Does God Exist?

By Baalu Kharel

We do not the answer. But we try to solve the question as to whether there is something like God, and if it exists, what role it has to play in this cosmos. Since time immemorial, people have struggled with the question of God. Philosophers have their own interpretations. Hindu philosophy talks of the Absolute, the Ultimate, which is God, and it is impersol. In this school of thought, there is no persol God, and the belief that this God has the power to bless or curse people is misplaced. Hindu philosophers, drawing heavily from the Vedas and the Upanishads, have ideated God differently in that scheme of things. According to them, just everything is God because everything is a manifestation of the Ultimate Reality which is God. In other words, there is nothing that is not God.

Scientists have their own take on the matter, but the common thread that binds them all is that they do not know, until today, whether there is something that can be called God, the All Powerful. The most intelligent man living today as he is called, the acclaimed mathematical physicist Prof Stephen Hawking of Cambridge, is also a confused man. His classic book A Brief History of Time is full of the word ‘god’ – in fact, his book is as much about astrophysics as it is about  an effort to understand the ‘mind of god’. The question he makes us confront is whether God had any role in the creation of the universe. The question is somewhat like this: Why did God create this universe the way it is, and why not some other way? Well, there is no answer. But certainly there is a question mark on the freedom God had in creating the universe if He was the Creator at all!

Then comes the next question: Why are we here, in this universe? Just to be born, eat, do something, earn money, love and hate, and then ultimately die? Only for that? Is there a larger purpose in life? If there is, what is it really? If there is none, is life then so hollow, and then how can we call life beautiful? In fact, what is beauty?

These are baffling questions. The sad part of the story is that there are no satisfactory answers. The reason why there are no answers is that there is a deficit of knowledge and insight into the working of the universe. We are yet to come across a Theory of Everything, but we hear that Prof Hawking is working on such theory. In his book as mentioned, he says if we have a Theory of Everything – a unified theory to explain all the four fundamental forces of ture – we should be able to know the ‘mind of God’. Until then, we must wait, it seems.

But the theist will disagree. For him, God definitely exists and it is God who controls everything. There is nothing outside the purview of God. It is God who decides how things should be, and why. God is someone, he will say, who decides who to bless, who to curse. He will say one must be God-fearing, and this is the best way a man remains honest and truthful. If he is not God-fearing, his sense of right and wrong goes haywire, and he becomes immoral. This theist gentleman is deeply into morality. His compartmentalization of both thoughts and actions into moral and immoral is sharp and rigid. He is a ‘religious’ man. But here comes the problem. He is not into spirituality, which is not the same as religion. In fact, in the world of spirituality, there is no notion of God who is persol, who has a human-like figure, who sits in some heaven and becomes the Ultimate Judge to decide who to reward and who to curse. In the world of spirituality, there is no God as such; there is just self-realization – an understanding of the mysteries of life and universe.

The question essentially is: Do you need God at all? We do not yet know whether it was some God who created the universe and life – at least science has yet to confirm this. The larger question also remains unswered: Why did God create the universe in the first place if he did create at all? Why? What for? Therefore, I believe it does not matter whether God exists or not. We should not be bothered about God, nor about our daily prayers where we actually are beggars begging for this and that. Let us rather be loving and compassiote. Let us help each other. Let us kill the demon of hate and envy. Let us evolve more intelligently. Forget temples and mosques and churches and mosteries and so on. Let us just remember ourselves and evolve the flower of love more and more. Fashioble living, you know!

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