Log In | Register
''That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.”
“Does faith matter? Absolutely,” Gingrich said. “How can you have judgment if you have no faith? How can I trust you with power if you don’t pray?” He continued, “the notion that you are endowed by your creator sets a certain boundary of what we mean by America.” Gingrich said that Americans should value religion first, above morality and knowledge.
The reason our life is devoid of the richness of renaissance men is that the days are past when our present schools could give time and attention to a child to learn knowledge.
History is the first step of learning for any child; history teaches man to learn from the mistakes of the past. That knowledge will lead him/her to Geography and finally to familiarity of classics and our globe. Once he/she knows our earth well, some unanswered queries will lead him to know our solar system where our 'blue pearl' sits as a third planet around the sun in quite a silent part of our galaxy.
Once we discover our triviality in the system of the Universe, the road to self-discovery is laid bare. The idea of a 14 billion-year-old Universe raises an enquiry and questions the entire logic and philosophy of Abrahamic scriptures. Faith tells us a story that is the greatest myth of all times. If that is the litmus test of trust that Gingrich imposes“How can you have judgment if you have no faith? How can I trust you with power if you don’t pray?” then USA/mankind has a big problem. Either we are created in 7 days / are only 6,000 years old, or came out of nothingness 14 billion years ago from the womb of Providence and The Big Bang. The two positions are incompatible, one has to give way to other.
It is this dichotomy and basic error of understanding of our age that is rarely addressed. Majority of the Faithful across the lines of Abrahamic scriptures refuse to believe science of creation that evolved through a carbon-based life from the throes of dead stars. From the womb of death we are formed, to quote Rumi who inspires me a lot:
I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as a plant and rose to animal,
I died as an animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear?
When was I less by dying?
Rumi
When a star dies we form! Yes, every carbon atom in our body is the primordial 'star dust.'
Though the 'faithful' have broken the hearts of atoms, discovered particles that travel faster than light very near to the Vatican at CERN, they undertake journeys to study distant galaxies but the eternal sin and guilt of reconciliation with the scriptures that acquaint us with an allegorical tale of creation still remains a collective burden on mankind's conscience.
The 'boundless' world of faithful.
Until this contradiction of a 6,000 year-old Universe created by a God who rested on Saturday is finally put to rest in the minds of billions of faithful, doors of the new horizons shall stay firmly shut. We will continue to have two worlds: one of ideas and the other the world of myths that stretches around the globe. What flies in the face of science is a part of set concrete beliefs. Once this freedom of mind is obtained, pride, egotism, dogma, orthodoxy and unrelenting craving for riches falls sideways.
The exhibition of power and riches is narcissism at its worst. Both are corrosive to mind and body; spectacle of arrogance and pomposity leads to vein of self-promotion; the only way self-image can be satisfied is if we collectively coin something fresh and immense.
Realization of self-worth and self-esteem that is perpetual, limitless and infinite can only come through the intransigence of knowledge, this brings elated outbursts of ecstasy. Rarely is a rich man ever talked about, but a philosopher never dies. Perpetuity of thinking is the ultimate zenith of our corporeal existence of trillions of atoms of primordial dust.
Through knowledge we question entrenched notion of infallibility of ideas, the tradition of independent investigation is the only delight of which there is no substitute. It lasts when all other gratification grows faint. The joyfulness of existence consists in the use of one's vigour in pursuit of incessant expansion of knowledge, adaptability to continuous transformation, the satisfaction and inclusion of innovative ideas and rejection of those that are outmoded.
To impede this train of thought is simply to die rationally. Knowledge is about questioning established wisdom. Any knowledge that does not instigate this faculty is antithesis of knowledge. Knowledge is expression in words of our dissent to the 'past' engrained absurdities and opening of new vistas of our minds to wonders of the future.
We are just 10,000 years fresh-out-of-caves nomads and 100 of millions of years of life lies before us undiscovered and unknown. The little we know is too little to decipher Gods and fingers of creation.
