Belief in God or a Supernatural Power Comes With a Caveat
By
Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
13 December
2022
Isn't
Curbing Natural Urges In The Name Of A Fictional God And Religion, Some Kind Of
Despotic, Nay Theocratic, Sadism?
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" One of the strongest theological differences and dissensions
between Islam and Christianity is while the former just cannot think that Allah
can make love and become a biological father, the latter endows it with a kind
of procreational attribute and makes the god as the father of Jesus. But one
thing remains common in both the Semitic faiths: The divine sexuality is not
discussed further and remains a hush-hush issue. "
-Alan
Turing, Father of computer science and founder of Artificial Intelligence
“Why do humans portray god as a completely asexual entity?”
Ayn
Rand
“When sex, unbridled orgies and debauchery of the believers can be possible
in heaven for their admirable celibacy on earth, what on earth will god do?
Will he watch his loyalists make love like a voyeur or jump on the bandwagon?
"
-Sigmund
Freud
Recently,
Pope Francis condemned nuns and priests for watching pornography on the sly and
said that it was Satan's trick to dissuade them (nuns and priests) from the
path of holiness. He urged them to delete all pornographic stuff from their
mobiles. Morally Good. Hallelujah! But the question is: Isn't curbing natural
urges in the name of a fictional god and religion, some kind of despotic, nay
theocratic, sadism? Nowadays, the entire world seems to be obsessed with god
and religion. We're turning ourselves into living zombies to please a
fictitious and concocted entity up there in the seventh heaven, taking a
pervert interest in every individual's life and deciding the quantum of
punishments for the varying degrees of our sexual and moral capers. This is too
much and it must be stopped for the mental health of mankind.
A few days ago, I got an unverified WhatsApp
message containing a conversation between Einstein and his atheist professor. The
fake message presented Einstein as a staunch believer, which's doubtful. In the
end, receivers were exhorted to send that dubious message to as many readers as
they could.
This is
business! God's business-a flourishing business across the globe. People have
been making a living out of it since time immemorial. Our shrewd politicians
know this jolly well. So, they use and manipulate this imaginary entity
whichever way they can. Soon, the images of different deities may adorn Indian
currency! In other words, god-obsession is skyrocketing.
Retailing
god is a profession older than the oldest and resembles it in more ways than
one. It professes to offer satisfaction, but aims at exploitation. It promises
bliss, but imparts syphilis. It makes tall claims backed by no guarantee. And
yet, men go ahead willingly and eagerly to be conned. Ancient men who created
gods and wove myths around them, were highly imaginative and sagacious people.
But men who take these gods literally are myopic morons.
Gods should
never be taken seriously as well as literally. At best, they function as handy
metaphors. Being afraid of a god is as silly as being scared of the monster one
had sketched on one's canvas. It's equally absurd to be infatuated with the
portrait or sculpture of a beautiful woman: You cannot make love to it, but you
can end up making a fool of yourself.
The makers
of films are dubbed as dream-merchants, but the greatest dream-merchants are
the purveyors of heaven. Look at the idyllic but sanitised settings of all heavens
with minor variations to suit the local tastes. When an adult takes a
cine-fantasy seriously, we make fun of him, but billions over the globe move
about dazed like zombies carrying empty-headed visions of Elysium. It's morbid.
God's the
greatest fraud that man has foisted upon himself. It's an April-fool prank
that's played all the year round without its bluff being called even once.
Children abandon their fantasies of fairies and ogres as they move into
adulthood, but adults cling to the most vacuous fiction of god all their lives.
Anyone who's not grown out of his childhood gods beyond his twenties is as
ludicrous as an adult sleeping with a teddy bear, as fatuous as a man rummaging
through antique shops for Aladdin's lamp, and as derisive as a man organising
an expedition to collect gold at the end of a rainbow. One may take a liberal,
even an indulgent view of these irrationalities if they make an individual
happy as a Cushion/Placebo Effect. They may even be called therapeutic. But
when they become punitive tools as in the hands of fanatics, the whole shebang
of faith and religiosity becomes awful, obnoxious and absolutely vicious.
Individuals
with god-infested brains ought to be banished to a remote corner of Africa or
drowned in the Mariana Trench. If they (religious fools) are found propagating
violence and hatred, they must be treated on a par with drug-pushers and
homicides. They ought to be confined to long term isolated cells and given
electro-therapy of sanity.
Belief in
god or a supernatural power comes with a caveat: It includes all sorts of
unexplained miracles and mumbo-jumbo, defying all known laws of nature;
superstitions and shibboleths that dwell on portents and equivocal prophecies,
posthumous fate of soul entailing heaven, hell, reincarnation and rebirth; a
life-denying, dry and vapid code of conduct advocating strangulation of natural
instincts like sex; an interminable series of otiose rituals, customs and most
asinine practices that defy logic and reason.
The UN
should come out with a white paper on god before it does irreparable damage to
the human psyche. There's no room for a personal god in contemporary thought.
We must outgrow the mind-set that holds in awe a man who claims to be
god-incarnate or the son of god or the messenger of god. Listen to his message
by all means, but evaluate it critically and accept only after it passes the
litmus test of reason.
The most
insidious fallout of belief in god is a collateral belief in the devil. All the
miseries of man can be traced to this deadly duo. Like Scylla and Charybdis,
one of the two is bound to gobble him up. Agreed, the concept of god's also
responsible for most that's joyous, benevolent and moral in this world. The
beatific rapture that one derives from the contemplation of god puts into pale
any other kind of elation. But we mustn't forget that god is the most ingenious
brainchild of man- a grandiose fiction that's more fascinating than all the
facts put together.
It's,
therefore, time to enjoy life's innocuous pleasures without being fearful of
god and religion. There's no need to lambast oneself for occasional moral
transgressions and trivial digressions. You're not being watched by any god or
misled by any Lucifer. Enjoy your life to the hilt without a scintilla of
nagging guilt. How long will you live in
the suffocating penumbra of god and religion? Come out of it.
----
A
regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative
religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the
world's premier publications in several languages including Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/belief-god-supernatural-religion/d/128620
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