Monday, June 24, 2013

It's OK for God to only exist in your mind, if it serves you !!

In the book '50 Big Ideas You Really Need to Know' By 'Ben Dupre,' I found another interesting perspective on life, God, free will, evil and human suffering. Here's the extract from the chapter titled 'Evil,' that I want my readers to read, ponder and know about :-
 
"THE FREE WILL DEFENCE

The presence of evil in the world offers the most serious challenge to the idea 
that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving god. Historically, the most
influential argument used to counter this challenge - to show that there are sufficient 
reasons why a morally perfect god might yet choose to allow evil to exist - is the 
so-called 'free will defence'. Human free will, it is argued, is a divine gift of enormous 
value; our freedom to make genuine choices allows us to live lives of real moral 
worth and to enter into deep relationship of love and trust with God. However, 
God could not have made this gift to us without the risk of our abusing it - of our
misusing our freedom to make the wrong choices. It was a risk worth taking and a 
price worth paying, but God could not have eliminated the possibility of moral 
baseness without depriving us of a greater gift - the capacity for moral goodness.

The most obvious difficulty that confronts the free will defence is the existence in
the world of natural evil. Even if we accept that free will is a possession so precious
that it is worth the cost in so-called 'moral evil' - the bad and vicious things brought
about when people use their freedom to make wrong choices - what possible sense
can we make of naturally occuring evil? How would God have undermined or 
diminished our free will in any way if he had suddenly wiped out the HIV virus,
haemorrhoids, mosquitoes, flash floods and earthquakes?"

If logical reasoning is your only way that you employ, to survive / stay alive and function in this world, you would immediately reject the idea of 'God,' i.e., if you ever accepted it in the first place, wholly, partially or even slightly. (i.e., considered doing it some time in the future to maintain / restore your social status quo) That would be the next logical step for you to take, isn't it? 

But the belief in God, in the context of my blog, is irrespective of the debate whether God exists in reality or not. It is just that some people derive their inner strength from their belief in God and God virtually becomes a reality for them, for all practical purposes. Then you may begin to wonder, looking at their magical lives, that all of it is not just self-hypnosis, it is much more than that. 

It is a miracle, what beliefs can do to you and even, for you. It is pure psychology in action. Your mind and body is an integral whole. It is dynamic, always changing and never at rest or static. It will always undergo changes as per your ever-changing views, thoughts, habits and actions, newly acquired tastes / patterns of thoughts, lifestyle and behaviour, borrowed ideas, social conditioning, accepted notions and world-view.

The most important thing to note here is that, the condition of your mind will always have an effect on your body and the state of your physical health, i.e., your body, will always have an effect on your mental health, i.e., your mind. There's always a reality beyond your self-imposed mind-body prison that you can consider, which is waiting for you to discover.


A N U J  C H U G H    

No comments:

Post a Comment