Does He Know A Mother's Heart

                                                                                                                                               Religion

Does He Know a Mother’s Heart: How Suffering Refutes Religions

Arun Shourie

Suffering and evil in world are the greatest hindrance in acceptance of the concept of an all-powerful, all-knowing God. How could an omnipotent, incomparably loving and infinitely compassionate god bring to bear upon his own creation the soul-searing, unremitting suffering engendered by millions of misfortunes; A whole life spent in penury, Children afflicted with debilitating congenital malformations of mind and body, loss of children in their adolescence, a lifetime spent in sorrows of unrequited love, mothers being raped in front of their children, miseries visited by wars and natural calamities. It is an unending list. Happiness has only few forms while sorrow visits mankind in countless garbs. When confronted with ubiquitous misery and god’s alleged omnipotence, the simplest statement of the conflict between facts and faith has been phrased by the Greek philosopher Epicurus.

‘Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able but not willing? then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?’

Suffering calls the bluff of the concept of God most conspicuously and unambiguously.

Arun Shourie’s son was a spastic. He lived in to his fourth decade and became the epicentre of the love of his parents. Arun Shourie’s wife Anita, after a car accident, suffered early onset Parkinsonism, a debilitating affliction of mind. Shourie was thus entrusted with responsibility of two specially-abled people at home. In this book, the theme of which is amply clear in the subtitle, Shourie examines if religion explains suffering adequately or suffering refutes the concept of God.

In a short first section of the book Shourie writes briefly about his life with his son and wife. This is written beautifully and is moving in its candour. He writes with marked brevity, eschews sentimentalism, yet portrays the poignancy of human suffering. Major girth of the book occupies itself with refuting the religious explanations of human suffering. Shourie takes up Judaism first. He then goes on to Christianity and Islam. He discusses philosophies of two Hindu saints, Ramakrishna Paramahansa and Ramanna Maharishi as representing Hindu views on suffering. Religion of every form and colour has universally and abjectly failed to give even a faintly believable and mildly reasonable explanation of suffering. The only explanation religions could cobble up was that suffering is because of evil in human heart. It took the form of ‘Karma’ in Hinduism. Bible preaches that all humanity for eternity has to atone for the original sin committed by mythological Adam and Eve. Such crass and shoddy attempt to explain the universal, unfathomable sorrows of human existence! Words fail to express the gross, naked insincerity of originators and perpetrators of religion. Religious explanations for our suffering are mockery of our miseries. God was created in the image of human beings, is undoubtable, but in the image of the most vain, vengeful, intolerant, lying and degenerate specimen of our species, is a fact that is most regretful. A few passages from each religious text would have sufficed to illustrate clearly the ridiculousness of religion’s explanation of suffering. Shourie instead writes a lengthy exegesis as he fills page after page with these laughable explications masquerading as deep philosophical arguments. This is one glaring fault of the book: redundancy and long-windedness of arguments. Science now offers incontrovertible facts about origin of universe and myriad life forms on earth. Science has unravelled the fascinating and mysterious nature of human mind. In light of this, religious exposition of human condition seems like an infantile fantasy and does not require verbose arguments to expose its falsehoods. Shourie devotes one full chapter to elucidate Mahatma Gandhi’s thoughts on human suffering. Deeply religious as Gandhi was, his explanations are as hollow and meaningless.

Shourie finds that Buddhism comes closest to offering a believable reason for human suffering and suggests practical ways to circumvent it. Unfortunately, he has devoted least space to discussion of Buddhism, while he has quoted unending, repetitive passages from Bible, Koran and teachings of Hindu saints.

Book could have been much slimmer and better structured. It provides laboured reading of a very pertinent subject. There are innumerable books on the subject that are highly readable and offer a wider coverage too.