Who created you?

“Who created you?” I was asked by the catechism teacher in the Sunday class of the parish church when I was a kid of 6 or 7 years old. Like any other Catholic contemporary of mine I answered as mechanically as an android of today: “God created me.”

That was the very first question of the catechism book in those days. All of us Catholic children had to memorise quite a few dozen such questions. It was followed by: “Why did God create you?” Android’s answer: “In order to know, love and serve God so that we will live with Him in the end.” It went on and on though I don’t remember any question beyond those two.

I was reminded of that “little catechism” (as the question-answer booklet was known) this afternoon when a colleague of mine – the young physics teacher who found a mention in this very space a few days ago – narrated his experience in grade 12 (17-year-olds, not kids).  

He was speaking about the Big Bang in the class in the context of nuclear fusion and fission. He told them how we all, everything in the universe from the tiny little grain of sand on the beach and the vast lot of water in the ocean to the trillionth galaxy out there, came from a small little point, tinier than a pinhead which was incredibly hot and dense. Some 13.8 billion years ago, this tiny point exploded like a bomb and the space began to expand.

Eventually the universe grew larger and less hot. Then particles like protons and neutrons were born which in turn led to nuclear fusion and the birth of atoms and elements, and so on. My colleague was teaching physics.

Having traced the ancestry of everything in the universe to one singularity, he wanted to make sure that he did drive the point home. So he asked his students that same old catechism question: “Who created you?”

One of the students answered instantly, “God.”

“All my efforts of more than an hour to make them grow up from the kids’ catechism class to the adult scientific temper were a dismal failure,” my colleague concluded with his characteristic retiring smile.

Why does religion enjoy such a vice-like hold on people? Just look at what is happening in India these days. From 2014, in fact. Too many Indians speak and behave like little kids who are fascinated by gods who look and behave like nursery rhyme heroes – gods with elephant’s trunk or ape’s face and tail or those who cheat on a battlefield and call that dharma!

Similar things are happening in many other countries too though their gods may look more anthropoid and even more banal.

Why don’t humans grow up from the soporific succour of their nursery rhymes? I think the answer lies in the concept of memes mooted by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. Memes are units of cultural ideas (beliefs, practices, symbols, etc) that are transmitted from one person to another through imitation, communication or other social processes. They are quite as inalienable from us as are our genes. Religious belief is a meme too: hard to mutate.

Once some Jewish religious scholars and rabbis gathered to discuss the miseries they had endured for centuries. “Yahweh hasn’t been fair to us,” they all concluded after the philosophical and theological discussions and debates. They all agreed that it was time to tell Yahweh this and demand greater justice, if not love, from Him. Just then the gong sounded for Ma’ariv, the evening prayer. “Let us pray,” the Rabbi said. And life continued as it always did. With the slavishly ritualistic prayers three times a day. And numerous other rituals.

That’s it. Amen.