Failures of Blind Atheism vs Blind Faith

(c) Ved Kovid Durgadas / Arogya Ayurvedic Health Ltd.
All Rights Reserved.

By Ved Kovid, Durgadas

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It is easy to deny the existence of a Deity. However, it is harder to find evidence to support that claim if one considers the doctrine of karma (cause and effect) for suffering individually, the Deity remaining aloof and allowing free will of all transmigrating [embodied] souls and not attributing creation directly to a Deity's mystical powers, but through cosmic evolution through natural process as in the case of Hindu Samkhya (cosmological enumeration) and Vaisheshika (physics and atomism) arising from the Big Bang and subatomic particles down to gross matter, not simply magical creation with no detailed explanation as in Abrahamic faiths. 

The failure of the modern atheist is to assume that all faiths have a physical Deity who presides over creation, causing affliction and granting grace. However, in the East, such is due to the limitations of the embodied soul alone who, through avidya (ignorance) accrues positive and negative samskaras or qualities, which cause them, in future lives, happiness (sukha) or swarga (heavenly) or suffering (duhkha) or naraka (hellish) suffering in lives due to health afflictions, deformaties, poverty and so on. It is simply the law of cause (karana) and effect (karya) alone - the science of Karma in itself. Even atheistic faiths as Jainism and Buddhism in India adhere to reincarnation and karma.

The Deity, in the East, also assumes form simply to personify transcendental qualities for the gross mind to grasp, but ultimately has no form (arupa) or qualities (nirguna) , being the nature of pure transcendental Consciousness (shuddha-parachaitanya) itself, which is even harder to deny as the Reality (sat) behind the building-blocks of creation (paramanus), just as they, themselves, are the reality behind all manifestation from the causal to the final product of gross matter.

What many atheists forget is they superimpose their Christian dogmas upon science, neglecting that in the ancient world, atomism, physics and cosmology formed an integral part of Religion, not as mere blind faith and acceptance, but as an understanding of creationism in terms of evolving manifestation from Consciousness behind the most subtle aspects of cosmic evolution, not simply blind creationism of the physical from a physical Creator-figure or Deity alone, without explanation.


In India, ritualism (Mimamsa) joins theology (Vedanta) which must go hand-in-hand with logic (Nyaya), atomic theory of creation (Vaisheshika) and cosmological enumeration (Samkhya) which is realised as a projection of the internal (Yoga); all deriving from the Self of which man projects (externally) as the Deity, but which remains internal and simply projecting itself as the external world through it's manifestation through the Avyakta-Prakriti or Primal Nature or Void, from which all manifestation naturally arises, through its own inherit shakti or power.

CERN (The European Organisation for Nuclear Research)  in Geneva studying particle physics itself has unveiled an image of the Hindu Shiva-Nataraja (1), Shiva as the Cosmic Dancer, which represents the cosmic dance in relation to physics. The physicist Fritjof Capra has stated of this:

"Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics. (2)"

The Vedic deity Indra is also the Dancer (Nrita) in the Rig Veda (VIII.24.12 etc.).  In the Rig Veda also (X.72.6), in the hymn that expresses creation from primal reality (aditi) or the unmanifest nature (avyakta) that produces the cosmic intellect (daksha, the Mahat in Samkhya), the deities are said to dance, from which produces dust, from which all things sprang. Earlier in the same hymn (X.72.2-3) existence (sat) is said to derive from non-existence (asat) and the hymns of primal creation are mentioned as manifesting like melting or blowing (of a smith) - a kind of a Big-Bang. 

The main concepts of modern atheism hence spring from the ideas that religious philosophies are against science and technology - but again, such is a Christocentric bias and has never had any place in ancient cultures or the East. As an example, in Ayurvedic medicine in India, there existed internal medicine and also an advanced degree of surgery, of which has given us plastic surgery today and several other techniques that were transmitted West by the Arab translations of Ayurvedic texts. Numerals and much of our astronomy and mathematics has come from the Hindus, as also our concept of zero. The failure of Christian nations to produce these has hence resulted in a kind of rejection of all faiths - forgetting the origin (or reintroduction) of science itself, from theistic India, which always allowed science and faith to go hand in hand. Ayurveda knows of genetic defects and diseases, passed on through the mother and father, but also goes a step further, stating that the cause before birth is karmic on behalf of the reincarnating embodied soul, not simply fate alone as Western medicine have us believe.  

While discounting ancient Medicine as Ayurveda, Richard Dawkins stated that "Through the advancements of science, we now have vaccines that prevent some of the worst diseases that have affected millions of lives: smallpox, polio, pertussis (whooping cough), rubella, measles, mumps, and chickenpox to name a few (3). "

However, he seems to be either ignorant of history to the fact that Ayurveda actaully gave us vaccination against Smallpox in India, some 3,000 years ago (4). Hence, many such claims by pro-atheists also modify history as it suits them and "select" passages that suit them or reject the rest, just as they criticise several religious organisations for doing also.

While Dawkins on his zealous rampage to undermine religion makes such blunders, he also criticises history, seeing the evolutionary theory of man, and yet seemingly also forgetting those such as Oppenheimer were also great scholars of Indian religious texts and profoundly influenced by them also, as also stating in relation to the Atomic Bomb, that it was not the first in history, but the first in "modern times". Perhaps Dawkins and his clan plagued by centuries of repression of science due to Christianity are still suffering from these wounds and seek to apply it liberally to all faiths and history - even those of which his own scientific clan belong to and disagree with!

It is also well-known that Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin of whom modern atheistic scientists commonly quote (and ironically revere as infallible monotheistic "intellectual Gods", not better than the Christianity and Biblical culture they came from), both stated they were not atheists, but seemed to have challenged organised religion and saw themselves as agnostics, but not atheists, denying the existence of a personal Deity, much like the impersonalism of eastern faiths as Hinduism and Buddhism with it's formless Brahman and concept of Void.

We recall Einstein's own comments regarding the Hindus, that: "We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made."

While there are failures of blind faiths, it does not extend to all religions and especially not in the East - where science and technology was put at an end in the 12th Century by invading Muslims and Surgery in India was shunned by the Victorian minds of the British later on. At the time of Raja Bhoja in India, the texts mention even the invention of flying machines and robotics, along with advanced ships and other technologies, also seen in earlier texts as well.

The conflict of religion with science hence had naught to do with native faiths of India itself however, which allowed and promoted these sciences at times they were shunned or killed-off in other nations to the West, due to blind religious fanaticism, which never allowed itself to take root in India - hence Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism arising from Hinduism, as well as the largest number of the native Iranian faith of Zoroastrianism, now dead in its homeland due to blind religious fanaticism of Islam, all continue to co-exist and survive in India to this day, along with Judaism, which Hindu India also gave a home to while members in the Middle East struggled against Islam.

It should also be noted that while other faiths were tainted with bloodshed in the name of religion, all faiths originating in India promoted vegetarianism for both health, mental stability and also ahimsa or non-violence, denoting not deliberately injuring or killing another living being unlike other faiths had, of which they still live up to today, some several thousands of years later.


 

Related article: Failures of Western Science: Christianising Dharmic Faiths and their Sciences

 References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nataraja 

3. http://www.richarddawkins.net/foundation_articles/2013/9/10/stop-the-anti-vaccine-gospel 

4. http://legacy.jyi.org/volumes/volume6/issue3/features/bourzac.html