History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c94.370

v7.c94.370

One of the oldest philosophical problems is Authority and Reason or to put it in different words, Faith and Reason and there has been throughout the ages a constant struggle between these two. Most men want to rely on some authority, on some one deemed higher than themselves. For vast numbers of people this authority or the something greater than themselves is Revelation and God. They have neither the leisure nor the inclination nor the intellectual ability to think for themselves rationally on such abstruse questions as the existence of God or an individual self, free will and determinism, the general principles of conduct, the final destiny of men after physical death &c. In sociological matters human judgement is often warped by prevailing dogmas and prejudices; on questions which are deemed to be religious (and in India the field of matters deemed to be religious has always been very extensive) a frank discussion is almost impossible without creating anger and rancour. Several ethical questions such as divorce and birth control often assume the position of religious dogmas and when openly discussed create great heat. In several so-called democracies of the present day rational discussion comes last and vital questions are determined by party loyalties or by personality cults or by lust for power and self-aggrandisement. It should not be supposed that ancient and medieval India had no rationalists nor atheists. As a matter of fact there were several rationalists. Vide the present author's note 875 pp. 358–359 in H. of Dh. Vol. II, Vol. III. pp. 46–47 note 57 on Lokāyatas and their views, ²⁴²¹ and pp. 974–975 note 1596 above for rationalistic criticism of sacrifices, śrāddhas &c. Many rationalists hold that there is no proof of the existence of God, they deny an individual soul, they deny immortality and the existence of any intelligence in the universe higher than man's, deny that there is any design or purpose in the Universe and they believe that in all religions there is some truth mixed with a great deal of error. The case of the rationalist is that he should not be called upon to prove that there is no God (which is a negative proposition), that it is for theists to prove that God exists (which is a positive proposition) and that he is omnipotent and omniscient. They say that to attribute anger, love, pity to God is to implicitly negative God's omnipotence The problem of evil in the world is, according to rationalists, a great stumbling block in accepting God as .good, kind, all-knowing and all-powerful. The rationalist might agree with the theist that man as an individual depends on something greater than himself that is able to give directions and to punish him for the disobedience of directions For the rationalist it is some kind of community or society in which men live and have their being that is greater than themselves This would be substituting the worship of the human community or of collective human power for the worship of God. What human community is to be in the place of God? Is it to be the whole human race (now having over two thousand million human beings) or some big or small groups out of these? There are now two well-defined blocks between whom there is a conflict of ideological ends, viz. the communist block represented by the U.S.S.R. and China and the capitalistic block represented by U.S.A., England and several other countries of Europe, and a third unorganized block of countries professing to have no alignment with anyone of the two blocks.