Nature as a Secondary Force to God
on December 3, 2009
Theme: God : nature : powerKartikey Sehgal
If nature is not god, and it is to be controlled by a god, then its destruction is not akin to god’s destruction.
Nature is then secondary; it comes after god. Nature is not god but since it is important for survival it is to be protected. If you don’t protect nature, then god will punish you. Never mind that without nature you will die in the first place. And how will you then think of god?
Transference of Power
If you commit sins, then god will punish you through floods, fires and landslides. It is god’s will that you die a terrible death. This implies that nature by itself is not powerful but under the control of god. If you are good, then god blesses you with white roses in your garden. If you are good–the one with the white roses–but die in a terrible accident then you must have committed some sin. Since you are dead you will never know. It is god’s will.
But Nature is a Living Force
Nature is self protecting. So while you think it is punishing you, it is actually living its life. Water flows from a mountain. The trees take some water and the rest reaches you. If the trees are absent then all the water will reach you and cause havoc.
The tree is living its life. You are living your life. But the tree is also a resource. You eat apple from the tree and discover gravity laws. Nature, perhaps, learns from you but it doesn’t show it.
So you live your life and the tree lives its life. Then civilization happens.
Your dressing and language is changed and the trees are cut to make buildings. Floods happen and it is decided that god has made this happen through nature. Nature wreathed havoc but on the orders of god. It is understood that trees were chopped and hence floods were inevitable; so god seems like an extra here.
Is God an Extra
Or consider this statement: ‘man paid for his sins’. Yes, nature took ‘its own course’ but man has been made to pay for his sins. God has been introduced again. As if nature’s ‘own course’ is not scary enough for man. Floods, earthquakes, tsunamis can wipe us out but that doesn’t seem terrible enough for man. There must be a god who must me included in the scheme of things. God is an extra here. We know for sure that the water that touches our skin and breaks through our homes and destroys our crops is real and is disturbing our existence. But we don’t know if god is doing it because we cannot see him. But we ascribe the events to god, not nature.
The Invention
Is religion the invention of a weak man. Who couldn’t face nature and devised a person/system that lords over nature. The person then assumed rights of communicating with that ‘God’. This way he became powerful and he ensured that he would be remembered for a long time to come.
Is nature god’s enemy. We pray to god and then die in a landslide. Or we are hungry and find a papaya plant. Is the plant, which we can see and touch, responsible for the fruit or is it god. Is it the same to worship the plant and the god. Or is it… paganism.
Paganism is not Religion
Pagans worship stones and plants and what not. Religion asks you to pray to specific people (or the ‘unpeople’ or the super-people). They are the top people and the only ones who can make you happy and dance-like. If stones and plants make you dance-like then it is the devil playing with you. Anything other than the gods that makes you happy must be devilish and if you are happy then you should praise god for it.
If you pray to nature, you bad bad pagan, then you are not praying to god. You are undermining his importance. You are praying to things that are supposed to be under god’s control. This is not acceptable to the religion. So you must pay for your sins. And the sin-remover will be that person we talked about, the religion inventor, who has communication with god.
As nature perpetuates, so does religion.
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Comments
A provocative post, but asks too many questions- makes the post a bit diffused and out of focus.
I have two issues with this:
1. Does man belong to nature, or is he out of it? If he does belong to nature, then it obviously means that all his activities are that of nature taking its course. In the same way like hypothetical goats in a hypothetical small island eating all the grass and making it barren, man prodigiously exploits nature and pays the penalty- or nature redresses the balance by wiping out man and regrowing its trees.
I can’t see in what way can we say that man stands outside nature. It seems, man is a force of nature, in the same way as cancer is not something alien to the body, but a part of it: only an abnormal generation of a particular cell to the detriment of others.
So, I think whatever we people do, it is part of nature’s scheme- if it has any. Or we are simply asking for trouble, setting ourselves apart and trying to keep things easy and cosy for people: but not plants and other animals etc.
2. About man-god. I don’t think any of us who are environmentally concerned see god’s hand in global warming. And, the animists among the tribals, the ones who worship god through trees and snakes, they might get the cause wrong, but they take care of the effect. May be they are wrong to worship the snake as god, but in restraining from eating snake soup or things like that out of fear of god, may be they are keeping the food chain healthy!.
It is people like us who live in cities and don’t feel inclined to worship cars and traffic signals- we are the ones that don’t need god to rationalise nature disasters and accidental deaths. We know we are responsible, but we also know that we as individuals can’t do anything about it.
May be if, we like the animists, paid our respects to the red light in the junction, and have a taboo against jumping the signal or crossing the lanes, and make a fetish out of signalling our intentions, may be it would work better for our city-life.
And as for environment, may be we need a god for whom the handler of the polythene bag is a sinner, and the man who pollutes, may be that god should condemn him to an eternity in a sewer-hole in the hell.
Do we need more god, or less?
(Sorry, a rambling comment- but your post inspired these thoughts, sorry again).
Regards,
baskar
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