Religion, Secularism, Democracy, Humanity and Bangladesh

Religion, Secularism, Democracy, Humanity and Bangladesh

By

Mo Chaudhury

 Religion, Secularism, Democracy, Humanity and Bangladesh

Part 1 [February 12, 2012]

Preface

Our days are always numbered, so might as well share some thoughts before they become unreachable. It is only natural that my thoughts have evolved over a rather eventful lifetime, but then it is supposed to be that way, else my lifetime would have been wasted frozen in a solitary point. As a matter fact that is precisely my thesis, the more religious we become about anything including religion, the more blinded and intolerant we become of apparently competing but inherently congruous views. Gradually but surely we, as individuals or as a collection, enter a phase of endless conflict with the "not-me" and "not-us" subsets, starting within the set of people we know to the set of country men and ultimately the humanity

Religion, Secularism, Democracy, Humanity and Bangladesh

Part 2 [February 26, 2012]

Universality of Divine Messages

With respect to religion, my premise concerns all religions. By definition, each religion/faith starts with the blind belief that only their version of the Creator and Creation is the "truth". By implication then, the followers of a given religion are to view all other religions as wrong and their followers as being misguided. This is precisely where religious intolerance is rooted and the process of blinding vision starts. This is because it is nearly impossible to accept [or even see any merit in] the view of another person believing that person to be absolutely wrong at the core.

I have to reiterate that belief in the Creator is not where the potential problem lies, it is the lack of belief in the dignity of all creation that breeds intolerance and blinding vision.

Everyday thousands of children are born worldwide into families practicing numerous religions. [And this has been going on for millions of years now]. Clearly if you believe in the Creator, you have to believe that it is solely the Creator's decision as to what parental religion, if there is any, a child is born into. Then you have to wonder why the creator is going to create a greater burden of finding the truth for the newborns who are born into supposedly misguided parents.

Or, is it possible that the divine messages to all religions at all times are, have always been and will always remain the same? Perhaps it is our intrinsic human limitations and self-induced blinding visions that keep preventing us from seeing the commonality in all messages. What else could explain as to why the more "religious" people become about their faith, the more they litigate the untruth about others?

Religion, Secularism, Democracy, Humanity and Bangladesh

Part 3 [March 01, 2012]

Why does it make sense to believe in a (the) Creator?

Let us start with the proposition that earth and life on earth are deliberate creations and not merely evolutions from random collision of some gaseous stars (with oxygen and hydrogen). The word random here forms the foundation of belief in divinity as we know. Else humanity is no more than a Poisson outcome continuing indefinitely until another astrological Poisson event (doomsday?) terminates humanity and transforms random pieces of earth into outrageously blissful (heavens?) or hostile (hells?) environments. The metamorphosis of those new abodes might be such as to sustain a robust form of life (no death any more!). But what happens to all of us who ever lived on dear earth and became deceased? Nothing really, our deceased cells dissipate into the matter of earth and in that quantum form we will continue to exist in the newly formed environments. This chance-driven physical story is rather an unexciting tale with no drama or intrigue that we human beings feed on!

On the other hand, the saga of a (the) Creator and creations (earth and life on earth) is enormously inquisitive and purposeful. Leaving aside the spiritual quest for another day, I will take for now the mundane perspective of rational choices like many other (education, relationship, employment, et cetera) we make in course of our lifetime. 

Let us start with clearly articulating the proposition: Earth and life on earth are deliberate creations. Then there has to be at least one Creator. It seems quite illogical that there are multiple Creators, simply because otherwise the biology of human beings at any given point in time would have varied considerably depending on the number of creators and because the laws of nature on earth seems too universal for too long for them to be governed by independent multiple Creators. This sensibility of a single Creator is of course what many apostles, saints and philosophers have contemplated out albeit at different times.

With the Creator, the next queries are whether there is life after death, whether there is a post-earth reward (heavens) and penalty (hells) system for our actions on earth, and whether the Creator dictates human beings to live their lives according to a single or multiple (and alternative) sets of codes. Notice that a post-earth reward/penalty system makes sense only if there is a life after death (apparently similar to the ones I described under No Creator or random configuration). And for systematic adjudication of our actions into rewards and penalties, there has to be at least one reference point or benchmark, namely an ideal code of living.

In principle, there is a prospect that there is no life after death and hence there is no code, the Creator just wants us to have a good time here on earth and in whatever way we find it enjoyable. Since there are no ill consequences in this latter case, we have nothing to lose in not believing in a Creator. However, it makes little sense to believe in a deliberate Creator and then not believe that divine guidance in some form exists. Thus, we can effectively interpret the belief in a Creator equivalent to the belief of at least one divine code. Let us denote by p the probability of a deliberate Creator (and hence at least one code).

If there is a deliberate Creator and we do not believe in any code, we will never make it out of the hells into the heavens. Those of us believing in a deliberate Creator and hence in at least one code, we face possible penalty time in hell for our deviations followed by endless time in the heavens as a reward for our belief in a Creator and our effort to pursue a code.

This leads to my premise that it is rational for us to believe in a (the) Creator and as such in at least one such code known to us. In doing so, we lose nothing, and the worst case is that there is no life hereafter and as such there is no infinite bliss of the heavens (payoff: +∞). On the other hand, not believing in a Creator (and as such in at least one known code), we run the risk (p) of eternal and abject misery of the hells (payoff: ─∞). Thus, it is a choice between the expected payoffs of +p∞ (believing) and ─p∞ (not believing). Now, our leaned friends would argue that there is a cost in the form of discomfort/disutility from the restrictions and extra efforts pursuing a code. But, guess what, so long the disutility is finite (and it is surely so), it would always be miniscule relative to the expected payoff +p∞ (of believing). Therefore, the choice of believing in a Creator clearly dominates the choice of not believing, and accordingly every rational human being should choose to believe in a Creator (and hence in at least one known code). 

Typically multiple codes have always existed in the known history of humanity. Thus the next issue is whether truly there is just a single divine code among the known ones at a given point in time. If it was provable, then only a single code would have survived and known to us by now (after a few million years). The truth of the matter is that it is not provable at all by any means. The rational choice is then to believe that the known codes must be compatible and congruent in a divine sense that is beyond our human frailty. As a matter of practicality, however, each of us should chose to follow just one code but always with utmost reverence for the other codes and the choices of their followers. In this pragmatic sense, it is natural to choose the code our parents are following as this is the path of least frictions. In the end, if there is a Creator, what will matter most is whether we have made an effort to pursue a code known to us, and not as much which known code we chose to practice. This is because the Creator did not give us the intelligence of proving the authenticity of the divine codes and as such cannot hold us responsible either in this regard. This is also because the known major codes that have survived to our time mostly share the same values of honorable living, differing largely in rituals.  

As always, my sincere apologies if my heuristics hurt the feeling of any friend or for that matter of any fellow human being. I am also solely responsible for any errors and pitfalls. Of course, corrections will be very welcome.

PS: In my mind (not necessarily to others or by conventional rule), I am a Bangladeshi Muslim in belief and self-identification, although a sinner by most codes. But more importantly, I believe in a (the) Creator and am struggling to pay due respect to humanity of other persuasions.          

 [Note: Poisson Process is a widely used statistical process to describe the random occurrence of events. It is a single parameter process and the parameter is often referred to as Poisson intensity. The probability of one or more independent occurrences within a given time span is dictated by the intensity parameter].