A PERSPECTIVE ON ATHEISM

More and more people especially young people are rejecting religious indoctrination and the image of God nowadays.

A large number of theists  perceive atheism as a religion that rejects other religions. If atheism is a religion then unemployment is a job. That’s how ill-fitting it is.

The term, atheism, should not exist in the first place. It is simply an admission of the obvious. Atheists are moved by a dedication for reason. Saying that the earth is only several thousand years old and filling your petrol tank with fossil fuel formed billions of years ago in the earth’s crust defies all logic.

There are no terms to describe people who believe Michael Jackson is still alive or people who believe that Richard Dawkins is the Satan. Same goes to atheism. It is a state of self realization and introspection. Skepticism is the tool – atheism is the consequence. The lack of reason in religions brings about skepticism which births atheism.  Atheism is merely noise reasonable people generate in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs. It is ironic that people outgrow from believing in fairy tales but not God when both simply don’t have manifestation evidence.

Atheists are said to be amoral because there is a perception that one is not capable to be good without god.  To atheists, morality exists outside religion and even predates religion. This means humans are fundamentally capable to display ethical behavior without the promise of reward or threat of punishment to be virtuous . It is something innate and natural, a psychological condition controlled by conscience. This extends many atheists into humanism where the emphasis is on the work of improving human condition, rather than worshiping god, realizing that two working hands can do more than a thousand hands clasped in prayer.

Atheists don’t hate God or religion. Atheists simply don’t believe in god and buy religious indoctrination. How to hate something that doesn't exist or non evident or believed to be non existent? The question is flawed in itself. And, there are no Christian atheists, Hindu atheists or Islam atheists. Atheists encompass when it comes to God, be it Jesus, Lord Vishnu or Allah as well as religions. Some believers put their hands down that atheists worship the Satan. Since you don’t believe in God, you must believe in the Devil right? So myopic is their view point. Satan manifests in religious scriptures as God’s enemy and like how atheists don’t believe in god, they don’t believe in Satan either in any form, be it a talking snake or a fallen angel on the same wavelength on how Jesus walked on water and how Hanuman tried to eat the sun up simply because it defies all logic and reason.

Atheists are not bigots. Atheists are receptive to new facts and evidence to supersede their existing form of thought and cognitive and critical thinking process. This is why many people of science are atheists. Science is able to rule out previous scientific establishments with new discoveries. Science corrects itself when it is wrong, and gains explanatory power in the process whereas religious scriptures are not susceptible to change, being static and immutable.

Below is an interview with an eloquent atheist who walks among us:

QS: When did you find yourself drawn to atheism and what is the reason behind it?

Well there is two parts to this. I naturally became an atheist by the time I finished high school. I use the word naturally, because I think I never really believed in a god since a very small child.

So, whatever phases I went through in between, including praying, visiting places of worship and godmen etc etc was more because of the superstitious society and community I grew up in, rather than because I thought there was a god. It’s like a fake relationship, sooner or later you will realize the waste of time.

QS:  Were you a closet atheist at any stage in your life in which you didn't believe in god?

Well I was brought up by my dads sisters until I was seven and they were Christian converts. So my early childhood included Sunday schools and church. As a child, i realized that this god was even more unreliable than my aunt’s rusted car. They  thought me to be good and do good and god will always protect you. God disappeared when my literature teacher decided to beat the crap out of me and many, many more incidents in my young life. So as a young child, i soon realized that this god is most probably a part timer.

QS: When did you decide to go open with your atheism and how others reacted to it?

I remember sitting on the staircase leading to the top floor of our house in and sulking because my aunt refused to take me to KFC and buy me the robot watch. Than I remembered god.  So I started cursing god with all the bad words i knew at that age. You know, sitting in the semi darkness cursing at god, challenging him to do his best. When I thought about that day, I realized the reason why I was cursing and insulting god and picking a fight with him was because I naturally knew there was no such thing as god.

I was barely five years old when this happened.

I was five and I instinctively understood that this god adults talk about, something is wrong with him because he does not behave or function like how adults told me he would.

The last time I was religiously ritual was when I was 12.  A one year period. The prayers altar was my domain. Dropped it like a ton of elephant dung when one day I asked myself why am I kidding myself. Again the proof of gods absenteeism, both in real life and in attending to the duties that prescribed omnipresence to him led me to atheism.

So I don’t visit the places of worship of the religion my family espouse out of my own vocation. But I do go through the rituals when its family prayer day at the local places of worship. It was like a social outing. That was until I was about 19. That was the first time I realized how religion and superstition actually harms people.

QS:  Please elaborate 'harm'

My cousin committed suicide. I was very close to him. I was overseas and from what little news I heard of him, I knew that he was chronically depressed and his binge drinking aggravated things. Than the binge drinking brought an even more serious problem, paranoid schizophrenia. Anyway, every time I talk to my mom I tell her,” Look, he needs medical attention.” His immediate family are big believers in this religious pile of junk. So they kept taking him from one temple to another as well as from one religious practitioner to another. I told my mom he is going to either harm himself or harm someone else seriously if we don't intervene. Anyway sometime shortly there after he came back from his binge fully loaded and he downed half a bottle of paraquat

So that is one of the first example I saw how religion actually directly harms people.

He had twins who were seven years old at that time.

QS: I'm terribly sorry for your loss. Final question, are you raising your kids as atheists?

I have thought of this issue briefly, but I have not made any conclusions yet as I believe its still early and I have time. Can we raise atheists? I don't think we can. Atheism is a state of self awareness. A person cannot achieve self awareness if he has been denied the very basis of what leads a person to that state of self realization. So far, from what little thought i have given the subject, I believe that it’s far more important for me to ground the values of my children on the concept of humanism. That is far more important. When you impart strong values based on reality, than the need for them to find values in fairy tales and tall stories will not arise.

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