September 26th, 2008 – that is the date of my last blog entry. A lot of time as passed between that day and now, approximately 5 months, and so many things have changed. A lot of which i just don't wanna remember and I have tried my best to bury those memories but unfortunately there are stupid little people who live in my head who wield a lot of power. They are so powerful that my cerebrum functions on their dictates. Seriously! I am not crazy! When i really can do without remembering those memories those people hit the play button and it starts off in brilliant high definition quality! Stupid people! Anyways i am not going to rant about my problems and depress the few readers i have (see i am not such a cruel person after all). I will instead delicate this post to answering a question that I am often asked.
Why are you an atheist? / why don't you pray? / why don't you believe in god? and best one is – HOW CAN U NOT BELIEVE IN A GOD!?!?! and etc, etc, etc...
Now technically it is not one question but they all basically mean the same thing. Anyways enough of stalling, I will get on with the purpose of this post.
Agnostic Atheist
It is first important to know what the two terms (agnostic and atheist) mean for this purpose i will quote the oxford advanced learners dictionary –
Agnostic – a person who believes that it is not possible to know whether god exists or not.
Atheist – a person who believes that god does not exist.
Now there is a difference between the two, one says that we can never know if there is a god or not and the other says that there is no god. i am an agnostic atheist which is basically a mixture of two terms that mean completely different things, confused? I sound like some crazy person right? Well I might be a terribly confused person but I am not crazy! Ok I am a little crazy ... maybe completely crazy but anyways this isn't a debate about my sanity so let's get back to the issue at hand. Now I am an atheist when it comes to god as defined by most religions (the popular definition of god), that is, a supernatural being that is omnipotent (all powerful), omnipresent (being everywhere) and omniscience (having knowledge of everything). God is also the embodiment of everything that is perfect and good. It is this definition of god that I am atheistic about because to me such a being does not exist. 'Why?' you ask, well one will just have to look at the world and all its problems. Now the theist will say that is god's way of punishing man for all his sins. Now my counter to this argument is what about little children who are born into a world that is so brutal like some African nations where there is absolutely no regard for human rights. For example let us take Uganda, where a civil war has gripped the country for so many decades. I remember seeing a report on Oprah Winfrey which showed how little boys and girls were taken away by rebel soldiers. The girls were used as sex slaves and the boys were trained to fight and mostly used as cannon fodder. What possible explanation can one give? This is just one tiny example, what about the millions of other evil things that are going on in this world? What about religions oppression, like the caste system in my country for example were people are oppressed just because they are born into a family which is considered 'inferior' based on some absurd believes and what about religious wars or what I like to cal religious violence were men and women blow themselves in the name of god? One could go on and on but what I am trying to say is that the over simplistic view that this is god's way of punishing sinners just doesn't make sense to me.
There are questions that need answers and it is here that religion as a big advantage in the sense that one can understand the reason for it's mass appeal. Questions like the origins of the universe for example. The big bang theory has answered some questions but it is still not completely clear about a lot of things. Now I am no math wiz and my physics is limited to – if you throw an object upward the force of gravity will bring it downward. Therefore I am not trying to critique the big bang theory but I will raise one issue – the big bang is not completely clear about the events that transpired before the big bang and also about how all the matter came to be (the various elements that make up our universe). This is where the theist can say, 'HA! I got you there! Let's see you try and answer that with all your fancy science!' well I got to conceit defeat there, i have no answer and even people who are vastly superior to me have no answer, but my retort is simple, 'neither do you!' Sure they can say god created everything but proof? In this regard science and religion have reached a very frustrating stalemate! One can label me a pessimist (which I very much am) but I see no end to this stalemate, as the human mind has a lot of limitations that will keep us from fully understanding these complex questions.
Now we step into the agnostic part of Sid (assuming anyone even got to this point as this is arguably one of the longest and most boring things I have ever written!). I have earlier expressed how i am atheistic about most forms of god or at least the popular forms of god. However there are other definitions that are more liberal and less confining which i find interesting. Some define god as a universal force or cosmic energy that really can't be explained or even experienced. It is not a very clear definition of god but a person once told me if you find it difficult to understand don't use the term god, instead substitute it with energy or a mysterious force which we as humans will never know. My agnostic side is the confused side which says that one can really never rule out anything and that nothing can be proven for sure in this regard. It is also the open minded part of me which accepts that i can never know the truth but having said that i also have a bold claim which is – neither can anyone else know the truth.
My friend (who is a theist by the way) gave me an interesting quotation from the Hindu scriptures, from a book called Taittiriya
Upanishad section Siksha Valli to be precise, which says –
Mother is god,
Father is god,
Guru (teacher) is god,
And she added, 'these are the only forms of god we can experience after all!'
Am I happy being an agnostic atheist? Do I ever want to change?
Well being what I am is only my natural response - this is what I am because this is the only thing I can be. Am I happy? I really don't know how to answer that question. I am certainly not sad about being an agnostic atheist if that is what the people who asked me this question meant. However sometimes it is hard to be alone because every person I care about is a theist and I am very different – wow I just admitted to feeling a little left out! However there are people that care about me regardless of this difference and I lead a pretty normal life so ya I am not sad one bit about being what I am. However I sometimes feel that my social life would have been better if I was a theist (however it should be noted that my not so good social life or lack of it, might also be because of my obnoxious behaviour at times and my uncanny knack at irritating people beyond permissible limits at the worst possible time!).
Change – for this there are only two possible if's
- If somehow the existence of god
is proven then I will have to definitely have to become a theist as not believing in something that exists is absurd (I can picture some of your guys laughing at me already) - If
I can have
faith. This is something I don't have and you can even say it is a deficiency I have but that's the fact. I remember once seeing a child, a girl who was probably no more than 4, kneel down and look at an idol of Ganesha with so much devotion. I really wonder sometimes what went on in her mind, was she really aware of what she was doing, did she expect something, I just don't know, but the point is I can never be like that, faith is something I just don't possess.
I really don't see any of those things happening so i may never change (note I used the word 'may' - I am really confusing right?)
Now I have tried my best to make myself as clear as possible and I hope to have succeeded in answering the question and also more importantly I hope I haven't bored my readers or reader (which is more likely the case) to death!
Hope all this rambling made sense and I really hope to be hearing from you, please feel free to leave comments, I would love to hear anything you guys have to say and I stress again on ANYTHING!
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