The concept of God

You might find this post odd. This is probably the first time I am discussing about an abstract subject - God. However it is not without reason. The idea behind life seems incomplete with out some discussion on this subject. But why is this subject so important? Even before science was established in societies it was religion or rather the concept of God that shaped almost all the ancient religions. My guessing is that almost all the concepts of God (i.e. most of the religions) map to the same thing - the One who created this universe.

However so many questions come to surface while we are even thinking about this concept. Like for e.g. why would you think that there is only one force? The concept of God was not founded on logical arguments, but rather on observations of phenomena that people had no way of explaining in the ancient times. Child birth and death. Archaelogical evidence has hinted that people who lived in civilizations that are 3000 yrs old even paid respect to the dead. This fact is amazing. But why would we want to pay our respects to the dead? We do it even today?!


Earlier I guess people believed in after-life, i.e. life after death. This was the main reason the egyptians mummified great kings and queens. They somehow believed that they would be reincarnated somewhere in the future... This was the fundamental belief of the egyptian civilization.

But why is it that people think of God? Is it to find the meaning of life? Is it to define some purpose for life? Is it to say, God created the universe. Then why is it that we are so interested in living?

Sounds like madness doesn't it?

Then would you want to believe in my philosophy rather and believe that life on earth was co-incidence?

This was where I wondered what makes our mind behave so special. Special in the sense why we relate to spiritual things... Of course we can construct a scientific answer, but then you'd hate life for that! I ventured in trying to realise a model for our brain. I tried to understand concepts such as memory. I was going literally crazy at one point of time. My current model of the brain is simply a network of neurons designed to either instigate signals due to some brain chemistry or to propogate signals from nieghbouring neurons, or inhibit them. It is not a complicated model.

I tried wondering what if this model was subjected to some strange signals? What strange signals? Seeing something out of the ordinary - like miracles or seeing a ghost etc. When we see some object our neurons work through predefined channels and propogate signals. At the end of this process there is always a result. Either an action or response. These responses can be chemical in nature. These chemical can in turn influence brain activity by making other neurons that are normally dormant to fire. When this happens there is no regularity in the way the neurons direct signals; there is no particular channel. Its like chaos. There are many channels that are normally not supposed to be there. Somehow I feel that this particular condition is the same as fear. Fear of not knowing what happens next.

Although this is only a hunch. The pattern when one sees a miracle is the same as that of fear. This was what I concluded from the above discussions.

The concept of God. Back to square one. Miracles are the back bone of faith. Not everyone will agree with this view. And those who don't believe in this view are truly considerate people. They think about religion at some point in their life. Now was the concept of God born out of chaos in the mind? Could be; we don't really know.

All that I've discussed here are not the result of lucubrative scientific studies. Rather it is the output of probably preconceived thought. It could have come to my head before.

Altruism

You know this is actually an interesting subject!

You are probably wondering what am I talking about?

Yes, its the word called altruism from an evolutionary perspective.

But what is the connection? How will this add up?

I began wondering about patriotism. To me patriotism is the act of sacrificing life for the welfare of the nation or a group. This idea of patriotism is usually linked to human beings. Because you can cite numerous examples of people actually sacrificing their life for their country or nation. But this is also quite true in the animal kingdom too. Imagine a pack of wolves defending their territory from a bear that has strayed into their LoC. [Line of control] ;)

But then the very idea of patriotism is against the laws of survival. Evey individual is prompted to live and increase its chances of survival. This is something selfish but it is vital. This notion is hinted in the phrase survival of the fittest. Because its those who compete and succeed thats wins the race. But how does this idea support the phenomenon of patriotism?

The answer is altruism.

First of all you should differentiate the use of words patriotism and altruism. Patriotism is almost always commonly used by man in the context of politics. Therefore I believe it will confuse some people. To avoid this ambiguity I chose to use a more scientifically sounding word - altruism.

Even my understanding of this concept is incomplete. It seems there were a lot of revisions into the idea. People have used statistics to come up with proofs that are vincible. I have not quite followed that trail of thought. In fact I popped a question relating to this at Yahoo answers and received links to web pages that dealt with this subject.

However, to begin with, it is an idea better understood from a 'gene expansion' standpoint, rather than from an individual's survival standpoint. It is the gene that is trying to favour its selection by maximizing its trait. This is what I understand of it at present. However if you are interested in research check out the following links:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/
my yahoo answers question

Message

While I compose this post there are many things I want to tell my readers. The first thing is that I have become more philosophic in certain ways. I have started thinking about religion. However I have not become religious. Even if I have become religious people still will say that I am an atheist. Because I think in that fashion. However to be exact I am an agnost; I can't know about God or any other supreme power. I can't truly define 'what is God'.

Since I do think about subjects like God and religion the thought about how these concepts came about are also lurking in my head. Why have these concepts come about? This is something I choose to find out. May be the answer is out there. But as of now I do not know about it. I intend to discover it. However I have not renounced the scientific temper that I have. I still rely on some evolutionary principles to start explaining some concepts about life. And if you are thinking how I am balancing myself between religion and science: simple; they are one and the same thing in terms of goals they want to establish. Now while I use science to look into some things it might seem that I am ignoring the importance of religion, and vice versa. This fluctuating tone is what you are going to get.

Finally these blogs are going to include a much wider scope. It is going to discuss religion, philosophy and science. I personally feel that these things should be discussed as they somehow give a more or less complete perspective. Or in other words they complete the perspective. Or at least they give you an illusion that they complete the perspective.