Category: Religion

  • God in the details

    Sometime back, Vedant shared a video on Reader – a Punjab village in 1925. It reminded me of how little of documentation we have as we go further back in time. I could see two factors in this – documentation itself didn’t happen because it was not an easy process, and storage mechanisms that were used then haven’t really endured.

    These days, we do a lot of documentation, on the web and offline – pictures, videos, text, creating a lifestream that at this point, looks to be durable, because as each technology gets replaced by another, we are also building means to transfer the data captured. My own lifestreaming experiments have been on for quite a while now. New tools like foursquare only add to it, and I find that I can actually recollect a lot from this information.

    I’m inclined to believe that data capture itself will only get better with time, though the reactions to it will definitely be varied. But it did set me thinking. In the enterprise, the more the data, the more we are able to glean information and knowledge about things, people, behaviour, preferences and so on. Do you think, even at a theory level, that if we actually had data of all humans over a really long period of time, we will be able to crack the profound questions that we haven’t found an answer for – why do things/people exist the way they do, the complete effects of one’s action/inaction, the purpose of life itself? Will this data help us unlock dimensions that have been closed to us thus far? Like I’ve asked before, how would that affect our God constructs?

    until next time, data and daata 😀

    Bonus link: Your place in the 7 billion

  • God Plus

    The thread that interested me most in Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver (Volume One of The Baroque Cycle) was on Predestination vs Free Will, something I’ll continue to read up on. The book has a conversation between Daniel Waterhouse, a fictional character and Gottfried Leibniz, in the chapter Daniel and Leibniz Discourse (II), in which Leibniz puts forward a thought that there is an incorporeal organising principle, which organises and informs the body. He calls it the Cogitatio, and later uses it interchangeably with Mind, but different from brain, which is a mechanical phenomenon. With this, he attempts to find a middle ground between free will and predestination by stating that Mind and Matter grew out of a common centre and “I have complete freedom of action… but God knows in advance what I will do, because it is in my nature to act in harmony with the world..” (seems close to Molinism)

    While the recent exploits of humans would dispel this last thought in a jiffy, it did set me thinking on another subject of fascination – Singularity, “the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than human intelligence.” I still wonder whether it would be a ‘Skynet’ version (a superb post by Chris Anderson) or a an augmented human. (something I wrote earlier)

    The thought is whether God’s design had anticipated a Singularity for humans. A state in which the human being will understand and create things far more ‘advanced’ than God can? What would be the relevance of the idea of God then? And in parallel, what would be the human’s role if machines are the way to technological singularity?

    On the flip side, as i wrote in the earlier post, if augmented humans are the way to singularity, would the human mind as we know now exist then? Most probably not, and that would explain why if indeed God did make us in his form, we have no recollection of him or his idea of Singularity.

    Or maybe, some among our species already have reached it, without artificial augmentation, and that’s what we call nirvana, when you can bend the spoon, if it exists. 🙂

    until next time, the God complex is also a possibility 🙂

  • Playing God

    So, a few days back I had this rather scary thought. What if ‘God’ or ‘collective consciousness’, was a variable?  Depending on the notions and mores of living beings, it would change, continuously. That would probably explain how everything went downhill from whatever is believed to have existed as utopia or paradise, and how it works in cycles. Like a game that adapts to you and your moves.

    Meanwhile, I came across a link that I am yet to fully explore. Maybe you can, and write about your experience in the comments/ your blog. It is titled ‘Ten games that make you think about life‘, and the synopses do make it seem promising. Coincidentally, the first one in the list is ‘Immortall’!

    And while I was writing this, and scanning Google Reader, I came across this link, which talked about a game where Augmented Reality, a new technology that offers a “direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input, such as sound or graphics”, was mashed up with “Conway’s game of life“. Though I’m familiar with AR, I’m still reading up on Conway’s Game of Life and it’s fascinating!!

    From the wiki entry “The game can also serve as a didactic analogy, used to convey the somewhat counter-intuitive notion that ‘design’ and ‘organization’ can spontaneously emerge in the absence of a designer. For example, philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett has used the analogue of Conway’s Life ‘universe’ extensively to illustrate the possible evolution of complex philosophical constructs, such as consciousness and free will, from the relatively simple set of deterministic physical laws governing our own universe.” Essentially, the game of life could’ve been played out without the designer – God.

    Meanwhile, the new game lets users create their own artificial life and then, through augmented reality, see it ‘live out’ in the real world. We have become creators. Does it go from here to a point where in the far away future, a new strange species looks back and wonders who created them, and gets no answer? Is that how the game is played out?

    until next time, a level playing field?

  • The wonder eras

    The Lanka trip earlier this year, and specifically the Day 2 visit to Sita Kotuwa was quite an experience. Like I said in the post, its difficult to describe the feeling when one sees evidence that points to the actual existence of characters who were  considered a part of stories and mythology. Its one thing to theorise about what our gods really were, or read  historical perspectives, and another to come face to face with the reality of it. Of course, we could debate that Rama was human, and only considered an incarnation, but if the events in the Ramayana did happen, there is enough ‘godness’ in it for us to still wonder.

    I read ‘The Rozabal Line’ by Ashwin Sanghi recently, which is a fictional story based on the Jesus in Kashmir theory. The author has done considerable research on this, as evidenced by the notes, acknowledgments and references section of the book that spans more than a dozen pages. The domain the book operates in meant that these trails were fascinating, and I plan to follow them online soon.

    Meanwhile, in the book, the author draws parallels to the various messengers of gods who shared a lot of commonalities with Jesus, mostly in terms of events in their lives. They belonged to various cultures and eras before Jesus, thus ‘a great deal of material available to create a story around the historical Jesus Christ’. The existence of Jesus has probably never been in question, as opposed to say Rama/Krishna, but the above, and other things I read in the book, does make him much more human.

    Cut to the present. I read an actress’ comment recently – that she wasn’t on social networking sites because it took away the mystique surrounding her. Fair point, and I had to agree, considering how most actors and ‘celebrities’ in general use the sites to showcase feet of clay. I’m not comparing celebrities to gods, not yet, but in the eras before hyper communication tools, and further back, before ubiquitous magazines and television, there was probably more fiction than fact built around celebrities. The persona overshadowed the person. But now, they seem to be just regular people. Not that they aren’t that, but its more in-your-face.

    And thus I wonder, about the gods of yore. In those times, news got around much slower, and it was perhaps easier for legends to be born and for facts to be coated liberally with fiction. It was also perhaps easier to believe. So when I see images and statues of Jesus these days, I wonder what the real story and who the real person was.

    Ashwin Sanghi took 2 years of reading and 18 months of writing to complete this book. You see, the other thrill of ‘The Rozabal Line’ was having a conversation with its author, while I was reading it. Wonders never cease. 🙂

    until next time, acts of faith

  • Recycling Gods

    Sometime back, I’d written a post about super powered individuals who later came to be known as Gods, and how technology is perhaps taking us closer and closer to these versions of gods. And sometime back, Vimoh too wrote a very thought provoking post on the evolution of Hindu gods, and how, over a period of time, important Vedic gods like Indra, Varuna, Agni etc have lost their importance to a newer set who rose to prominence according to the stage of our civilisation – Ganesha, Saraswati, whose ‘hidden’ characteristics were brought to light. An evolution from gods “that govern the elements of nature to gods that govern abstract concepts of the mind”. He also hypothesises that  in the future, the list will be further transformed when man realises that the universe is more of a network than a hierarchy and when he finds himself at par with the highest of gods and the lowest of forms, he will realise his divinity.

    I’ve always wondered whether the original set of gods was a small number and as needs arose, historical characters were pushed into divinity, their stories exaggerated, and for later generations they served as gods. The original triumvirate – Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva have remained more or less a constant in their importance, though Brahma lost out in terms of places of worship.  But the evolution of gods is something I completely agree with.  As our needs changed and the things we could control changed, it was perhaps inevitable that the things we attributed to them would change. More importantly, they also changed with out interpretations of good and evil. Since our gods have always been close to us, their character and behaviour also reflected this change in ethos.  Huffington Post says they’re now pop culture, through Bollywood movies, for example. But yes, they were always more human, and ‘approachable’ anyway.

    It does bring up a point though. I wonder how our current depiction of Hindu Gods would affect how later generations perceive them. The modern retelling, which sometimes adds layers hitherto absent. Imagine a future generation treating Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana the way we treat the vedas now simply because earlier sources may not stand the test of time. If they saw Sippy’s Mahabharat and also saw Jha’s Rajneeti, would they be able to grasp the parallel? Or would they miss it because they haven’t ‘lived’ with the gods like we have? ‘Sita’ in the television series was ‘Deepika’, the actress, who has also played other roles in serials and movies. So, without a context, it might be just another role she did. There is a reason I’m thinking this way. Any of the gods could be just a role play – incarnations/manifestations – different roles in different contexts at different times. We rely on certain images and certain texts which are possibly incomplete in their current form. And thus rises the question that invariably gets asked in such discussions – who created who?

    Each age fills up the void of its unknown with its own versions of God or his opposite number. Like Vimoh states at the end of his post, the future explorer will be an amalgamation – with knowledge from many disciplines. For now, we pursue the mystery from among the tools we choose based on our interest, bias, and faith – science, religion, philosophy, and so on. The question is, will we ever reach a point when everything is known, and the God shaped hole would be finally filled with our knowledge. Maybe that’s the point when the current Brahma gets irritated and presses the ‘Delete All’ button, and the Brahman starts with the next Brahma. 🙂

    until next time, divine grapevines 🙂