Human compassion, not religion, the answer to global scourges
On Saturday, Hamas and Israeli forces observed the first day of truce since October 7. They have been fighting in the names of their respective gods—who do not exist. Ask any child orphaned by war. Not one of those children could be held to have sinned. Yet, god has shown no mercy, sent no help. A god that cannot explain why a child, or a pup, must suffer is not of much use either to the child or the pup. Or even to himself.
Despite our great need to believe in eternal justice arrived at some point, perhaps even after death, it is increasingly hard to believe a bearded male sitting in an oversized chair running the universe without so much as a laptop.
Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace (1749–1827), was one of the great French mathematicians and astrophysicists. When Laplace presented his definitive work on the properties of the solar system to Napoleon—who since Ridley Scott’s release of Napoleon last Friday has begun to look like Joaquin Phoenix—he asked Laplace if it was true that there was no mention of the solar system’s creator in his theory. Laplace is reported to have said, “I had no need for that hypothesis.”
After that denial, typically embodying the Enlightenment period, many great men, including Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, have politely dismissed god as one of the most superfluous conditions to our existence. Contemporary thinkers such as Peter Singer, Sam Harris and Yuval Harari, among others, see no reason for a god in the origin and running of the universe. Or even a motor car. Indeed, Peter Singer dismisses the idea of god because of the needless suffering that he imposes on humans and animals.
Yet we continue to cling to him. Or the anthropomorphic idea of him. Him with the very human compulsions conditioned by their natural habitat. For example, the desert-born Abrahamic gods and their descendants are bearded. Water, or its scarcity, dictates its own aesthetics.
On the other hand, the main Hindu gods are clean-shaven, thanks perhaps to the Ganges. Even in the Mahabharata battlefield, Krishna seems to have found the time for a barber. This seemingly facetious hirsute detail aside, Krishna could not prevent the massive bloodshed that characterised Kurukshetra. He could not even convince Duryodhana to give the Pandavas a village or a house, which would have avoided the war. What kind of all-powerful god is this?
In Ramayana, Lord Rama could not prevent the ravages of war either. Indeed, Sita, the idea and person over which he fought the war with Ravana and his demons, in the end, walked out on him. She had had enough. In the war itself, Lord Rama turned out to be a god in dire need of the strength and support of monkey men.
As a child, I used to wonder: why can’t Rama go ahead, call Ravana for a duel right at the beginning, and get it over with? Why all these elaborate build-ups? Why indeed? Because Ramayana is a story. As is the Bible. Without narratives, there are no gods. And who created the narratives? Haha.
What is the point of gods who are not in control of anything except the one that the faithful attribute as the outcome of events to them? If the result of a particular turn of events is positive, the gods are seen as pleased. If it is not, you have to try again. Either way, their existence and well-being appear not to be conditional on your victory or failure. They are guaranteed from your fate. Why have them around? Because you can pray?
Last month when the cash-for-query scandal was raging, its protagonist Mahua Moitra went to a Durga pandal and prayed to a fierce-looking Kali and said something to the following effect in a social media post: Maa Kali rules. It is a safe bet that her detractor, Nishikant Dubey prayed to the same god with equal devotion during the same Durga puja week. Besides the fact that prayer gives us a measure of righteous self-confidence, the absurdity of two sworn enemies appealing to the same god is self-evident.
In India, since the BJP’s ascent to power in 2014, their efforts to unify the Hindu vote crucially rest on godliness. Going against Lord Ram could be easily interpreted as going against the ‘Ram Raj’.
Despite the fact that opposition parties and their social media trolls make fun of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s concerted efforts to be seen as a devout Hindu (for example, recall the Kedarnath cave meditation photo ops), the Congress’s Rahul Gandhi does pretty much the same, visiting the same places as the PM. Same stone, two superstitious foes.
No matter how liberal the opposition is, they cannot afford to be seen as atheists or even agnostics. The competition is to show how good we are because we believe in god—a stone of a certain shape that cannot save a child from starvation. But nothing can prevent the human need to believe in miracles. It is perhaps a human condition: miracle is the essence of the nature of life.
The James Webb telescope reached its destination in January 2022, some 1.5 million km from Earth. It can see as far back as 13-odd billion years. The Big Bang, when the universe was formed, was about 13.8 billion years ago—the time when your dog was not even an atom. We are surveying the neighbourhood of Creation, of god—after a fashion. Yet we see no sign of him. Or her. Or it. And for a simple reason: he does not exist. There is no one out there, or here, but us. All the more reason why reason and compassion ought to prevail beyond hunger, poverty and war.
C P Surendran
Poet, novelist, and screenplay writer. His latest novel is One Love and the Many Lives of Osip B
(Views are personal.)