GOD & NATURAL DISASTERS

God does not sit in judgment on Creatures of his own creation - Einstein

http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2012/11/divine-wrath-and-hurricane-sand

TRAGEDY can bring together the most argumentative of people. In the wake of Sandy, the cyclone that savaged America’s North Atlantic coast, rival religious figures found unwonted if unconscious agreement. The storm, chimed Christian, Jewish and Muslim extremists in unison, was nothing less than God’s punishment for American sins.

Needless to say, full agreement was lacking about which particular sin was most to blame. John McTernan, a born-again American blogger, pointed the finger at gay marriage, noting that the storm struck just six days after the New York State court of appeals dismissed a challenge to the state’s legalisation of gay marriage. Rabbi Noson Leiter, who runs a group called Torah Jews for Decency, agreed, explaining on the radio that God had targeted the southern end of Manhattan because it was “one of the national centres of homosexuality.” He also claimed that the biblical flood in the time of Noah was similarly caused by same-sex marriages.

Far away, among Muslim radicals in the Middle East, divine wrath was perceived a bit differently. A Saudi blogger reports that the Friday sermon at his local mosque took a more general approach, describing the heavenly anger as simply intended to smite “the capital of the infidels.” Other sermons in the kingdom suggested that the Americans’ failure to convert en masse to Islam was a probable cause. But Wagdi Ghoneim, a perpetually angry Egyptian tele-Salafist, tweeted to his followers a more specific reason. The storm, he declared, was intended as payback for the recent release on YouTube of a scandalous film produced in the United States that insulted the Prophet Muhammad.

A Reader’scomment:

The more 'ignorant' the population … that is, lacking in secular education … the more they 'buy' into the 'prophesies' of the religious obscurantists!

In Simon Winchester's book … Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 188 he writes:

"In the case of Krakatoa, the Muslim prelates of Java first made this connection. The eruption that had killed so many and had ruined so much was clearly, they said, the work of Allah - a divine who was, so the mullahs told their Javanese congregations of the day, supremely irritated that so many of their number were passively allowing themselves to be ruled by white infidel outsiders, the Dutch. To appease the sorely tried Allah, the mullahs said, the Dutch had to be killed and their influence expunged. Rise up, they advised.

And so they did - in a piecemeal fashion at first, in an organised rebellion five years later, and in a measured and defiant way in the decades that followed. The Dutch were eventually forced to leave; Indonesia, born out of the Hollanders' imperial fiefdom, remains today the world's most populous Islamic nation. Krakatoa was not the cause of the birth of Indonesia, far from it; but it was a sign, a trigger, and it remains a significant moment in Indonesian political history for that very reason."

My comment:

Interesting to read Albert Einstein’s views on the subject: http://kirtimukha.com/Krishnaswamy/Einstein/index.htm

 "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."

“I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance-but for us, not for God.”

Extract from: From "Subtle is the Lord-- " : the science and the life of Albert Einstein by Abraham Pais, Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York, 1982.

'Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.'
So Einstein once wrote to explain his personal creed:
"A religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the  significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation."

His was not a life of prayer and worship. Yet he lived by a deep faith--a faith not capable of rational foundation--that there are laws of Nature to be discovered. His lifelong pursuit was to discover them. His realism and his optimism are illuminated by his remark:

'Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not' ('Raffiniert ist der Herrgott aber boshaft ist er nicht.'.').
When asked by a colleague what he meant by that, he replied:
'Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse'
('Die Natur verbirgt ihr Geheimnis durch die Erhabenheit ihres Wesens, aber nicht durch List.').

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It's a miraculous experience, when we watch the baby grow from infancy to child - struggling to crawl, move on all fours, sit, stand, walk and speak to the mother. The instructions wired in the brain are first decoded and practiced repetitively by the infant before it learns the tricks to balance itself, stand, walk and speak. The nurturing mother watches, encouraging her child; but every step of the learning process has to be taken by the child itself.

A similar process is in operation when we learn to walk on the spiritual path. An urge to seek the mysterious spirit arises in our mind; we then have to unlearn the earlier urges and directives of the ego, and learn new ways to perceive, hear and experience the spirit. The Universal Mother, with great love and affection, watches patiently - confident that her child would overcome the initial hurdles as it did the physical ones as an infant and triumphantly come to her ultimately. For, she has already provided the needed equipment and knowledge for this new experience.

We have to have faith in this belief. Reincarnating over many births, benefiting from past experiences, like the child tripping, falling and finally learning to stand and walk and take great strides upon this earth, we too will be ultimately successful in attaining to the goal of Sat-Chit-Ananda that is pure Bliss.

Einstein who said he experienced the mystifying forces in Nature, stated also that he did not believe in a personal God - the anthropomorphic God created by man, in the image of man, for the worldly benefit of man, a God that ruled like a disciplinarian, granting favours to those who conformed and punishing the rebels, the fictional God of the religions preached by the Priests supported by the earth's Rulers.

The Upanishads however, speak only of a Brahman, (in the neuter as तत् tat - IT), omnipresent, in every atom of the Universe and beyond, living in each moment of time, past-present-& future. Conceptualizing this huge, timeless & dimensionless presence in a Rama or a Krishna helps the mind of the seeker in the same manner as a stroller helps the child to walk steadily and learn. Identifying totally with a personal God of one's choice in this manner, one advances spiritually by leaps and bounds. The personal God then becomes the Universal Presence, which is experienced in the silence of the mind and the Bliss in the heart. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa experienced this Blissful presence of the Universal Mother in the idol of Kali that he worshipped.

Hinduism is a strange amalgam of a core theory and accompanying puranas, practices, rituals and superstitions. Understanding its core truth is akin to reaching the kernel of a coconut - remove and throw away the tight, adhering coverings of fibre, break the hard shell, pour away the water and reach for the pure white delicious kernel. Is it any wonder that those who do not practice it with faith, sincerity, steadfastness, devotion and detachment see the outer coverings and are turned away?

Einstein did not believe in a personal God since he felt that organized religion and its rituals were not effective in ensuring the practice of the core that they preached about morality and ethics. He summed up this ineffectiveness, and his disappointment, in forceful terms thus:

"When considering the actual living conditions of present day civilized humanity from the standpoint of even the most elementary religious commands, one is bound to experience a feeling of deep and painful disappointment at what one sees. For, while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one's fellow men. This competitive spirit prevails even in school and, destroying all feelings of human fraternity and cooperation, conceives of achievement not as derived from the love for productive and thoughtful work, but as springing from personal ambition and fear of rejection." 

The Vedantic concept of Hinduism lays emphasis on a personal, moral, ethical code of conduct. It however, goes further to analyse the root cause of humanity’s suffering and concludes that the powerful, over-riding ego nurtured in societal materialistic values is to blame. This analysis, which is contained in the Upanishads, leads to many recommendations for getting complete control of the mind and developing contact with Universal Consciousness. Perhaps, had Einstein been more familiar with the Upanishads, he might have conceded the validity of Upanishadic statements - which do not refer to a Personal God but only the Brahman (in the neuter) as the source that exists every where - timeless, in all things and beings, perhaps like his concept of energy. 

This Upanishadic concept of the Universe is not religious but philosophical. Realizing the practical needs of the 99% of humanity, Hinduism’s ancestors created Gods, mythologies, rules, regulations and rituals -- all of which served an intermediate purpose like a ladder. An advanced practitioner like an ascetic (sanyasi) has to step out of it and proceed further on his/her own in order to realize the Truth.

Hinduism thus provides a 2-tier system: an elementary stage in which you believe in a personal Deity of your choice and follow rules for personal ethics and morality, and an advanced stage when one is ready to leave behind ego-dictated pursuits for material goals and is ready for the higher goal of realizing Sat-Chit-Ananda, with the assistance of a Guru.  The Guru of Hinduism is merely a guide and an adviser, not a priest with authority to control and guide his flock in accordance with a set of rules prescribed in a book. He is a realized saintly person who has himself understood and practiced the Upanishadic statements relating to the nature of Reality and therefore is able to give his disciple (sishya) guidance in the travel along the spiritual path which has been described in the Upanishad as being like the razor’s edge, difficult to tread and beset with obstacles, as described in Kathopanishad:

UtthishTatha, jAgrata, prApya varAn nibodhata Kshurasya dhArA nishitA duratyatA, durgam pathastat kavayo vadanti.

Arise, awake, receive guidance from the best preceptors For the path is like a razor’s edge - dark, beset with obstacles, difficult to tread – thus the learned and the experienced say.