How do we know if God exists ?
Consider a person who is paralyzed and blind since birth, whose only functioning sense is his hearing.
Say, we take such a man to a cave or some sort of a place, where an echo can be heard.
We scream. The man hears an echo. He wonders, "Hmm, what is this that I am hearing?"
Then we take him outside the cave and scream and this time he does not hear an echo.
The man of course has no idea that he has been in a cave and out. All he is aware of is a difference in the sound that reaches him.
Now if the man is sufficiently smart and makes good use of his only sense, He will sense that there is some difference in the place that provides the echo and the place that doesn't.
But he will attribute the echo to some source that is present in the place where the echo is heard and absent in the place where the echo is not heard.
His limited perception will lead him to this conclusion.
***
Similarly, we humans may have only limited perception and the senses that we require to realize God in his entirety, may not be gifted to us.
But who can deny that they haven't felt the presence of an external power sometime in their life.
What that God is or what his form is we do not know. Just as the man in our example has no idea of a cave or whether it is just another person repeating those same words from afar. But he does believe that there is something out there.
So, do these experiences in our life, corroborate the fact that there is something out there. Something powerful.
We do not know its form and would be quite useless to try to decipher it, with our limited senses. But what we can do is to attune our existing senses more closely to it.
Why do we feel closer to this Godly presence when we pray? Maybe because prayer or meditation does open one of our closed senses, offering us a better impression of this God.
Consider a person who is paralyzed and blind since birth, whose only functioning sense is his hearing.
Say, we take such a man to a cave or some sort of a place, where an echo can be heard.
We scream. The man hears an echo. He wonders, "Hmm, what is this that I am hearing?"
Then we take him outside the cave and scream and this time he does not hear an echo.
The man of course has no idea that he has been in a cave and out. All he is aware of is a difference in the sound that reaches him.
Now if the man is sufficiently smart and makes good use of his only sense, He will sense that there is some difference in the place that provides the echo and the place that doesn't.
But he will attribute the echo to some source that is present in the place where the echo is heard and absent in the place where the echo is not heard.
His limited perception will lead him to this conclusion.
***
Similarly, we humans may have only limited perception and the senses that we require to realize God in his entirety, may not be gifted to us.
But who can deny that they haven't felt the presence of an external power sometime in their life.
What that God is or what his form is we do not know. Just as the man in our example has no idea of a cave or whether it is just another person repeating those same words from afar. But he does believe that there is something out there.
So, do these experiences in our life, corroborate the fact that there is something out there. Something powerful.
We do not know its form and would be quite useless to try to decipher it, with our limited senses. But what we can do is to attune our existing senses more closely to it.
Why do we feel closer to this Godly presence when we pray? Maybe because prayer or meditation does open one of our closed senses, offering us a better impression of this God.
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