Chapter 2

God and Religion

Whenever and wherever I raise the issue of injustice and cruelty, many of my peers and colleagues maintain that all that is designed and created by humankind would have imperfections, claiming that it is only God almighty that can set things right by his blessings and grace. The dominant argument is that all the logic we acquire through our readings, enquiries and research would not be sufficient enough to unravel the mystery of the Universe. It must be through the understanding of God and religious discourses and only through a spiritual transcendence that one can experience the divine being. God is interposed between what we know and do not; each symbol or understanding of God is first conveyed to humanity through epics and narratives of superhuman deeds in religious texts. Most of the religious discourses contain an array of dialects and predictions which are transmitted to the mortals by theologians or “Acharyas.” Each sect or gathering positions itself into a homogenous group of believers at some point of time in history. Such believers and their ideological leaders build a framework of theology and rituals that becomes unshakable foundations of religions. As our understanding of the universe became a cosmic or divine one, the concept of God had to be predated to before its creation or existence.
We read in most holy books (Bible and Bhagavad Gita) that an omnipotent God created the universe. Both the Bible and the Gita proclaim that there was sound and later the void in the universe was filled with the creation of life. A person born in India is initiated into this mystical tradition from birth, so what we do not know or are unsure about is attributed by the elders to the domain of God or mystical powers. I too found it convenient to believe that what we see around us may be the designs of such powers until my reasoning and critical faculties began to question this assumption.

All throughout my adult life, I had been intrigued and fascinated by the mysticism surrounding each the origins of each god and religion, reincarnations and theologies. I was given to understand that almighty God came into being by itself and all parts of the universe—its galaxies, solar systems, creatures and all the life system that we know of—were created and molded by this almighty being. As a result, the destiny, deeds and future of all the constituents of the universe were individually and specifically determined and evolved by God. But when I began to understand the infinite nature of the universe, the enormity of its size and power, and the extent of its interdependence with Galaxies as later proved by astronomical explorations, I began wondering whether a tribal god, a human-type incarnation of God, or any concept of the divine as understood or worshipped by the present or past