God Can Protect Himself

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 11 July 2022 We're All Modern Pagans, To Use An Oxymoron, Coined By Sam Harris ----- " For the sake of their fictional god/s, ancient religions, meaningless 'books' and a number of dubious messengers, men have shed more blood than all the waters lying in the great oceans," paraphrasing Buddha's famous quote, " Men have shed more tears than all the waters lying in the great oceans." Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Somalian ex-Muslim, protected from the blood-thirsty Muslim zealots by the government of Netherland " I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on god. " This famous quote of French existentialist Albert Camus assumes exponential significance in these turbulent times of relentless sparring over religion and god. It's indeed a matter of great pity, nay shame, that humans are simply wasting their time and energy on god and religion and killing each other. Christopher Hitchens was once asked by a leading American daily, whether he ever believed in miracles? The ever-witty Hitchens said that he fully believed in miracles because wasn't it a huge miracle that humans had been killing their fellow humans and taking umbrage for a god they never saw and would never see? That this is happening in the 21st century when the world is facing a legion of humongous issues like poverty, ecological imbalance, disparity, pandemic, global undernourishment etc. is all the more strange and pitiable. At the moment, the honour of some fictional divinity is much more important to us than the honour of humans who're getting killed in the name of god and religion. It's, therefore, time for every individual to sit and mull over the uncertainties that abound our lives and find solutions to them, rather than take god and religion so damn seriously. The Buddha summed it up so nicely, " Care for the humans around. Your self-sufficient god will take care of himself. " The second part of the Buddha's famous quote has always fascinated me: " Your self-sufficient god will take care of himself. " So very true! If the entire mankind understands the import of this statement that god can protect himself, all these differences and bloodshed will stop forthwith. We erroneously think that it's incumbent upon humans to save, protect and honour the divinity of god. Nope. Once someone asked Rumi, why didn't he react or curse a Jew who constantly abused Allah? On the contrary, Rumi used to smile when that vindictive Jew abused the Almighty. Rumi again smiled and told that person that had he reacted, he would have provoked the Jew to abuse Allah with a greater degree of intensity and also given him the impression that his ( Rumi's) Allah was so helpless that he needed a mere mortal's help and intervention to protect Him. That would have been ridiculous, nay juvenile. No reaction is the best action in the matters of faith and a sense of dignified silence is an ideal remedy in such volatile situations. This is what we call spiritual wisdom. Now followers of all the man-made faiths have begun to react and react violently at that. Every follower seems to have become a self-styled custodian of his or her religion. What we all can do to avoid any kind of religious confrontations is follow Rumi's recipe in toto: No reaction. The more we react, the more we flare up the situation. We shall have to get rid of this ultra-reactionary attitude to eschew religious differences, discriminations and divisions. We also need to have much more religious maturity. Aldous Huxley called humans, Religious pygmies and Spiritual dwarfs. It's a very apt definition that suits today's fanatic humans to the last syllable. Since most of us are spiritually wanting and morally deficient, our approach to religion and god is also very puerile. A spiritually enlightened individual is never impulsive. He's, in the words of British Vedantic Christopher Isherwood, an ocean of religio-spiritual placidity. Where's that religio-spiritual placidity and calmness in today's violent humans? We seem to have shelved that. It's, therefore, time to introspect that religion is a private issue and every individual has a moral responsibility to follow his or her god and faith in a divinely dignified manner without resorting to hooliganism. To sum it up with an Urdu couplet of Raahil Shikarpuri, " Tanha Chhod De Khuda Ko, Mazhab Ko Samajh/ Tashaddud Ko Aqeeda Nahin Kahte, Mere Dost " ( Leave alone god, understand religion/ Don't mistake violence for faith, my dear friend). We all need to imbibe the spirit of this Urdu couplet to make this world a religiously more desirable and tolerable place to live in. Now the million-dollar question is: Are humans intellectually evolved as to go beyond all these religious shenanigans? A few days ago, I was speaking to a retired professor of Anthropology at the University of Reading in South England. His bailiwick is religio-anthropology. I asked him why the followers of all religions were behaving in a primitive, nay prehistoric, manner? He told me that this is known as the Phenomenon of Pagan Eruption/Repetition ( PPE/R) in Anthropology. Pagan and cult worshippers/followers before the advent of 'modern' organized religions were always concerned about the safety of their Pagan deities and cult leaders. For them, it was a matter of tribal /group pride to uphold the sanctity of their deities and leaders. Since there were numerous tribes and all had their respective Pagan beliefs and sacred totems, it was imperative for the followers of tribes and groups to 'save' their sanctified figures ( who later became 'revered' figures in all man-made faiths) from any kind of desecration from rival tribes ( in modern parlance, religions other than one's own). Those Pagan insecurities travelled through generations of human evolution to manifest themselves as today's Religious Behavioural Patterns ( RBP). Human advancement or modernism is actually a misnomer. Humans are terribly devolved beings. Our religious behaviour is a throwback to our prehistoric past. According to the Italian great Umberto Eco's Semiotics ( Science of signs and symbols), all our gods, scriptures, sects, faiths and associated things are Neural Impressions or Signs of brain-alterations caused by thousands of years of fear of the unknown. This will take nearly 50 thousand years for the mankind to get rid of this tribal paganism or modern religiosity. Till then, a handful of ' evolved ' humans will have to live with a majority of religiously ' devolved ' creatures. I really wonder and feel pity, when I see so many ' scholars' do hair-splitting analyses of their scriptures which are all hoary-old screeds of primitive importance. We're simply wasting our time and energy on things that have no existence, no basis and no value. Death is the ultimate reality and there's nothing beyond this world. That most of the humans haven't yet understood this simple truth is a proof that man ( no gender specification) is still wallowing in mindless irrationalities and he'll continue to kill others and feel slighted over the perceived insult to his Pagan deities, tribal totems and prehistoric religious figures. We're all Modern Pagans, to use an oxymoron, coined by Sam Harris. ---- 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 world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. 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