lincoln liberated slaves, he did believe in racial equality and the founding fathers of America had slaves. Then mentions that the philosopher Peter Singer is the most eloquent advocate of humane treatment to all species that have the brain power to appreciate it.
Reverence for life is an article of faith in Hinduism because God pervades everything both living and even non-living. Reverence for life is a creed of Jain and Buddhist faiths who rebelled against the rituals of Vedic religion. Jains do not till land so that they do not kill even microbes and they are mostly traders for centuries.
The Hindus have evolved a concept called Dharma which means that which sustains society, family and the individual. Hindu concept of Yugadharma ( Law of the Times) which almost conveys the same meaning as that of Zeitgeist. That is why family planning and choice were not big issues with Hindus at all. Universal suffrage was introduced in India with the adoption of the constitution and elections were held almost without too much violence in a poor country with considerable illiteracy. The people of the country are suffused with the humanistic values of Hinduism.
Where Hindu religion meets science.
" Steve Grand ( in his book, Creation : Life and How to Make it) points out that you and I are more like waves than permanent 'things'…. 'Really', for an animal, is whatever its brain needs it to be in order to assist its survival. And because different species live in such different worlds, there will be a troubling variety of 'really'. What we see of the real world is not the unvarnished real world but a model of the real world, regulated and adjusted by sense data – a model that is constructed so that it is useful for dealing with the real world. The nature of that model depends on the kind of animal we are. A flying animal needs a different kind of world model from a walking, a climbing or a swimming animal …"
This quotation in the Dawkin's book suspiciously reads like the theory of Maya of Shankaracharya, the great sage and commentator of Vedas (10th Century A.D.), who said that this world is an illusion. The famous example given to illustrate maya is : a rope looks like a snake in the darkness. The world is not what it looks like. There are different models to suit the needs of different species. It looks different from different perspectives but Hindus believe the core or essence is the same. Water in different vessels takes different shape but it remains the same. Water can become vapour or ice. This is the philosophy of Advita ( non-duality).
This philosophy made Hindus believe that God is everywhere and in everything – He is not merely in human beings and animals but in every particle or atom in the world. The Isha Upanishad says, Isha vasam idam sarva ….which means God dwells in everything and is everywhere in the universe centuries before Albert Einstein propounded his theory of mass- energy equivalence ( E = mc2) and that energy and mass are equivalent and transmutable.
Religion has met science. Let religion and science remove their blinkers and recognise the contribution made by both and work for the welfare of mankind.
May 19,2009
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