Existence of life

The existence of god depends upon us. We human beings are responsible for god and I think without us there is no purpose of god. Millions of years ago when dinosaurs inhabited earth, did they need god for their survival? It is a common idea among us that dinosaurs vanished from earth because they were not capable enough to survive on earth and hence nature decided to demolish the whole species and begin the era of humans. Well, that belief is not true and in fact, dinosaurs lived on earth for around 160 million years while Homo sapiens have been on earth for only around 200,000 years. And, although we have more developed brain than dinosaurs, I see fewer chances of us surviving few millions of years on earth. And, if dinosaurs didn’t needed god for their survival, do we really need to believe in god for our existence and for our survival?

When we compare the age of earth and time of form life being here on earth with time of human being on earth, we are in early stage of evolution. And, when we check the history of religions, we can easily find out that there is no religion exists today which has been here for more than 5000 years. Does it mean that god came to our life since then? Or, is it that we realized about god when we were clever enough to figure it out about him, around 5000 years ago? There is no religion that explains clearly how life came to an existence on earth. Religions teach us how to live a good life and teach us about the practice we should do to go to heaven or for salvation. But I think it is very tough to live a normal life when we do not understand the existence of life and we do not know the purpose of it. The question of existence should have come across to each and every intelligent person into his or her lifetime. And there are chances that none of us will be able to find out the answer in the future. But that doesn’t mean that there is no answer to it. May be we have confined ourselves to logical thinking and that logic cannot go beyond our understanding of current knowledge and hence we will need people who can think beyond the limit and that will be way to find out answers we seek throughout our lifetime.

Religion as a tool for socialisation

Recently, I had a good talk with a person who often comes to local temple, here in Southampton. He has already been retired from and spends almost every evening at temple. What I noticed about him was that, although he helps a priest a lot for arranging prayers and keeping temple clean and tidy, I never saw him praying to god and just sits around and chats with people.

I was enthusiastic about his opinions about god and wanted to know whether he believes in god or not. So, I asked him whether he believes in god or not. I was expecting negative answer. But, surprisingly, he told me that he does believe in god but doesn’t like to pray or bow his head to god that something typical devotees do. In order to explain this behaviour, he told me that he sees religion, at least Hinduism, as a tool for socialisation. We had a good talk and I grasped few of his views on religion believes.

At the time of when Hinduism was formed, according to him, people were depressed, only self oriented and society as a whole were near collapse. Clever people from that time met to discuss the situation and decided to act together by creating new thing, called a religion. They became Monks (Sadhus) and built temples all around the places. Their aim was to start people getting socialised again and in order to do that people have to travel around and meet new persons. Hence, those monks built temples at the top of mountains, in jungles, near rivers, etc so that when people visit those places for religion purpose they can also see the beauty of nature and learn new culture around those places.

If people understand this way of thinking and take this positively, it may help us again to build the society. Right now, societies, in India and in Britain and in some other parts of the world as well, are collapsing. I believe we are not spending enough time to get socialised anymore and seeing religion places as tools by monks for making money. But, a person doesn’t have to give any money to these places or he has to believe in god in order to go to church or temple. If a person doesn’t believe in god, even he should go to church or temple and try to interact with people, understand culture around religion places, take positive things from priests and give something back to the society either by some volunteering work or by sharing things with others in which he is good at.