God---->wat does he play???wat r the rules of the game???

For centuries people looked at the ways of the world in an arbitrary fashion. Prayers were the only solution to their fears. Floods came and went, epidemics wiped out a great portion of the population. Everything seemed to happen without a warning. Every incident was attributed to gods and goddesses. When plagues haunted feudal England or when England and France had their horns locked in the 100 years war, prayers were all that people could offer. Indians living in the northern plains were so scared of the Gangetic Gharial that they modified the myth to make it the mount (vahana) of Ganga maatha. Such mythical modifications are prevalent in all mythologies. There was no way to predict what they would do, and the only hope was to win favor by gifts or actions. Many people still partially subscribe to this belief,and try to make a pact with fortune. They offer to do certain things, if only they can get an A grade for a course, or pass their driving test.

Gradually however, people must have noticed certain regularities in the behaviour of nature. These regularities were most obvious, in the motion of the heavenly bodies across the sky. So astronomy was the first science to be developed. It was put on a firm mathematical basis by Newton, more than 300 years ago, and we still use his theory of gravity to predict the motion of almost all celestial bodies. This led to the idea of scientific determinism, which seems first to have been publicly expressed by the French scientist, Laplace. He said that “if at one time, we knew the positions and speeds of all the particles in the universe, and then we could calculate their behavior at any other time, in the past or future.” There is a probably apocryphal story, that when Laplace was asked by Napoleon, how God fitted into this system, he replied, ‘Sire, I have not needed that hypothesis.’ I don’t think that Laplace was claiming that God didn’t exist. It is just that He doesn’t intervene, to break the laws of Science. That must be the position of every scientist. A scientific law, is not a scientific law, if it only holds when some supernatural being, decides to let things run, and not intervene.

Determinism was really the way the western world took about things in the next 3 centuries. As the regularities seemed more and more obvious, man assumed that he held great control over nature. Though the late 19^th and early part of 20^th century is considered a Golden age of science, I would rather say that it was a period of partial darkness. While break throughs were made every second minute (a little exaggerated), the scientific world was still ignorant of facts.

Darwin proposed his theory of evolution, Mendel had erupted to the scene with his laws of inheritance, there were innumerous inventions, the world was propelled forward. Electricity came as a real force. Through this period human kind experiencing a new renaissance, directly in the western world and indirectly in the rest via imperialism. While atheism and nihilism can be dated back in history, the great power assumed by man through scientific progress, gave him a false sense of superiority.

Now coming to the question of our interest…….. Does our greater understanding of the nature, rock our basic spiritual trust??? One thing is very true ; that mankind experiences a much safer life , free of disease, hunger and invasion , the sense of fear has flown of…….. A sense of disbelief has stepped in…….. In this atmosphere, I would like to illustrate certain phenomenon which are direct evidence of an omni potent savior.