Belief in God or a Supernatural Power Comes With a Caveat

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 13 December 2022 Isn't Curbing Natural Urges In The Name Of A Fictional God And Religion, Some Kind Of Despotic, Nay Theocratic, Sadism? -------- " One of the strongest theological differences and dissensions between Islam and Christianity is while the former just cannot think that Allah can make love and become a biological father, the latter endows it with a kind of procreational attribute and makes the god as the father of Jesus. But one thing remains common in both the Semitic faiths: The divine sexuality is not discussed further and remains a hush-hush issue. " -Alan Turing, Father of computer science and founder of Artificial Intelligence “Why do humans portray god as a completely asexual entity?” Ayn Rand “When sex, unbridled orgies and debauchery of the believers can be possible in heaven for their admirable celibacy on earth, what on earth will god do? Will he watch his loyalists make love like a voyeur or jump on the bandwagon? " -Sigmund Freud Recently, Pope Francis condemned nuns and priests for watching pornography on the sly and said that it was Satan's trick to dissuade them (nuns and priests) from the path of holiness. He urged them to delete all pornographic stuff from their mobiles. Morally Good. Hallelujah! But the question is: Isn't curbing natural urges in the name of a fictional god and religion, some kind of despotic, nay theocratic, sadism? Nowadays, the entire world seems to be obsessed with god and religion. We're turning ourselves into living zombies to please a fictitious and concocted entity up there in the seventh heaven, taking a pervert interest in every individual's life and deciding the quantum of punishments for the varying degrees of our sexual and moral capers. This is too much and it must be stopped for the mental health of mankind. A few days ago, I got an unverified WhatsApp message containing a conversation between Einstein and his atheist professor. The fake message presented Einstein as a staunch believer, which's doubtful. In the end, receivers were exhorted to send that dubious message to as many readers as they could. This is business! God's business-a flourishing business across the globe. People have been making a living out of it since time immemorial. Our shrewd politicians know this jolly well. So, they use and manipulate this imaginary entity whichever way they can. Soon, the images of different deities may adorn Indian currency! In other words, god-obsession is skyrocketing. Retailing god is a profession older than the oldest and resembles it in more ways than one. It professes to offer satisfaction, but aims at exploitation. It promises bliss, but imparts syphilis. It makes tall claims backed by no guarantee. And yet, men go ahead willingly and eagerly to be conned. Ancient men who created gods and wove myths around them, were highly imaginative and sagacious people. But men who take these gods literally are myopic morons. Gods should never be taken seriously as well as literally. At best, they function as handy metaphors. Being afraid of a god is as silly as being scared of the monster one had sketched on one's canvas. It's equally absurd to be infatuated with the portrait or sculpture of a beautiful woman: You cannot make love to it, but you can end up making a fool of yourself. The makers of films are dubbed as dream-merchants, but the greatest dream-merchants are the purveyors of heaven. Look at the idyllic but sanitised settings of all heavens with minor variations to suit the local tastes. When an adult takes a cine-fantasy seriously, we make fun of him, but billions over the globe move about dazed like zombies carrying empty-headed visions of Elysium. It's morbid. God's the greatest fraud that man has foisted upon himself. It's an April-fool prank that's played all the year round without its bluff being called even once. Children abandon their fantasies of fairies and ogres as they move into adulthood, but adults cling to the most vacuous fiction of god all their lives. Anyone who's not grown out of his childhood gods beyond his twenties is as ludicrous as an adult sleeping with a teddy bear, as fatuous as a man rummaging through antique shops for Aladdin's lamp, and as derisive as a man organising an expedition to collect gold at the end of a rainbow. One may take a liberal, even an indulgent view of these irrationalities if they make an individual happy as a Cushion/Placebo Effect. They may even be called therapeutic. But when they become punitive tools as in the hands of fanatics, the whole shebang of faith and religiosity becomes awful, obnoxious and absolutely vicious. Individuals with god-infested brains ought to be banished to a remote corner of Africa or drowned in the Mariana Trench. If they (religious fools) are found propagating violence and hatred, they must be treated on a par with drug-pushers and homicides. They ought to be confined to long term isolated cells and given electro-therapy of sanity. Belief in god or a supernatural power comes with a caveat: It includes all sorts of unexplained miracles and mumbo-jumbo, defying all known laws of nature; superstitions and shibboleths that dwell on portents and equivocal prophecies, posthumous fate of soul entailing heaven, hell, reincarnation and rebirth; a life-denying, dry and vapid code of conduct advocating strangulation of natural instincts like sex; an interminable series of otiose rituals, customs and most asinine practices that defy logic and reason. The UN should come out with a white paper on god before it does irreparable damage to the human psyche. There's no room for a personal god in contemporary thought. We must outgrow the mind-set that holds in awe a man who claims to be god-incarnate or the son of god or the messenger of god. Listen to his message by all means, but evaluate it critically and accept only after it passes the litmus test of reason. The most insidious fallout of belief in god is a collateral belief in the devil. All the miseries of man can be traced to this deadly duo. Like Scylla and Charybdis, one of the two is bound to gobble him up. Agreed, the concept of god's also responsible for most that's joyous, benevolent and moral in this world. The beatific rapture that one derives from the contemplation of god puts into pale any other kind of elation. But we mustn't forget that god is the most ingenious brainchild of man- a grandiose fiction that's more fascinating than all the facts put together. It's, therefore, time to enjoy life's innocuous pleasures without being fearful of god and religion. There's no need to lambast oneself for occasional moral transgressions and trivial digressions. You're not being watched by any god or misled by any Lucifer. Enjoy your life to the hilt without a scintilla of nagging guilt. How long will you live in the suffocating penumbra of god and religion? Come out of it. ---- A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/belief-god-supernatural-religion/d/128620 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism