For Reason
The case for god on the basis of personal experience is not a credible argument yet for many centuries it has served the purpose of creating the effect or illusion of an argument. Believers around the globe have claimed to have felt, seen or heard the voice of god and many a times they act on such divine providence. Is this acceptable? But more importantly are their claims true? I hardly think so. For someone who is conditioned to accept or believe forces far greater than them any random piece of rubbish or any random event would in his/her perspective be interpreted unreasonably as divine or supernatural.
This attitude makes it quite easy
for someone to thank god (not the doctor or science or reason or technology…
the list goes on and on) after spending hours beneath the surgical knife. So
now I’m sure you must be thinking “Then why do they do it?” What makes people
not see the obvious but feel inclined (blinded by belief) to come up with
stories of virgins and infants, angels and saints, fiery chariots and divided
seas, cosmic forces of good and bad etc. This was something that troubled me
for quite for sometime and I hope that it troubles you too. For if it doesn’t I
promise you that the remaining words that I have poured onto paper are as
useful as cat litter to you. To understand why people try so desperately to
come up or create evidence for such fallacious oddities we must take into
account the stalking process of socialization and its firm grip on our psyche.
I must admit that the process of socialization has its share of let’s say
virtue, innate virtue but when used by the narrow minded pompous manipulative
god enforcers who take pride in their ignorance; this beautiful process becomes
altogether diabolical and tends to glorify the idea of pure unadulterated
belief and in worse cases belief in belief.
The inexistence of a god or for
that matter any other phantom is something reason cannot prove neither can
scientific enquiry, provided its objective. This is mainly because of the
paradoxical fallaciousness it employs. Bertrand Russell in his article that
went un-published for sometime “Is there a God?” wrote:
Many orthodox people
speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas
rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I
were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot
revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to
disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too
small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go
on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable
presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be
thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot
were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and
instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its
existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the
attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an
earlier time.
Reason can never convince someone
obsessed with goblins and ghosts that they do not exist. This is because the
subject enjoys the company of belief and imagination but fails to understand
the necessity of reason and empirical evidence. Now we all agree that pixies
and goblins along with the whole colourful lot are just beings of fairy tales
but it is interesting to see the same “critical thinkers” (regarding pixies and
unicorns and leprechauns and fire breathing dragons… this list too goes on and
on) profess the reality of virgin births, resurrection, after life, eternal
damnation, intelligent designers, heaven hell, transubstantiation… (another
unending list). So why do we believe in some fairy tales and not others? The
most obvious answer is that we are told to believe by many socializing forces
to believe and hence we believe, living in constant fear to swim against the
tide, even when we make a complete fool of ourselves by not doing so. Even
though this is true and a common phenomena it does not answer why we try
substantiate such irrational and preposterous claims. Surely we all have great
amounts of doubt and skepticism in us to make it through the night? To
understand the “whys” I would like to introduce to you two influential factors,
something I like to call the diabolical duo-imitation and anticipation.
The reason why we imitate and
anticipate is thanks to socialization. It conditions our psyche, keeping it
always on the look out to fit in, to go with the crowd, for the crowd is always
right and if they are wrong, well its safer and wiser to go along just as the
saying goes “if you can’t beat them, join them” This works well as far as
survival is concerned in most cases unfortunately this contradicts reason. In
modern day theocentric societies the presence of tele-evangelists and god men are
evidently felt. They tell you think that is soothing to hear, they make rules
to their comfort and change them when ever god asks them to, it is strange to
see that most times god dictates something, it works well to the advantage of
god enforcers. Lets just say it fattens their wallets to a certain point in
which it is quite hard not to let out a smile and profess the good news, and
this my friends is real bad news, not just for some individuals but to the
collective unconscious that forms and in time shapes the thought process of
generations to come. The healing presence of god, the love and the peace are
what these men in white sell. This induces a sense of personal relationship and
many a time comes to the rescue of theist when they try to debate with reason
and logic. Much of the popularity religion enjoys is due to the subtle process
of imitation. A child from the moment he is born is labeled in order to create
an identity for him and this unquenchable thirst to stick to the constraints of
this imposed identity is what makes one act in ways that are strange to reason.
In religion, this is exploited as it right from the start makes it clear that
its provisions are what are best suited for survival. And hence just to satisfy
one longing of being right and acceptable one feels inclined to imitate the
acts of others.
Popular tele-evangelist Benny
Hinn is known to amuse and create moments of awe using his cheap theatrics.
With a wave of the hand he showers his audience with mild doses of “the holy
spirit” the subjects feel inclined fall to the ground when he waves his hand, not
because their muscles fail to keep them standing but because they know deep
down that all good pure people fall when in contact with the Lord’s presence. They
do so in order to feel an unconscious innate sense of acceptance. At times this
preacher even brings down to the ground, his whole choir comprising of a few
hundreds of good souls. How does he do it? How can he fool so many people at
the same time and since he “fools” quite a large group shouldn’t it be true,
that he does have something in him, something extraordinary? No he doesn’t he
just makes people imitate others. You see these people are conditioned to think
that falling to the ground or bursting out in tears is acceptable and hence
right and so when the first knee bends, other around too involuntarily take
part in this mass delusion and therefore within seconds they find themselves
flat on the grounds and this to them is amazing and hence something
supernatural.
The second trick theists have up
their sleeves is anticipation. Imitation and anticipation overlap and coexist
in most instances of insanity and mass delusion. During ones stay on earth one
comes to learn many things, a lot of interesting things along with a bunch of
amusing things too. We see sci-fi movies, read bible stories and what not and
this shapes our understanding of reality. Even in our day there are many who
claim to speak with the dead, they are just exercising their belief in delusion
and should not be taken seriously. Consumerism has gone to such great heights
that it has even arranged for, thanks to public interest, our dialogue with the
dead. All you need is a board with letters and numbers, a candle and some empty
spooky space to add to the overall effect. You have all of these and in seconds,
voila, you have a spirit or a ghost of someone dead. Your hand is now guided by
this force and it reveals juicy information to you, name, age, cause of death
etc. supernatural isn’t it? No, plain rubbish, designed to fool the gullible.
The only reason your hand moves is because you anticipate it to move, because
otherwise your brain deep down knows that this phantom would not be able to
covey what he/she wants. In short it is safe to say that in this case it to your
imagination that you are speaking to. Your deliberate yet unconscious
imagination is what speaks to you and same is the case with people who claim to
have been visited by their respective gods or by the spokespersons of these
busy deities(whom we now call saints). This also accounts for why UFOs most
times are described as flying saucers that hover through the air at the speed
of light, it is thanks to the very many hours we spend listening or/and
watching sci-fi fiction. There is a good deal of imitation in the process of
anticipation and a lot of anticipation in the process of imitation. What we see
from this is not evidence to assert the existence of the super natural but the
internal conflict we all face, a conflict which subsides in order to quench our
thirst of acceptance.
The existence of objects, be it
gods or ghouls on the basis of personal experience is fallacious as it can
never be proved. What we can say about such claims is that it is a mere
manifestation of our socialization, of the environment we grow in. To think
that such unsubstantiated claims are worthy of attention is truly a fault.
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