Thank God I am an Atheist

"Science and religion are like two sides of a coin. One relies on heads, the other believes in tales."

As a child who was brought up in a traditional Hindu family and taught in a typical convent school, I find myself in a rather dubious predicament here. After all those years of chanting prayers, reciting hymns, seeking blessings and making wishes, it almost feels like being bitten at 99, back to square 1 by the longest reptile on board in the game of snakes and ladders. 

Back then, learning by repetition, we are taught not to ask the questions that matter. Now that the good old days are over, it is time to rock a few boats. Treading on what most would term ‘thin ice’, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you have perhaps misunderstood what I said!

Born and brought up in different ways of life- religion that is to say- all of us possess concepts of faith that are derived out of differing texts and when it comes to matters of the Almighty, we are seldom on the same page. The question therefore- for most of us at least- is not whether or not we believe but WHY do we do. The truth may set you free but first it will piss you off.

Most of us believe in God, the Creator- an all powerful being who would have ‘caused the first cause’ and set things rolling to eternity. But, while religion believes, science doubts. It is so because if the ultimate purpose of this all powerful being was to create intelligent (or arrogant?) beings who can raise such questions, then He couldn’t have done a more inefficient job, for the human race wasn’t even around for 99.9999% of the time elapsed since the moment of creation. Therefore it is fairly reasonable to wonder whether or not He created the universe with a purpose and if so, what? 

People working at the frontiers of physics, perplexed by this revelation, are trying to confirm “God Particle” and are closing in on a model of our universe which is ‘finite but with no boundaries’ i.e. completely self contained, having no beginning or end. Then, as Prof. Stephen Hawking quite mischievously puts it, ‘what place for a Creator’? 

Some others believe in God, the Preserver- an all knowing being who knew apples HAD to fall down and not go up, that Carbon HAD to form long chains and crazy rings and who knew how to write and replicate 3 billion lettered codes, comprising of A, T, C and G- the DNA- with errors less than 0.6%. Is it surprising that we can identify laws governing our universe that never change when we also know that the same universe prefers a state of uncertainty and chaos over determinism and order? After all, there is no logical necessity for it to obey rules. 

But even preservation doesn’t quite seem to rank on top of His list of priorities, for natural forces directed by Him have left extinct 99.9% of all species that have ever lived. It seems that when the answers provided by the likes of Newton and Davy and Darwin seemed too complex or heretic to explain the mess we find ourselves in, we chose to believe someone up there orchestrated all of this in six days (by the spoken command “Let there be…”) and rested on the seventh. 

"God created nature to amuse and confuse the man. Man created philosophy to help God do so."

The laws of science that have been developed over the last 300 years have been able to explain the workings of our universe in all but the most extreme conditions. That is, we have a generally accepted theory of exactly what transpired after the Big Bang. But in the dearth of ideas as to what happened before it and in the lack of strong evidences as to what caused it, this event continues to be regarded as divine intervention or the work of God. 

Therefore, we ought to assume that an all knowing all powerful being chose a set of laws- or in the language of elementary mathematics, some very specific ‘initial and boundary conditions’- that govern our world. But if that is true why he now chooses to abstain himself from intervening in the large and small scale workings of the universe, continues to be a mystery beyond the grasp of my intellect. It’s almost like a referee who patiently chalks out the rules of the game but leaves the arena right after the opening whistle and kick-off (perhaps to enjoy it from a suitable vantage point), never to care enough about the score, the fouls or the result, knowing all the while that somehow the smartest of the players will eventually understand the rules and hopefully learn to play by them!

“You can have all the faith you want. But when it comes to this world don’t be an idiot because you can tell me that you put your faith in God to get through the day, but when it’s time to cross the road, I know you'll look both ways.”

It’s a funny world that we live in today, one that reeks of uncertainty and insanity and is sporadically marred by hatred and terror. So, if it makes some even a teensy bit happy to realize that what they read in their Moral Science texts- that everything happens for the good, that they’re here for a purpose etc- is true, then so be it. That is their belief, a notion of a ‘personal God’, someone they thank every morning and evening, for they believe He ‘gives them their daily bread and forgives them for their sins’. For people who couldn’t care enough, religion is shared belief. And belief is nothing but (unquestionable?) faith in something/someone we trust. Needless to say, it is nonsensical to waste time and energy proving/refuting the existence of something we only believe doesn’t/does exist.

"We are all atheists about most of the Gods humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one God further."

It is however, the concept of ‘absolute morality’ of religion that is most deeply disconcerting. Wars have been waged, heretics have been burned and blood has been spilled over centuries whenever religious fanatics blinded by shared delusions of some militant faith have tried to force-feed people their notion of personal God. Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than to say that all knowledge of good and God is confined in this book or that place of worship? 

Nothing exists in this world apart from atoms and empty space, everything else is opinion. So is good and bad. We create our own demons. What one might consider bad or evil might just turn out to be a different way of life, a radically different way of looking at the same thing. Religion and morality are, and should be, mutually exclusive things- two uncorrelated random variables. Remember- we create our own demons.

I don’t believe in God but I’m afraid of him. Perhaps, in our whim of ignorance and arrogance, we have all been blinded or as Amish said ‘…we beheld gods in what were great men of the past, for we believe that such great men couldn’t possibly have existed in reality. We see magic in what was brilliant science, for our limited intellect cannot understand that great knowledge. We retain only rituals of what were deep philosophies, for it took courage and confidence to ask questions. We divined myths in what was really history, for true memories have all been forgotten’.

Perhaps He has laid all the signs of His existence all around us in The Matrix or within the enormous bounties of nature and is patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper- placing the question of His existence squarely before us all. Perhaps we are not human beings who have a spiritual experience but spiritual beings who have a human experience. Perhaps the only difference between you and God is that you have forgotten you are divine.

"Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother."

I find it fitting to borrow the words of Robert Langdon- “Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I’ll never understand God. And my heart tells me I’m not meant to.”