Let me start by asserting that I am an Atheist, a naive one, but one none the less. I call myself naive because if you were to have a debate about atheism with me, I probably will not be able to argue giving definite theories or concepts, but I will definitely be able to justify my beliefs with my logic.
Logic, I think is a very powerful tool that we intelligent human beings have, and animals lack. We have the ability of reasoning, to question the events occurring in our surroundings, and then to learn from the process of questioning. And yet when you think about it, we do not really question every belief of ours. Why?
I do not believe in god, because no one was able to prove me his existence.
People say god is omnipresent. Well, let us consider this opinion. If the god exists, and if he is indeed omnipresent, then he should be all around us, and within each of us. In that case, I do not need to go to a church or a temple or whatever to pray. I could as well pray considering my brother as the god. Extending the same argument, I can claim that there should be a god within me too! So everyday, if I were to close my eyes for a minute, and make a pledge with myself that I will go out and complete all my objectives for the day and also contribute towards the welfare of society in whatever small manner, the god within me will be pleased.
And this is my point. If there indeed is a god, why do we need to show him our affection by praying? What good does that do to the society? Instead, if we rather utilized the same time helping a poor child, I see the world becoming a much better place to live in. But if you insist on reciting lines of texts from supposedly holy scriptures, then again answer to me what good does it do to you? Reciting is completely different from following. As Williams Shakespeare writes,
The devil can cite scripture for his own purpose! An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek.
[Merchant Of Venice]
And I beg you not to give the oft recited excuse of calming ones mind by recital of holy scriptures. Our brain is the biggest fool you can ever hope to run into and psychology works either ways. It can be tricked into believing anything. If you have read the book Phantoms in the Brain by V S Ramachandran, you’ll know exactly what I am saying. Some people who have lost an arm, have been tricked by their brains into believing that they still have the arm, and in fact they sometimes feel excruciating pain in the same severed phantom arm. Sometimes, your brain can be tricked into seeing and yet not seeing. In a rare malfunction of visual nerve cells, it could happen that you cannot visualize the object in front you, i.e, cannot see it, and yet perceive it. As an example, if the person, with this disorder, was made to stand in front of a board which has a huge C written on it, the person will say he cannot see the letter. The brain will trick him into believing that there is nothing in front of him, which is opposed to being blind. And now if you were to ask the same person to write the letter on a piece of paper, he will most certainly be able to! You may want to read the above book if you don’t believe me.
As I was saying, our brain can be tricked into believing anything. The society has fooled it into believing that prayers have a calming effect on us, but we can very easily, by practice, rid ourselves of that notion.
Those scriptures have their purpose, I do not argue that point. Their sole purpose is to teach us morality. We should adopt the good in those stories and try influence the society to do the same. Instead, all we do is to learn the texts by heart and never follow the principles it preaches. I respect Ramji as a good person, but I refuse to bow before an idol of his and think of him as a god. I learnt from Ramayan a few good stories, but never that Ram is our god and that only through his prayers can I lead a happy life.
I have a very simple rule of life, question everything. So if you were to tell me that your religion professes some theory, I am definitely going to question the theory until you can convince me of the logic behind it.
I was having a discussion with a friend who told me that his religion professes nothing but the truth and how to distinguish the right from wrong. To this my obvious question was – Is Truth, Right and Wrong absolute or relative? And please do not tell me that they are absolute. I will get into another debate with you then. Truth is nothing but an interpretation of our observations. And since interpretation is not absolute, truth cannot be. In fact, I doubt if even observation is absolute. Right and Wrong are the two domains divided by an imaginary line, the definition of which is different for different people.
All I want to tell people is that blindly following anything is a crime. By doing so, we give a lot of authority and power to these preachers, and history is proof that these maniacs with power want only one thing – more power. Instead, if we were to question every thing that they tell us to follow, if we were to ask for the logical justification of every action, our society would be much better served.
But since the society consists of more followers than leaders, this is going to be an extremely difficult goal to achieve.
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