PK QA – article series
Are rituals wrong numbers to God? (PK QA 1)
PK QA – article series
1. Are rituals wrong numbers to God? (PK QA 1)
2. Can we reject as wrong numbers the rituals that don’t make sense? (PK QA 2)
3. Why do religious teachers stereotype people as when they pronounce all Pakistanis as cheaters? (PK QA 3)
4. Do people who are afraid go to temples? (PK QA 4)
5. Is it cowardice to go to God out of fear? (PK QA 5)
6. Are there two gods: the god who created man and the god whom man created? (PK QA 6)
Are there two gods: the god who created man and the god whom man created? (PK QA 6)
Why only two? Why not thousands?
Yes, it is true that man has concocted notions of God. But if we were to count such concoctions, then there would be not two gods but thousands of gods, because thousands of people have come up with their own myriad notions of god.
PK says that we don’t know anything about the God who made man. The how do we know that this God is different from the god whom man created? If we don’t know anything about the real currency note, how can we say that the currency note in front of us is false? To say that the God who created man is not the god whom man created implies having some knowledge about that God. If we don’t have any knowledge about God, then how can we say what god is not?
More incoherently, PK says that he has faith in the God who made man. But if he doesn’t know anything about this God, then on what basis does he believe in him? Might his faith be blind? Or might the differentiation between the two Gods be a subtle and sinister tool to make people stop doing all practical acts of worshiping God, while giving them a pseudo-assurance that they haven’t become atheists because they worship some unknowable true God?
To authentically know what God is and to differentiate between him and man’s concoctions about God, we need to not stop doing rituals but start studying scripture, the authoritative books about God. Such study will protect us not only from the pitfall of blind faith that PK depicts but also the pitfall that PK pushes us into – blind faithlessness.