পূজনীয় স্বামী চেতনানন্দজী মহারাজ এখন ভারতে আছেন ত ।

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Soshrodho pronam Maharaj. J disha apni dilen setake dhore cholar jeno moti hoy.

Actually what sets us separate from other animals is our power to reason...faith is to accept anything without reason or evidence. tai dharma chaara na ...jukti chara manush pashu hoye jay.

You have the answer in the first line of your post. Organised religion. Swamiji precisely said that same thing too..That organised religion is now in decline, because it takes away your freedom, liberty and makes you a sinner from the very first day. He is not telling us to accept anything supernatural . He is merely telling us to lead a righteous life so that we can realise that divinity within ourself. The very foundation of RKM is a righteous life and working selflessly for the masses, not some black magic supernatural mumbo-jumbo. Swami Vivekananda crossed Sri Ramakrishna at every possible opportunity till he was convinced beyond any doubt. And regarding faith, you want evidence, right? Take the example of gravitation. It was always there in the earth, but we only came to know of its existence as a force after Newton discovered it. So you are taking the words and calculations of Newton, because you know and trust that he has the knowledge. You are trusting a learned person because he has tread the path. Similarly, God is omnipresent. Inside you, inside me eveywhere. We just dont realise it. But similar to Newton we can trust a person who has actually tread the path. You can pick anyone as per your intellect, you can take our ancient scriptures, our upanishads whatever you want. Its not something which is hidden or only for the saints. Scriptures and books will sharpen your intellect, your intellect will help you choose whom to follow or trust for your spiritual life. This intellect makes the difference between faith and superstition, nothing else .

@@pushanbhattacharya9728 Newton is actually a bad example to establish your point. We don't trust Newton, or for that matter any scientist. There is no authority in science per se. In fact, in the early 20th century scientists discovered that the laws of Netwon collapsed in the atomic world. We saw the advent of scientists such as Neil Bohr, Pauley, Einstein, etc who redefined the scope of Newton's Law in order to understand the behavior of subatomic particles. We don't believe in gravity because Newton said so; we don't believe in the theory of evolution because Darwin said so. We look at fossil records, study the anatomy of various life forms, look at the geographical distribution of different species, and then only we conclude that evolution by natural selection is the only tenable theory to explain the prodigious bio-diversity that we find in nature. A wrong fossil in the wrong layer of rocks - and the theory of evolution, regardless of who postulated it, would evaporate like vapor. We are not taking the words or calculations of any scientist, great or small. That's why there are peer-reviewed papers in science. As soon as I make a claim that humans and chimpanzees are close cousins and that we share a common ancestor who lived some 6.5 million years back, there will be hundreds of scientists around the world who will verify my claim through rigorous scrutiny of the evidence I am providing in support of that claim. And if and only if I pass that scrutiny my claim/hypothesis would become established. My conclusions will continue to remain open to scrutiny though; there will be no need or necessity to trust my words; any future scientist will be able to test my hypothesis/theory and see whether she arrives at the same conclusion. That's how science has progressed - if Bohr or Pauley simply trusted Newton we would have never understood the forces and principles that guide the atomic world. Sadly, in the religious world, there is no scope to examine the evidence and change one's mind. If the Bible (Book of Genesis, I believe) has claimed that Adam and Eve were the first humans then no matter what you tell them, no matter how much evidence you bring forth, the Catholic Church won't change its mind. Then of course in face of overwhelming evidence, it shall one day mumble a meek apology (the way they did in 1996, admitting that Galileo was right and the earth does go round the sun). Faith and superstition are the one and the same thing - to believe without reason; to believe because some authority asked me to believe; to believe because it has been believed for ages.