Happy Ganesh Chathurthi

Welcome

Love is consistent passion to give
Not a meek persistent hope to receive

WPC: (Extra)Ordinary

“But in the end they were not called saints because of the way they died, or because of their visions or wondrous deeds, but because of their extraordinary capacity for the love and goodness, which reminded others of the love of God.”
― Robert Ellsberg

Beliefs

Having a discussion about religion with someone you meet for the first time is a little daunting. Because if the other person has a very strong opinion about their belief or non-existence of it, then the whole conversation can become very uncomfortable in a matter of seconds. When I was asked how religious am I , all I did say was ‘I am a believer’. But how much , what extent etc… I didn’t elaborate. And when I asked the other person about it, he said he was agnostic. That according to me is neither here nor there. And I remember a conversation about religious beliefs from a blog post some long time ago, where the discussion sort of turned ugly but most of them were very wary of agnostics rather than the atheists 🙂 I remember the words that I read as (and its paraphrased) ‘You can believe an atheist, because we know that they just don’t believe, but agnostics are like the cat in the wall, they can jump on either side based on where the benefits lie’. And saying something like that to someone you are getting to know is totally an unwise thing, but then I am known to take some risks in life and am curious by nature. So I went ahead and told him about it. He obviously disagreed, albeit in a very gentleman like manner and went on to say what his version of agnosticism meant. It means that they are in search of faith, and once they find it, they would definitely turn into a believer. Until then, their judgement is reserved 🙂 Today, when I am back at my parents place, because both of them got sick and injured within a day this week, I had to take the role of a driver to take my dad to places. He has some problems with his vision and today after a very very long gap, went to a temple and that too because I need to take him for his weekly visits. That is when I remembered the discussion I had with this person about our beliefs. And when I read these lines which is almost equivalent to what this person believed,

The realization of knowing that “we cannot know everything” is the backbone of the agnostic belief.
Christian Zealot: God loves you and everyone. He will save you
Agnostic: Prove it.

Athiest: There is no way that a god can exist.
Agnostic: Prove it.

it definitely brought a smile 😀 What about me? I know what I don’t believe in much better than what I believe in. I believe that the supreme power or the God, will not be able to help us in any small way unless we are not ready to help ourselves.