Blasphemy!
I'm an atheist. I am not an atheist who believes there is no God, rather an atheist who doesn't believe in any Gods. There is a difference. Now the reason for any rational being to be an atheist is always the same; lack of evidence to support the claim. It is the same reason why Stephen Hawkins or Kamal Haasan or E.M.S. Namboodiripad or any other atheist, is an atheist.
When presented with this statement, many people have asked me to prove a God doesn't exist. Is that my duty, now? Isn't it a believers responsibility to prove to the sceptic, the existence of their claim? Well, most people say, why don't you disprove it, then. This is like me claiming that my motorcycle can fly, but only if you believe it will fly and asking you to disprove it, instead of proving that the motorcycle actually flies. Disproving a negative is impossible. It's also impossible to prove the non-existence of Santa Claus or faeries or Leprechauns or Trolls or Elves or anything out of Lord of the Rings (But it would have been really cool if they existed)
I have been extremely fortunate to have parents who are religious but doesn't really have a problem with my brother and I being non-religious. In fact, I have been even luckier that I get to discuss this with my parents. It's not something anyone can do. Even though they are extremely tolerant of our shenanigans, my mother used to tell me that atheism is a phase. It will go away when a disaster strikes you. To this, I quoted Samuel. L. Jackson from Pulp Fiction: "HELL NO!"
A phase comes after an impulsive thought. Like a haircut, or a soul patch or a fashion statement etc. For me to adorn the title 'atheist' I had to go through 4 years of reading and research. It all started when a friend of mine told me his atheism and my theism are very similar. The reason for his statement was because I agreed to most of the scientific pieces of evidence he put forward. This made me realize I was a deist (belief in the existence of a God on the evidence of reason and nature only, with the rejection of supernatural revelation or belief in a God who created the world but has since remained indifferent to it) to begin with. I had and still have immense trust in science and scientific ways. Curious mind of mine wandered on this particular topic and finally met "The Pale Blue Dot". A picture of Earth, taken from 6 billion kilometres away, and an eye-opening speech accompanying it, by the late Carl Sagan, made me think in dimensions I never thought of, thereby confirming my religious identity.
The "miracle" of birth is a topic most of my family members use to defend God. A couple of days back a sister of mine lost her baby in the first trimester of her pregnancy. On hearing this my mother asked me, "Isn't it these sort of incidents where you see the proof of God?" My cousin, studying for medicine explained to me that there are a million factors which determine the birth of a child (Not getting technical here. The other thing is lack of expertise in this field). But these millions of factors have millions of years of experience with them. The cell has been replicating since the dawn of life. I'll try to explain this as simple as I can.
Anyone who is about to learn driving would know how complicated it is. There are so many things to consider; the clutch and it's balance, brake, accelerator, gears, steering, left mirror, right mirror, rear view mirror; oh the horror. Panic is a normal reaction here. But a person driving for 10 years wouldn't be scared of this, but could, still, meet with accidents. Now imagine cell replication having 3.9 billion years of experience. Mistakes are bound to happen, as the system is not perfect, but one that is trying to reach perfection.
Another argument I hear very often is the code of morality. If there is no God, how can we determine good and evil? Simple. Use your brain! If you do good because you believe God will reward you or you don't do bad, because you fear punishment, then your morality is not truly moral. My morality comes from my logic. I don't mistreat women because I fear God or in the anticipation of a reward. I respect women because they are fellow human beings and the only difference we share is a tiny little chromosome (Thanks Nitu for giving me this insight).
What came before The Big Bang? I don't know. Neither does anyone on planet Earth. There are assumptions to what came before but, no one is certain (except the religious folks). It's okay to not know everything; it makes us passionate to seek out the truth. Filling it with fallacies will get us nowhere. If I were to say big bang was just the fart of a giant cosmic organism that evolved in a Darwinian sense, would any of you believe it? And if I make a religion out of it would any of you follow it? I hope not! I could give hundreds of substitute theories, but they would be just speculations and the truth would lay obscure. There is nothing wrong in saying, I don't know. Like Bill Maher said, "I preach the gospel of 'I don't know.'"
"Atheists must be leading sad, sorry, purposeless lives." When I hear someone make this sort of a statement, I laugh. Let me clarify this. It's not just wrong but the opposite. Being an atheist is eye-opening. Every time I look at stars, I'm in awe and wonder. Every time I am close to nature, I feel serenity. I see art everywhere. I see poetry in science. I believe that an atheist would appreciate simple joys of life so much more than a believer. Seeing a waterfall doesn't remind me that water is just hydrogen and oxygen. Even if it did, I'm even more awestruck thinking, these two simple elements created immense beauty.
Even as I say this giving easy analogies, many people would find it difficult to understand these complexities without the help of God, because we all are plugged in to "The Matrix"(Thanks Satya for the analogy). To understand that we are in the matrix or what matrix is, one should step out of it. But no one can be forced out of it. It's a self discovery. There will be someone to offer you the pill (Thanks Robin, for offering me my pill. I'm glad I took the red pill), but the journey and realisation is all up to you. I too was once the part of this and I truly understand why people can't take away God from the equation.
Two quotes from two of my favourite comedians to end this rant.
If someone said, 'We're banning religion,' I'd march to not ban because it's your right to believe what you want, and it's your right to be wrong, and I'll fight for that right.
And the most important one.
Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.
Sharade let me share my views on atheism. As u know i was a hardcore thiest then turned to athiesm now agnostic. If anyone is intelligent enough then he or she won't call themself as athiest or theist coz no science or religion can prove anything which is wat i understood till now. its just an illusion of both side that they can have an ultimate answer which will explain everything. i don't think so.
ReplyDeleteand as u claimed urself that u r atheist then its ur responsibility to justify ur point lyk u said about the believers.
about EMS, communist athiesm was formed based on materialistic universe which it was perfect that time but unfortunately 'Alan guth' gave us a tremendous theory which proved the existence of bigbang called 'inflation theory'. with this theory communist belief of atheism had broken long before but still they following the same ideology.
steven hawking is trying to prove that universe has formed from a big black hole. which even black hole will also be vanished by the might of gravity. and along with him his colleagues also coming up with somany ideas. Edward wittens 'M theory'. pensrose theory of before big bang.
and i am sure that u r aware of the quantum consciousness which itself gave headache to einsten. and all the quantum bullshits. which no one couldn't understand. all subatomic and atomic particles only come to existence only wen its observed. if so all ur thots which is an electrochemical activity inside ur nerve centre shud also be observed which again brings a big question, is all our thots are really ours or is it valid?? brain is another big puzzling thing which i am trying to understand which researchers say that our brain can figure out things even before we come to conscious on that.
And ryt now i am thinking about morality which u cannot simply get by logic. logic can bring ur set of probablities like if else statement in programming. it doesnot give an absolute thing. then something else figure out what is good and bad. so don't generalize it as logic. as u said once ur good maynot be my good ( me, amal and u wer debating on this same topic wen wer in R11 )
so logic can vary according to person which is wat i understood. and again as in pale blue dot explained by carl sagen we literally are negligible. and if we think we are intelligent being then i wud ask to think again. its a highly relative statement with respect to our animal kingdom. we simply say donkeys are idiots. and what guarantee do u have that u r not? whatever statement we make its all relative.
what i am trying to put here is instead of calling yourself as atheist just be silent or be nameless which is agnostic by the way and explore everything, all sides, which u cannot cover in barely 4 yrs or 40 yrs or 4000 yrs for that matter. if u r claiming urself then u r degrading urself from intelligent being, from the consciousness u have. so stop being in one categorized group and explore everything everywer. This is wat i have realized in my theist life.
"any one who become seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that there is a spirit manifest in the laws of the universe, a spirit vastly superior to that of man" - Albert Einstein
"science without religion is lame
religion without science is blind" - Einstein