My Atheism

In my eagerness to commit to writing my conversion to atheism, I was missing the tiny wick of the lamp on the altar. The eagerness is not without a tinge of melancholy. Compared to the time I spent tending to my faith, my lapse from faith is very recent. I still hear the creak of that door shutting behind me. People ask what happened. I am at a loss to explain. Therefore, this blogpost.

The idea of God always attracted me. He was a figure with whom I often conversed. While my trust in people always diminished on re-evaluation, God always grew in my re-assessment of Him. Troubles intensified my prayers, happiness made me grateful: Faith met no challenge whatsoever. I relished believing in an invisible Being. My reason became the handmaid of faith. Reason argued, “Faith cannot be rationalized; it is prior to reason. There is a reason why it is called faith, in the first place.” God had an unquestionable hold on me.

Of course, if God is prayed to as a benefactor and arbiter, that belief can shake during long periods of suffering. One who sees no reparation for all the wrongs suffered can end up hating God. Such an individual continues to acknowledge God but not His power or compassion. When God is no longer loving, we need Him for loathing too. Why give up a long-nursed illusion when it can pay for itself by being a punch bag?

For me, God has outlived his utility. The hare on the moon serves well the credulity of childhood but is eventually outgrown. We miss the innocence and gullibility we had as children. But can one be forced into that innocence? To commit oneself to a rational life is to forsake the spiritual solace we look for when things are going against us. When life brings unpleasantness, only a courageous one can uphold his sanity and not attribute the difficulties to the wrath of a displeased deity or to a disruption in one's spiritual connection. Fear of suffering, which is at the root of all religiosity, makes even a nuclear scientist sacrifice a goat! 

Very early on, I had taken it into my head that there existed a reality that is hidden from our vision. That reality was indescribable and excitingly blissful. It was not made of anything material and temporal that taints our worldly pleasures. Boredom and unhappiness were the unmistakable signs of an unreal world. I found succor in spirituality to distract myself from a work-extracting world. Mystery and abstraction kept God going for me. Terms like atman, maya, pure consciousness tickled my fancy. Ancient writing found its victim. I was smitten by the beyond and the unknowable. Unity of existence, unity of consciousness, and other extended notions of God were my favourite ideas for contemplation.

I believe, we have an inherent weakness for grand ideas. People generalize about bosses, communities, and nationalities, all the time. The learned generalize about life and cosmos. A few overstep the bounds of reason and generalize about the nature of reality. The appeal of such ideas is inversely proportional to their degree of clarity. No doubt, these grandiose ideas make the tedium of our surroundings tolerable. 'Oneness of existence’, ‘singularity of consciousness’ are creative ideas. That someone was able to think them up does not make them true. They are not claims backed by evidence but claims of fancy, or at best, opinions. 

Knowledge arises through trial and error; a process known to us as science. Old navigation systems were not true by belief but evolved through observation and application. Objectivity, repeatability, verifiability, and falsifiability are the watchwords of scientific experimentation. Science is our only yardstick to evaluate a hypothesis, no matter how strongly we feel about something. Science speaks to the logical parts of our brain. It's the only language that brain can pick up and converse in meaningfully. 

Only when it comes to explaining the origins of life, science appears a little unsure. But it has a pretty good grip on what happens once life comes into being. Biology had to wait until physics and chemistry were perfected to break down biological functions into biophysics and biochemistry. It's been only four centuries since the method of science has been consciously adopted and it has already extricated a lot that was inexplicable. Let's give it some more time; it will bring to light all that is yet in the realm of mystery. Have no doubts about it.

Even the magnificent conclusions of the general theory of relativity (space-time pictured as a sagging mattress with matter and energy causing distortions in its geometry and thus gravity) are worked out through mathematics and science. That time almost stops when one attains the speed of light, a concept impossible to wrap my head around, is worked out in neat mathematical formula by Einstein. Who ever thought a material world would couch such mystical phenomena! The world of matter and energy is replete with wonders only if we look with fresh eyes. The awe and magic that we meet in the physical world is immanent in it and not imported from outside space and time. This idea is central to my atheism. 

Religion, on the other hand, believes that even physical laws are derived from God. Instead of accepting the authority of science, religion seeks petty recourse to ideas for which science is yet to evolve a conceptual framework: Consciousness, for instance. In my opinion, the religionist's propping up of consciousness is a sentiment against matter. Well, science is up to the challenge. Just like biology did, consciousness may need to wait a while; eventually, it will be explained in material and psychological terms. Hopefully then, God will vacate human minds. God is just a grand word for 'I do not know'. The word 'God' while it covers up our ignorance, also gives an illusion of understanding.

The attitude of the majority is that one loses nothing by believing in God. "If God does not exist, it would be just another idea among many others that had our mindshare. The preoccupation, if it comes to nothing, will be just one among many other things that we are preoccupied with. At least, the idea served to console and placate us. But, if He exists, then we would only be glad to have chosen well in spite of all evidence to the contrary." I am not willing to accept that unfounded beliefs are harmless, no matter how innocent they are. The belief of the majority determines the fate of a nation. Belief can colour our entire personality and attitude. It can make us blind to facts and make us acknowledge truths that are based on the authority of a book or one individual in the past.  

However evolved the concept of God, its very falsity is an invitation to dogma. The path of theism is paved with superstition, devotional eccentricities, hypocrisy, bigotry, astrology, numerology, psychic reading, and what not. I read God's affirmation in the falling of a flower, grace in the cawing of a crow, and ill-omen in the blowing out of a lamp. Although, all along the idea that rituals possess the potency to malign or bless the soul was beyond me. Arjuna says in the first chapter of the Gita that manes fall from grace when they do not receive rice and water as part of Sraddha ceremony. It always amazed me what is it about a physical act that rebounds to the spiritual realm. And how does semen, if retained, sublimate into spiritual energy?

So, is man a mere configuration of atoms and molecules? Love, fear, hope, longing, anguish count for nothing? They are indeed valuable as emotions. They complement our actions, forge our connections, and constitute the human element of our interaction. Their non-material nature is not a diagnosis for a non-material deity breathing those emotions into us. It is well-known that emotions have their corresponding chemical agents in the body and respond to stimuli. Attaining heightened awareness or higher states of consciousness is a human capacity that can be acquired through training and practice like any other skill. The experience is spiritual in that it promotes a unitary 'feeling'; nothing is supernaturally supplied to us in that state. 

People rationalize, "The fact that we are endowed with reason supports the God hypothesis. Maybe, God wanted us to work our way to our Creator. Everything else can be an accident except the phenomenon of a thinking man. A creator is a given!" It's an ego trip. Because we experience some firings in our heads, we attribute a special distinction to ourselves over every other creature.

Millions of years of evolution has endowed us with sophisticated brains. Not being around to witness evolution from a unicellular organism to a self-conscious man, we cannot appreciate the vast swathes of time over which species adapt until man arrives on the scene. A billion incremental adaptations got us where we are. We see intelligence where there is only blind natural adaptation. Any which way nature had unfolded, it would only appear intelligent to us. It's our helpless need to see a creator where there is only an interplay of blind forces.

I can’t express the feeling of lightness when you finally put aside the yoke of religious dogma. I intend to write a separate post on how liberating my atheism feels. But old habits die hard. Waking up from sleep, I have often caught myself muttering prayers. I smile to myself. "O God, it could have worked if only I had sleepwalked a little longer. Believe me, it is not you but me!" 😁

Good or bad, there is no recourse to obfuscation anymore; no divine will to submit to. No heaven, no hell. No reunions. No false hopes of redressal in the future for the suffering in the present. No deity sitting at whose feet I shall pass aeons in ecstatic visions. In death, we simply cease to exist. There is no soul to be delivered or damned. No divine will expressing itself in existence. No pre-ordained meaning to our life except what we give it. This world is all we have. Make the most of it here and now. Science, culture, and humanistic traditions can be our guiding lights.

Yes, it is important to salvage culture from religion. Free from religious trappings, it is our most valuable heritage. While evolution gave us bigger brains to work out our survival, culture made us aware of saner purposes in life. Culture informs art, architecture, and almost all aspects of our social life and thought. Culture nurses no enmity against science, rather it accords science its rightful place, often willing to correct course if science so dictates. So, let your altar be where it is. Get some good idols and images, clear out the excesses, and light a lamp to create a pleasing ambience.

Related post Salvaging Atheism from Crypto-Theists.