God: An obsolete concept

The fascination for the concept of God started wearing off for me as I grew older and older. Does it or should it? In young age, probably everybody is God-fearing as the concept is not clear. We are introduced to the very concept by our mother. She is the one who indoctrinates us into this divine field so the strength of a person's bond with God becomes as strong or as rational as he/she is having with the mother. Some times the lines are so blurred that the Mother takes the form of God and in India it is rampant. The very fact, She too is a human being like any other,   becomes secondary. 

For the intellectually middle class [ not financially/ economically] the package named  'God' is very attractive. For it, it is Something, unknown, unproven, unseen but serene, pious and sublime supernatural power. It not only controls every aspect of their life but decides their fate and destiny too! They simply surrender.  According to this class, even a lone leaf on a tree does not move without his [ her ?] will. Now if you really accept this, then it's a tremendous job. Right from moving the last leaf on the 13th twig of 106th tree on the central avenue of 17 sector of the city of San Paolo in Brazil to pushing the ball played by Rafa Nadal in the net during a crucial match of Australian Open Tennis. From arranging a marriage of docile African lass with a boy she doesn't like to creating a tsunami on the Malaysian coast and killing thousands of people in one go! How big a piece of machinery it would require to carry out all these tasks, is beyond my brain's imagination and capacity!

For this class, the faith in God is a positive thing, conveniently keeping aside the fact that every positive must have a negative to balance. So they don't believe in Satan, black magic, sacrifices and ghosts. For them, this amounts to blind faith. In fact, these are sides of the same coin. So faith in any other way is always blind! To prove scientific findings you don't have to have faith, like boiling water scalds, is not faith, blind or otherwise, it's a fact. Can same be said about God whom nobody has seen or whose existence has not been proved scientifically beyond doubt so far!

The plurality of God is yet another aspect of this concept, that is difficult to fathom. We have 33 crores Gods. May be in ancient India everybody was called God because that might be the entire population of India then. Maybe half, as this is the number of 'Surs' [Gods], there were 'Asurs' too [ Don't feel like calling them sons of Satan, maybe Non-Gods]! It has so much of political hue that it's better to be left alone. Fair-skinned, tall handsome, intelligent Aryans from North proclaimed themselves to be 'Surs' while dark, short and not so handsome but in the real sense the original inhabitants of India were labelled as 'Asurs'. So their Gods differed too. [So called ] High caste Hindus don't worship 'Mari Aai, Vetoba, Mhasoba, or Kadak Laxmi ' who are the Gods of downtrodden. Tribal Gods change every 12 miles and no higher caste Hindu is even aware of them and likes to push them under the blanket by labelling Tribals' faith as blind!

Even if we don't consider Hinduism as a religion, because it's not a religion and is a way of life, there are so many other religions all over the world having their own Gods amounting to the plurality of the concept. How could this all-encompassing, all-knowing, all-forgiving supernatural power be different for every individual? And disciples fight, many a time killing each other for the very concept that is serene pious and sublime! In the history of mankind, more wars have been fought and more people have died for this concept, this faith, this blind faith!

If as a concept we take God to be 'Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram' how come he used to test the faith of his disciples by letting them go through ordeals beyond human endurance? He should have known at the outset only, that who is his earnest follower and who is not. God is not an examiner for the university's 3rd-year exam! Moreover, every God has likes and dislikes not only in Food but in colours of his clothes to vehicle he uses. These are nothing but human qualities given by humans to him because it was the man who floated the concept!

Is it any different today in the 21st century? Sadly no, NO in big capitals. On one hand, we won't accept Blood from the different group but on the other, go and worship the Gods who don't have any scientific basis. I am not against any body's personal beliefs that give them psychological booster in difficult times but now it's taking an ugly turn and We are losing the perspective. We are getting too carried away by the concept, mind you, it's only a concept and in the name of God, inflicting pain on the others that's totally contradictory to the very concept itself !