God and Logic

Recently, I had been to Coimbatore, to take part in the cultural fest held by one of the branches of the institution where I study. One of the events there was a personality contest, of which stress interview was a part. A friend of mine, who had participated in this event, during her interview was asked to prove God exists. The interviewer wanted her to prove it logically. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to do it.

But it got me thinking. Very recently, i finished a book called Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintainence by Robert Pirsig which has the protagonist, who is a thinker and a logician struggling throughout his life to understand what the world really is about using logic. He asks some fundamental questions like "Didn't gravity exist before Newton discovered it?" When this question is asked to an ordinary man, he might laugh and say, "Of course it did!!". But the question this logician asked was, If so be the case, why didn't anybody acknowledge it? Everything that the innovators have discovered right from the Fuschian equations by Poincare,Riemann system of Geometry, Einstein's relativity,String Theory... have revolutionised the field of science and the way we perceive things. Didn't the people know earlier that there was something called time? Did they not know that all changes in our system are subject to this entity? If they did, how come it took so many centuries for someone to come up with this idea??

If one looks carefully, these great men discovered these things when they looked at things differently. In other words, they found that the perceptions of their time could'nt answer their questions i.e there was no logic which could explain what they were seeing but yet, the things they were able to see had to make sense. So, they did the only thing possible which would lead them to the truth. They transcended. They concluded that what was being accepted as the Absolute truth was not an Absolute at all. This Original thinking, of which man alone is capable of, have led to all the great innovations and discoveries.

There is a parallel to this train of thought. Indian Sages, the ones who have obtained self realisation have insisted time and again that one must transcend to find God. Unfortunately, many of us presume this means transcendence at a material and physical level. All they have been asking of us is to accept the fact that this system of Aristotlean Logic which we have been following, in which our innane desire to hierarchcically classify all things we see and find an explanation about it which can be said as 'trying to fit square pegs in round holes' is wrong. If one studies the western philosophy carefully, at the top of it there exists this dichotomy of Virtue(grossly mistranslated as Good in the philosophy textbooks) and Evil. And all the various names(often unpronouncable and difficult to remember) which are included in this hierarchy stem from the fact that even Aristotle made the mistake of assuming that all the things in the world follow his dichotomy i.e he concluded it to be the Absolute truth.

So, do we conclude that all the "logic" which we have been trained to accept is wrong? Not at all. Mankind, as of now, is in an intermediate state. Let me quote an example. If you have observed an ant which is crawling across your floor, you are able to determine where it'll be after ,say 5 seconds(assuming it follows the straight line path it always takes :) ). In other words, you are able to see it's future(a.k.a. relativity). But the ant itself, does not know of it since it's vision is restricted to the 2-D. Similarly we normal men are now at a stage where we are not able to envision many things because it's a block we have ourselves set up..of thinking in this straight line fashion.

Only when we transcend this sort of thinking will we come to know the Absolute Truth. The day science finds this, growth will stop. Perhaps, this is why we are made to trudge through this dull and boring existence and yet, at times are given glimpses of what we call beyond, of what we call Absolute Truth, of what some call God.Perhaps, this fleeting motivation is a test for us, to determine whether we have the guts to break free and look for the truth. So, my advice for people who want to prove God exists logically, is either abandon ur current system of logic and transcend thereby making that logic which helps u understand God as the Absolute Logic, or wait for someone to do it and keep whining till then that God does not exist.

Until next time,
Adios.