Overhead projectors

Yes, AnandaDasa, I can sympathize with your angst but cannot empathize yet. Agnostic was a term probably invented in the 1860s after Darwin shook the dark world of the white Christians. I don't want to reach out to the Merriam-Webster lying nearby to even check. Who cares? An agnostic is someone who questions the existence of god. Someone tells me Aaron questioned the magical powers of some god, so is he the first agnostic from our myths? I could never finish reading the Old Testament. Or the New one.

(The Charvakas, or the materialists were there before the times of Buddha, trying to spread the cause of reason as opposed to blind faith, which is always the easy way out. Like the dead sea scrolls, even their literature was destroyed by the Hindu Brahmins, who never wanted the poor, ignorant populace to see light. I have older atheists to choose from if I want to. More than five thousand years old, in fact.)

So, agnostic is not a fit term in my dictionary of things to describe someone who questions the very necessity of creating a god in the first place. Today, when my little Aaron watches the clouds come down and pick up huge cows in this videographic rendition of a tornado in the movie called Twister, he feels the first signs of fear seep in. Okay, so if there's a tornado, even my all-powerful daddy won't be able to stop us from being picked up and thrown around like in a circus.

Or videos of that quake, or why not the bomb blasts all over the war-torn world? Today, if you pray to your god, pray to him/her to stop the next bomb from being blasted in a crowded marketplace. Jordan, New Delhi, London, wherever.

If fear gives birth to the desire for something powerful that can keep you and your loved ones safe, it can be mathematically put as: Fear = birth of gods, everywhere in the world. Almost at the same time, perhaps, but for that I got to consult some encyclopedias of evolution, compiled by mostly believers anyway.

Why not learn to accept the fear as part of our lives? A short life, some fears, big or small, and nobody to protect you. How do you like such a world? Sans gods?

Sadly, that's not going to be. Today even newspapers have columns on astrology, horoscopes and psuedosciences. It sells, buddy. Our stars and our gods know hot business. And there will be news clippings of a Pope claiming the Universe was an intelligent creation. Yes, all the light fell on Rome. So much so that they were blinded enough to choose a ruler who allegedly subscribed to Hitler's anti-semitic view of a world ruled by white Aryans . . . have you seen his eyes, AnandaDasa? What do they tell you? That the world should listen to him? And what do you say when one such god apparently comes to Prof Bush's dreams and asks him to go plunder at his own free will? So gods support personal vendettas these days?

If little Aaron has a fear, I'd want to teach him to analyze it to a point where he cannot find any solution. The next step shouldn't be to give in to external influences that egg him on to start believing in something abstract, controlling
everything from up there. Yes, give up and accept that it is humanly impossible to fight this fear. And there's nothing beyond the human brain either. Nothing called superhuman. In stories, yes, because stories are always nice to read. In stories of the Asura being slayed by Ma Durga. In projections of our fears out there in the sky, like some new age laser show, projecting gods . . . in their dhotis and robes. I wonder who sold them clothes, though.

Come down for once. Open your eyes. In times when all around you have chosen to close theirs. Accept the fears, live with them, and walk proudly to your grave.

No prayer can save us from the inevitable "scheme" of things.



p.s. I use "scheme" because it is a nice word, not because it suggests some intelligence controlling everything.