What does following a religion give us?
It also is used to give some sort of stability, checks and balances in the society so that it will not degrade..
But with extreme religion people get carried away to think that things can happen without their working, and making each and every thing in scriptures as absolute law even if it is not at all logical are the ill effects of religion. I know that there are some things which might seem illogical at this level of consciousness, but may make sense if we know more things.. Especially in the hindu culture, most of the rituals have some inner meaning which we may not decipher for some things but they do have some significance...
If we can understand that it not all necessary to follow everything which is said and follow only those that make sense to us and remember the first line..(courage, faith, hope and humility) we can have them ourselves without attributing them to a superpower.. and in that way we can even avoid the ill effects of religion.
So why atheism?
If you think closely, you can understand that what the world runs on is the survival of the fittest. You can see lot of people committing lot of sins to earn money and power. People often tell that 'God sees the truth but waits.' But nothing happens. You know lot of people who have committed sins and still go scot free in the world. And people who haven't committed any sins but are powerless suffering. I am not advocating that we do illegal and immoral things and get away with it, I say exactly otherwise. It is up to you to determine what is really illegal and what is really immoral and not depend on a religion on a text to tell you what is it. This way you will be more in control of outcomes in your life and there will be no false hope for miracles.
I know I am treading a dangerous path here, because life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And by saying I don't believe in miracles, I am setting myself in a path where I will never see miracles. Okay so how many of you readers have seen something extraordinary, something unnatural or something miraculous, not which was told to you.. something which you have personally experienced? I haven't experienced any such thing from my childhood till now. So I have decided that there is nothing like that until proved otherwise. If it has to come with belief, then I choose not to believe because things that I have to do something to be happy in afterlife doesn't make sense to me. The fact that we have to repent for our sins committed in previous life doesn't make sense to me. The fact that I am reborn also doesn't make sense to me.. what the heck.. if I am meant to improve and reach God, why should I forget what I learnt in the last life... why cant I remember it so that I can make better progress?
I feel it is up to us to live and let live. I don't need to do that with a fear of some power overlooking me.
Let us not talk about the caste system. If such a system is proclaimed by God who chooses to distinguish between people based on birth, I don't believe him. Ok let us leave hinduism... If there is a religion which proclaims there God is true blue God and others are not, then how can you accept such God? All these things make me feel these things were only created for manipulation and power-grabbing. Hence I reject them.
Other Religions and Philosophies :
I have written previously on aim of life here,
If the sole aim of a human is to reach God or salvation or mukti whatever we call it and there is nothing else for humans to do here except worshipping God, then why should he create people at all? If God is the one who created us and wants us to reach him, then why should he create us at all? Here people talk about karma siddhanta that we are born because of the papa/punya phalas of our previous birth. Then I ask how did it accumulate its papa and punya, Initally it should have been a blank slate right? Why is he created then? Is it just that Gods wanted to see a game? Doesnt it look strange to be born freely, do what ever we want but being awarded points for being good or bad respectively, and again being born, not freely but with the points we accumulated in the previous game, and this happens cyclically till our good overwhelms the bad and we reach God. Doesnt it seem like a game and we are just coins in His hands? This is the limiting point of the theory. People argue this way too - why do you argue about where you came from, as you know the end point try to reach the end point of salvation. But when I am not convinced of the starting point, how can I be convinced of the end point?
Thus I rejected this philosophy..
Christian philosophy is a lot better in that sense... It doesn't bind you saying, you have to bide your time for previous sins. It just says - 'acknowledge your sins, and leave them to God and you are free.' If you are a believer, this is a lot better because you are free. What I argue is what you are technically doing is letting go of your sins, that you can do without imagining that you are giving it to a God. And it has its own misgivings..
If you think about what you get from religion, you will easily understand that all the good in religion can be incorporated in our life without the need for a super human being and if we reject the religion, all the unnecessary parts can also be left out.
Finally, now I don't believe in a super human being and automatically which disqualifies me from all the famous religions. Now my view of the world is something very rational (Darwinian view) to a different kind (subjective view) as explained by Buddha. Darwinian theory is a proved and very rational theory and it is true by default and I need not prove this. But I also want to explore the subjective view more to see if it is true or not.
What is my world-view?
Now, as you know our life is mostly meaningless. Don't misunderstand me.What I am trying to tell is it doesn't matter in the long run. And we always try to assign meaning to whatever we are doing as if it really matters. Yes, that is the only way we can live life, otherwise there is nothing to look forward to. But the fact that life is essentially meaningless, and it is in fact ourselves that assign meaning to it should never be forgotten. Anyway you all know that you cannot take the wealth you create or any of your possessions when you die. So what is the best way to live.. I feel that to recognize the fact that we should understand the futility of trying to living up certain standards but do what makes us happy but in the end, it doesn't matter what you did. I don't feel right cheating others to get what I want, so my philosophy is to live and let live. I don't need a religion to tell me that.
This topic has received a lot of interest in this blog. All the posts in this series
1. Aim of Life
I know this is a topic which can be quite divisive, for it is concerned with beliefs and it takes a lot of questioning to reject a strongly held belief. So what do you think about this?
