In Praise of Agnosticism

The origin of the notion of God and religious beliefs can be attributed to the attempt of the primitive people to come in terms with the hostile environment they were exposed to. They could not comprehend and were awed at the different physical phenomena like alteration of day and night, lightning, thunder, flood, storm, eclipses, death, etc. They soon realized their helplessness and defencelessness against the forces of nature. They hypothesized that there must be some supreme power or deity/deities that controls all these happenings. They thought these deities need to be pleased to avoid incurring their wrath. So they imagined these deities in different forms, depending on the nature of the force they represent, and started worshiping them. Thus submission/surrender to the hypothesized Supreme Being is the foundation of all religions. With the progress of time and growth of knowledge our view of the universe has changed drastically, but fear of the unknown and search for reality continues. Sages and philosophers contemplated on this issue and thus there emerged the notion of divinely inspired or revealed knowledge resulting in what are called ‘dharma sashtras’ or religious scriptures.