The Case for Reason: Volume Two: A Scientific Enquiry into Belief

by Narendra Dabholkar

If god did exist, there should have been only one single god for the whole world. Ishwar, Allah, the Father in Heaven shouldn’t have been more than one entity. All great souls who experienced divine visions should have seen the same god. But their visions are different, so is the knowledge they received. That’s because the images and thoughts of these visionaries stem from their own selves, not outside.

Immanuel Kant refuted all these arguments. The German philosopher proposed an ethics-based counter to prove the existence of god. He said that, despite their moral behaviour, so many people remain poor and suffer in pain and grief. But there are scores of criminals who are happy and lead a life of luxury. This irony indicates that justice and morality have no place in this world. Yet humans are moral. Man has a pure discretionary intellect in his heart, which results in his steadfastness to pure morality. Secularism, though, cannot provide any such justification for pure moral behaviour. Even when you concede that ‘truth prevails in the end’, you have to assume that ‘in the end’ means ‘after death’. If there’s a judgement on morality or criminality at this point, it means life exists post-death. This translates into the existence of the immortal soul. The one who sees everything, who is omnipotent and fair, and provides justice to immortal souls is god.

Theists, of course, swear by the first hypothesis. Their rationale is that wherever there is a creation—paper, pen, table, chair, etc.—it ought to have a creator. In the case of the universe, they say the creator is god. Those who proffer this argument forget that we can turn it back on them. The creator has to be a creation too, so who created them? Our opponents respond that the creator is self-born and self-extant. Which means that god is bound by causality. So, they have to conclude that the universe is self-governed by causality.

In the face of a catastrophe, we need to stop relying on an omnipotent god and figure out our duties. No human value is mysterious. You can feel it in your heart and have a clear awareness of it. Only those who don’t care for these values to be upheld will try to give them a mystic spin. The wholesale dealers of such mystified values—religion, religious institutions, leaders—are the ones who turn their backs on the struggle for human values.

Man’s inward journey will progress with the help of psychology, anthropology, biology and sociology. Once man’s human needs are identified, fulfilling them won’t be a burden but a joyful endeavour.

Several centuries ago, a just-widowed woman would be burnt alive in her deceased husband’s pyre. Her half-charred body would then be thrown into the river. In one such instance, a woman survived the atrocity and floated to the shore. Governor General Lord William Bentinck’s police pulled her out and tried to revive her. But the so-called faithful groups demanded her body, arguing that saving her life this way was unacceptable, and that sati was an issue of religious faith. When Lord Bentinck promulgated a law banning sati in 1829, it led to several demonstrations in Allahabad and other places. The protestors asserted that the East India Company had no right to interfere in religious faith, which the custom of sati was part of. The law kicked in nevertheless. Despite the enforcement, a woman in Deorala, Rajasthan, committed sati in 1987. This time, it was women-welfare bodies and other social organisations helming demonstrations, to demand that the ban on sati be made stricter. Thus, the custom of sati, which had constituted religious faith until the nineteenth century, had become a clear case of superstition by the twentieth. This is the temporal nature of superstition.

The Renaissance agitated Europe for a few centuries. It was a multipronged approach. Scientific discoveries openly challenged religious tenets. Criticism of religion began with the rebellion by the Protestant sect. Communication with other countries increased with the spread of capitalism. A new attitude of global thinking, self-assessment and willingness to change developed. Philosophers offered different worldviews. No such thing happened in India. There were no scientific discoveries. Nobody questioned the caste system. Religious injunctions prohibiting crossing the ocean disrupted communication with the world beyond. Because of the lack of trade, one could only raise capital through moneylenders, brokers and feudal lords. Science in the country developed only as technology to suit the convenience of the British Raj. The Indian psyche was never so thoroughly shaped and stirred as it happened in Europe. People belonging to a country known for Charvaka, the Lokayata tradition and Buddha completely forgot how to ask questions until centuries later. We finally learned the principles of science and causal connections but only used them to create technology. Many of us remain miles from a liberating, scientific outlook. So, we fail to notice the incongruity of finding the ‘auspicious’ time to open a shop or perform a Satyanarayana puja.

As per the great saint Tulsidas, ‘a fool, an animal, a Shudra and a woman ought to be beaten from time to time’.

In 1987, a woman performed sati at Deorala, a town in Rajasthan. The episode raised a hue and cry all over the country. But the most horrifying part was the multitudes of people who had journeyed to the site, loudly proclaiming ‘Hail Sati Mata’, despite the ban on this horrendous practice. For these masses, a woman giving away her life along with her spouse’s corpse was a matter of pride and much more important than her fundamental dignity as a human being. This is a burning example of the mental slavery created by superstition.

‘Why are you afraid of unorthodox opinions?’ Agarkar would ask people. His question is pertinent even today because people tend to respond to nonconformist ideas not with argument but by suppressing them. ‘We are much too scared of popular censure,’ he added. ‘If Socrates, Copernicus or Galileo weren’t as courageous as they were, Europe’s ignorance would have never vanished. Merely acquiring knowledge is of no use if you’re not brave enough to practise unconventional, new ways.’