Skip to main content

Corona and God



God is one of the topics of discussion these days because the Corona disease makes people aware of their inevitable vulnerability. God is a safety valve for most people. However, a lot of religious centres which claimed to work miracles in the name of God(s) have shut down and I expressed my amusement over that in certain places like Facebook. One of my friends, who is otherwise very sensible and humorous, objected to my amusement arguing that if there is no God there would be utter chaos in the human world. Some people would even become cannibals, he said.

Though I have written much about my views on god and related affairs, I’m going to discuss some points once again for the sake of my friend.

1. I live a life of morality. I follow a very personal code of ethics which has a lot in common with socially and religiously accepted codes of ethics. But I don’t need a god to uphold it. I am good not because I am afraid of punishments from god. I am good not because I want the rewards in heaven after my death. I am good because I am intelligent enough to understand that goodness is what I should cultivate around me for my welfare as well as the welfare of others. Welfare is good, no one will dispute that. Knowing what is good, why would I choose evil? That’s simple logic. That logic is the foundation of my moral codes.

2. Being good out of fear of punishment and/or for the rewards waiting somewhere is extremely childish. Freud and many others saw religion as infantile. Shouldn’t we grow up into adulthood and take charge of our own lives instead of shifting certain responsibilities to an entity out there which we have empowered with all kinds of supernatural prowess and magical powers? I choose to look at my life without leaning against silly crutches invented by feeble minds.

I know that I am just another little creature born here because of a simple, natural biological process. I am a mere accident, just like anybody else, that happened at a moment in the eternal flow of time. If the accident had happened a moment later or earlier, if one chromosome was different there, I would have been a different person. I might have been religious too! This accident will end too just like any other creature in the natural process called death. And that’s the end of me. Except that I may linger on in the memories of a few people who chose to love me (in spite of me?).  In other words, I know, or I believe, that there is nothing waiting for me after death. I am neither afraid of eternal punishments nor concerned about eternal rewards. I choose to be good, nevertheless. I am mature enough, intelligent enough to make that choice.

3. My amusement about religious centres that keep making endless claims about the miracles they perform day in and day out continues unabashedly even in the time of Corona. Even more in the time of Corona, I should say. If they were really performing those miracles, why not perform a few more miracles when the world is facing a serious threat? Work a miracle and heal the sick. Why not? Don’t give me the oft-repeated argument that we can’t order God to perform miracles. I have seen priests and pastors and many others ordering God about as if He was their footman.

4. What is God’s will? Is Corona God’s will? Is the death of a three-year-old innocent child God’s will? Are the detention centres in various states of India God’s will? Is the brainlessness we see in India today in the name of religion and culture God’s will? I have infinite questions, my dear KK (that’s my friend who triggered this post). Maybe the next time we sit over another Bacardi party we can discuss this further, though I’m not inclined to do it because I know that reason and religion have nothing in common. Nothing, KK. Nothing at all. Faith is the antithesis of reason.

To conclude, I trust my rational faculty. I trust my imagination. I trust my intuition too. But when it comes to faith, I would rather trust the gossamer petals of the roses in my garden, the winks of the distant stars in my heavens, the protean music of the waves in the Arabian Ocean…



Comments

  1. Anita SabatMarch 20, 2020 at 4:10 PM

    Let us be good and do good. One needs integrity to make the right choices.
    As everyone is not smart enough or logical to make the 'good' choice and not the bad, thus, God has been created to keep such folks disciplined.
    Wish we would never have Nirbhaya case or convicts. Wonder if they went to pray...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 20, 2020 at 7:25 PM

      There is no evidence of correlation between crime and irreligion. On the contrary, criminals are often religious. Look at the crimes committed in North India in the last 5 to 6 years. Most of them were committed in the name of religion by people wearing visible religious symbols.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Relatives and Antidepressants

One of the scenes that remain indelibly etched in my memory is from a novel of Malayalam writer O V Vijayan. Father and little son are on a walk. Father tells son, “Walk carefully, son, otherwise you may fall down.” Son: “What will happen if I fall?” Father: "Relatives will laugh.” I seldom feel comfortable with my relatives. In fact, I don’t feel comfortable in any society, but relatives make it more uneasy. The reason, as I’ve understood, is that your relatives are the last people to see any goodness in you. On the other hand, they are the first ones to discover all your faults. Whenever certain relatives visit, my knees buckle and the blood pressure shoots up. I behave quite awkwardly. They often describe my behaviour as arising from my ego, which used to be a oversized in yesteryear. I had a few such visitors the other day. The problem was particularly compounded by their informing me that they would be arriving by about 3.30 pm and actually reaching at about 7.30 pm. ...
16 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...
31 comments
Read more