World View - Essay Example

3 May, How do we know what we know? We know what we what we know using our five senses, of touch, see, hear, smell and taste. We touch things to know their texture. A stone feels rough to the touch, so we know it is rough. A glass feels smooth to the touch, so we know it is smooth. Likewise, we see things to associate figures with their definitions in our minds. One can not actually know what sun is unless one sees it. We get to know only the much we see. When we know more than what we have seen, the knowledge essentially comes from others that have seen more than us.

Humans use the senses they are naturally blessed with to know the world. In addition to this, religious knowledge comes from Holy books. What is really real, or the ultimate reality? In spiritual terms, really real is some thing that would never change and would never end, like the world hereafter. Life after death would never come to an end. It will continue forever. Therefore, that world would be really real. In fact, it is more rational to call that world the ultimate real. In worldly terms, really real is some thing that never changes.

For example, a mother’s love for her baby is really real and remains as such throughout the life of their relationship. It is so real that one can not expect a mother to be unloving towards her children. Motherhood shows its reality not only in humans, but in every species of living creatures. Birds are possessive about their babies. A mother cat looks after the kittens, fetches them food and feeds them her own milk and so do cows and buffaloes. However, the relationship terminates at the death of either of the two, the mother or the child, so it can not be referred to as the ultimate real.

What does it mean to be “human” – what is the nature of a human being? To be human means to be superior to animals in every sense of judgment. Crows are too sensitive towards the miseries of their fellows, and they share one another’s grief in moments of sorrow. If one crow finds a piece of meat somewhere, it invites many more to fetch the food from the very location. Ants move in an organized pattern. They make a line while moving. Honey bees have a proper system of mastery and kingdom.

There is a queen honey bee that governs the whole system of collection of nectar and its storage of the honey in cells. Animals, birds and insects that are not humans are so organized in their manners with the shear amount of intelligence they have been provided with by God. Humans are supposed to be far more civilized than them in every walk of life because they are blessed with the maximum intelligence. “Being human” is to be righteous and complying with the standards of ethics in mannerism where as the nature of a human being requires the human to fulfill the unethical desires and lust that he cultivates as a human.

Paradoxically, a human goes against his nature to be human. What happens when we die? Death is the interface between this world and the eternal world that follows this world. When we die, the soul leaves the body. The body is buried while the soul is escorted to a place where all souls have to remain until the doom’s day when the souls will be re-entered into the buried bodies. After then, God will evaluate our actions that we did in this world, and we shall be sent to heaven or hell as per the merit of our deeds.

What is the basis of right and wrong? Religion teaches ethics that becomes the scale on which rightness or wrongness can be measured. One abstains from evil deeds because one fears that one would be questioned about one’s actions on the doom’s day. If there is no such concept, and if one thinks that nothing has to come after this life, then there is no solid reason to not fulfill the internal unethical desires. Thus religion is fundamentally the basis of right or wrong. What is the purpose of life?

The purpose of life is to “be human” and remain thankful to God. God gave us life and sent us to this world so that we fulfill His commands and abstain from the evil things. The purpose of life is to test human beings so that their status in the world hereafter is decided.