An exhausted wood-cutter reached his home after a long tiring day in the woods. He was carrying a heavy axe on his shoulders and by the look on his face, one could feel that he was in no-nonsense mood today. He knocked the door and his 6 years old son opened it with a cute smile on his face. But before the wood-cutter could enter, the kid came out and locked the door from outside. Wood-cutter became annoyed at his son’s gestures and asked him why he was not letting him go inside. Boy replied that it was his mom’s instructions to not allow his father enter the house until she said so. Angered at his response, father screamed, “AND I AM YOUR DAD GIVING YOU ORDER TO OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!!” Boy innocently replied, “Sorry Papa, but first I’ll have to fulfill the promise I made to my mom.” Wood-cutter became furious and he chopped his thumb off with an axe as a punishment. When he calmed down and reached inside, he saw the home was decorated with a “Happy Birthday Papa” written on the wall. He now realized his son and his wife were planning for a surprise party for him and that is why his son was not letting him enter inside.
Were these the actions of an ideal father? Can you tell this violent story to your 6 year old kid with enthusiasm and justify what his father did? Small kids tend to visualize the things and there is a great chance they might get terrified of their own father for rest of their life. So, I bet you won’t tell this story to your kid! Any sane parent won’t. In fact, if that story was true, you would want that person to be in jail. However, what if this act was done by a God?
If you replace Woodcutter with Lord Shiva, the child with Lord Ganesha and make few changes in the story, it would be similar to the story of Lord Ganesha’s head getting chopped by Lord Shiva by a Trishul because child Ganesha didn’t allow him to enter the home. Woodcutter only chopped the kid’s finger, but Shiva, the God (who is supposed to be most Perfect being) chopped the head of a child who was only following orders of her mother.
If I recall, when I first heard that Lord Ganesha’s story, it gave me nightmares. I was still too little to question God, but I sure became afraid of Lord Shiva.
I know believers will now jump to explain how it was meant to be, how Shiva did fix the Ganesha’s head (by killing another elephant btw) and how Lord Shiva is most angry God. And then they just prove my point; justifying actions and believing stuff just because ‘God’ word in it, which otherwise, were not justifiable and believable.
Steven Weinberg, who won Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 once said, “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
I am not against your God. God, to me, is just an imaginary figure like ‘Santa Clause’ and ‘Mother Goose’. Why should I hate any personal god or get angry towards him, when in the first place I know that God does not exist. On the contrary, if that God gives happiness, peace, hope, courage, sense of morality, encouragement for charity and meaning of life to millions of people around the world, I am fine with that notion of God.
All I urge you to stop accepting any holy book as literal truth and start asking hard questions to the spiritual gurus as you would ask to your professors in college. Do not surrender your power of logic, reason, rationality and conscience, which can become dangerous as we have seen in many temples where nasty rituals take place. Why would God give us the capability of logic and reason and expect us not to use it when it comes to belief?
When you will start applying logic and reason, you might come to understand that maybe, Ganesha’s head chopping story could just be a myth. And that’s the first sign of freethought.
“I am not going to question your opinions. I am not going to meddle with your belief. I am not going to dictate to you mine. All that I say is, examine, inquire. Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and the against. Know why you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for the faith that is in you.” — Frances Wright, Divisions of Knowledge, 1828