I have started developing a habit of thinking on issues that can, in a more broader context, be categorized as philosophical. Today it just struck me, why do we need to pray to someone called "God". I don't want to go by emotions to find its answer. Many people describe it as a means to communicate to "God" and appreciate "His" good work. This simple answer, to me, appears to be as far away from logic as sky from earth. My belief is that for every action there is a logical meaning associated with it. My tendency is to hunt for such a logical mentality that gave birth to such action. And this is how I conceptualized my answer...
During our early days as civilization, we used to pray to forces which were more powerful than us. Prayer in that situation is a symbol of weakness, symbolizing your surrender to the authority of more powerful forces. They used to think that the natural calamities are targeted to them. Those natural calamities were not at all natural to them. Moreover they had no means to gain control over them. Even today, if we apply the same situation to us, we will find the answer how and why people would have started praying, what could be the reason for starting such a practice.
Suppose at some night a group of people, all of them far more superior in strength than you are, came barging in to your house. You are all alone at home, no one to support you or take your side. Assume, for a time being and to put you into the shoes of those people in early days, you are virtually cut off from rest of the world. That group of people starts destroying your house, smashing each and every thing to bits and pieces. What are you going to do at this stage? You can just simply stand and see all this destruction or if you are a bit more emotional, you may start pleading them to stop their act of rampage. Now replace yourself with people of that era and that bunch of bullies with the natural forces. Now do you see why they used to pray.
They used to plead since they had no control over theose forces. They were helpless against those forces and the only viable option available was to plead. To say "we are praying" is nothing but a more polite way of pleading, its a digression from the word "plead". Similarly God of that era is nothing but something superior to us, more powerful than us and over which we had no control, about which we had no knowledge, and whose functionality is opaque to us. Any such thing can be termed as God. But then we also started distinguishing such forces into two categories. One which does some good to us, which helps in our survival, which supports us in our day-to-day life. This we called as good force and later termed as God. On the other hand, anything which came in way of our quest to survival was termed as bad, evil, demonic.
Now to continue with our example, and next few lines are important to establish why this action of pleading became inherent in our lives. Say that bunch of guys, who were destroying your house while you were pleading them, were random in their nature just like monsoons in India. And because of this random attitude, while you were pleading, they decided to walk away to some other place (may be to target some one else). What kind of effect will this have on you? Not hard to guess, I think. If in case, and lets say this be the case, you are not aware of their random behavior, you would assume that the bunch of guys were targeting you and your pleading melted their hearts and saved you. Here you see how easily you are falling into trap of false understanding. Next time if you are put into same situation, you are surely going to follow what you did now i.e. to plead. This is because the last time you pleaded, you got away. In other words, you are under the impression that pleading helped you to save your life, completely ignorant of the fact that it was the random nature of that bunch of mindless buggers and not your prayer that saved you. This is exactly how the act of pleading became a part of our lives.
If we are up against a hopeless situation wherein we are totally helpless, our first instinct is to start praying. And if luckily, we get away from that situation unscathed, we think our prayers worked. The mistake we are making here is we are insulating ourselves from rest of the world and think that only our efforts can make difference, if any, which is always a misconception. We are neglecting the impact that other parties, directly or indirectly, connected with that situation. In fact, it is almost impossible to determine who all are the "participants" in a particular situation.
This lead to another interesting phenomenon, that achieving success does not completely depends on your efforts alone. Rather, it depends on all the forces participating in that process. Here, considering a closed world, the process consisted of you and that bunch of buggers only. Success from your point of view was to save yourself. You did your best by pleading them but that had no effect on those guys. Instead, you were saved by virtue of their random behavior, over which you had no control.
Although this is very hypothetical and simplified example, but can be extended to any degree of complexity to simulate a real world scenario.
During our early days as civilization, we used to pray to forces which were more powerful than us. Prayer in that situation is a symbol of weakness, symbolizing your surrender to the authority of more powerful forces. They used to think that the natural calamities are targeted to them. Those natural calamities were not at all natural to them. Moreover they had no means to gain control over them. Even today, if we apply the same situation to us, we will find the answer how and why people would have started praying, what could be the reason for starting such a practice.
Suppose at some night a group of people, all of them far more superior in strength than you are, came barging in to your house. You are all alone at home, no one to support you or take your side. Assume, for a time being and to put you into the shoes of those people in early days, you are virtually cut off from rest of the world. That group of people starts destroying your house, smashing each and every thing to bits and pieces. What are you going to do at this stage? You can just simply stand and see all this destruction or if you are a bit more emotional, you may start pleading them to stop their act of rampage. Now replace yourself with people of that era and that bunch of bullies with the natural forces. Now do you see why they used to pray.
They used to plead since they had no control over theose forces. They were helpless against those forces and the only viable option available was to plead. To say "we are praying" is nothing but a more polite way of pleading, its a digression from the word "plead". Similarly God of that era is nothing but something superior to us, more powerful than us and over which we had no control, about which we had no knowledge, and whose functionality is opaque to us. Any such thing can be termed as God. But then we also started distinguishing such forces into two categories. One which does some good to us, which helps in our survival, which supports us in our day-to-day life. This we called as good force and later termed as God. On the other hand, anything which came in way of our quest to survival was termed as bad, evil, demonic.
Now to continue with our example, and next few lines are important to establish why this action of pleading became inherent in our lives. Say that bunch of guys, who were destroying your house while you were pleading them, were random in their nature just like monsoons in India. And because of this random attitude, while you were pleading, they decided to walk away to some other place (may be to target some one else). What kind of effect will this have on you? Not hard to guess, I think. If in case, and lets say this be the case, you are not aware of their random behavior, you would assume that the bunch of guys were targeting you and your pleading melted their hearts and saved you. Here you see how easily you are falling into trap of false understanding. Next time if you are put into same situation, you are surely going to follow what you did now i.e. to plead. This is because the last time you pleaded, you got away. In other words, you are under the impression that pleading helped you to save your life, completely ignorant of the fact that it was the random nature of that bunch of mindless buggers and not your prayer that saved you. This is exactly how the act of pleading became a part of our lives.
If we are up against a hopeless situation wherein we are totally helpless, our first instinct is to start praying. And if luckily, we get away from that situation unscathed, we think our prayers worked. The mistake we are making here is we are insulating ourselves from rest of the world and think that only our efforts can make difference, if any, which is always a misconception. We are neglecting the impact that other parties, directly or indirectly, connected with that situation. In fact, it is almost impossible to determine who all are the "participants" in a particular situation.
This lead to another interesting phenomenon, that achieving success does not completely depends on your efforts alone. Rather, it depends on all the forces participating in that process. Here, considering a closed world, the process consisted of you and that bunch of buggers only. Success from your point of view was to save yourself. You did your best by pleading them but that had no effect on those guys. Instead, you were saved by virtue of their random behavior, over which you had no control.
Although this is very hypothetical and simplified example, but can be extended to any degree of complexity to simulate a real world scenario.
Agreed. I have had debates with myself :) on such a theme at some point and I have more or less come to similar explanations ... what might have started out as an act of appeasing an unknown force has somehow become the basis of faith in a Higher Power ...
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