Monday, June 16, 2008
Religious Identity Crisis
Recently, I stumbled upon a very interesting read about Atheism, namely, The God Delusion. Very thought-provoking to say the least. Dawkins is very logical at many points. This reminded me about sometime ago, when I was engaged in a conversation about religion and its interpretations (especially those that result in fanaticism) and why I always saw it as a means to divide people (This particular viewpoint is very personal and is strongly influenced by the various events that took place during my childhood). So, we got into the argument about whether the central idea of every religion is God and what defines this entity? In the process of answering it, I had to interview a select few people who were well versed in their respective religions/beliefs. I interviewed a Christian, a Muslim, an Atheist and I had a few informal chats with a person whose religion was Judaism. I am very well aware that the 3.5 data points that have been collected are by no means a part of the answer to the above posed question. Of course, I am a person who is planning to spend his entire life in a field that values reason and experiment above all and encourages everyone to question every hypothesis. However, this natural curiosity is sadly absent in many of my peers. They seem to take things at their facevalue without even bothering to question. However, I think I seem to understand that I believe that the solution to this problem is not to do away with God. Nope! That solution does not work. I could pretend for sometime that there is no God, but I could not carry on. It did not make sense. Maybe because I have been conditioned for about 17 years that I had to believe in something. So, yeah, I am all confused right now about what exactly I need to believe in; that is, if I actually have to though! Maan...religion is tougher that Quantum Field Theory!!!
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