My answer to Atheists say they don’t believe in God; does it mean they reject all immaterial things? If YES, how do…
Answer by Vishu Menon:
Human heart, my dear friend, is a very material thing. There is nothing spiritual about it. A biological pump with four chambers, with inputs and outputs through tubes to various parts of the body that need oxygen supply, growth-producing chemicals, energy and immunity. Also to reprocessing organs like the kidney and the lungs. It is an electrically operated pressure pump that contracts its muscles to push clean blood to different parts of the body through arteries, and relaxes to pull in unclean blood through veins. It has a passive role, working like a dry-cleaner’s outlet – taking in the dirty ones, sending them for cleaning, and giving out the clean ones. The more active job of cleaning, oxidizing, analyzing and synthesizing organic chemicals is done by processing units like the kidney,lungs, and the liver. If a soul or a person’s yearning for romance reside within the heart, science has not been able to, and does not expect to, find them. If, as godman Krishna says, he lives in the heart of all living beings ( Bhagavat Gita 10:20), the poet who wrote the Gita probably meant it allegorically. Quran said that a person reasons with her heart (22:46); but that was the understanding in the seventh century – or that was an allegory too..
Heart palpitation does change with emotional changes.- It is this spontaneous reaction of the heart to external events that made thinkers like Aristotle and Ptolemy (and poet-philosopher Vyasa) to believe that the soul or God resides in the heart. The changes actually happen as a result of the brain’s fight-or-flight reflexes so as to prepare to give additional blood if in need, or to actually supply oxygen and energy that the body demands when it does faster or more strenuous work..
Heart is certainly a great piece of engineering – it can beat ordinary man-made pumps in its automatic responsiveness, complexity and longevity. It is a little difficult for the ordinary mind to comprehend how natural selection during the process of evolution over several millions of years could by itself create such a magnificent machine. Living cells known as genes are amazing things; they work as if they have a mind of their own, store an enormous data of history within themselves. Hence they can live and learn from experience. Observe how a tiny pair of chromosomes (the male one smaller than the female one) can convey so much data about the facial features, metabolic peculiarities, skin complexion, height, voice harmonics, gait, personality and the very nature of a man to his son (or daughter, but excluding some like the genital data which comes from mother’s chromosmes) just by fertilizing his/her mother’s egg. This transmission of data from one generation to the next happens even if the son (or daughter ) had never seen his/her parents. DNA and RNA that the chromosomes bundle along are amazing things; even when scientists say they have decoded all the millions of codes their staircase-like structure hold, there are many more things for them yet to unravel.
Human body, like any complex living organism, is built inside out – like little ants build huge anthills (several times larger than our largest tower if you rate them by the relative body sizes). Every complex achievement is the consequence of a series of trial and error exercises by a long chain of its participants. Present day scientific discoveries and inventions are the result of hundreds of years of human thought, research and exchange of information. The human body is similarly the consequence of the intuitive efforts of a long chain of microscopic cells over millions of (human) years. The cells themselves evolved in another few hundreds or thousands of their own years from the day a few drops of regenerative proteins evolved under one or more conducive chemicals and friendly environmental events.
Undoubtedly, there is much mystery yet in need of resolution; but a jealous, anxious-for-praise, selectively merciful God is not the answer. Such a God only prevents you from resolving them by giving you cock-and-bull stories from what they call religious scriptures and the false notion of spiritualism.
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