By Krishna Dharma Das
In its most recent survey on the subject of God, the National Centre for Social Research found that some ninety percent of us claim to be believers. One in five even said they had no doubts about God’s existence. Such statistics are perhaps surprising, given that education today tends to steer us toward more atheistic notions such as the’ Big Bang’ and evolution. Surprising also in the face of the widely touted suggestion that religion is the cause of most conflicts, a suggestion seemingly reinforced by the ferocity of some of the more fundamentalist believers seen of late. Plainly, in spite of everything, faith in the divine is an enduring feature of the human mindset. Although by its very definition belief in the supramundane cannot be proven by normal scientific methods or logic, for the faithful there are compelling enough reasons to accept God’s existence as fact. Many of the principal arguments were put forward by the Catholic theologian, Thomas Aquinas, who himself had borrowed from the Greeks (who in turn are said to have borrowed from India).