A topic that has been a recurring interest for me, particularly in an active manner in recent months, is atheism. I have been an atheist for a very long while now, but it wasn't until pretty recently that I started thinking more actively about it.
I used to be religious as a kid. Or rather, I thought I was. Sure, we read in Social Studies about all the major religions of the world, and I studied in a secular school run by a private trust, so there was no religious propaganda of any kind. Indeed, one of the best-liked features of school was that every religious holiday was indeed a holiday; there wouldn't be any religious ceremonies in school, so we all enjoyed the benefit of one more day in the week on which we could sleep late! I knew I was born to a Hindu family, and so was heir to all the religious traditions and beliefs that Hindu families inherit through the generations, and for a long time I thought I was religious enough in my own way.
How wrong I was.
I never learnt any prayers, neither did I ever worship regularly, nor did I like visiting temples. This stemmed initially from the fact that I was too lazy to do stuff like that. Later on, it became laziness plus the fact that it all seemed rather pointless. For instance, it felt somewhat weird to be chanting strange words whose meaning I did not know; my mom, with huge efforts, taught me one or two prayers, but when I asked for the meaning of the words, she didn't quite take me seriously (though she is well-versed with what the prayers mean), and I lost interest quickly. Neither did the idea of bowing down before someone else sit well with me; that was probably partially due to a sense of ego, but at any rate, it did not make sense to me.
My mom prayed and worshipped everyday, and still does, but she never insisted that I should do so as well; this is the first point of difference between me and most others my age whom I've interacted with. My dad was already an atheist, so there was no insistence on religious customs coming from him, and he too never insisted on my either worshipping or not worshipping, leaving the choice to me. He was secular minded too, which may sound weird when said in connection with an atheist, but I can't really infer anything else on seeing the various religious books and texts that he collected over the years (we had the Bible and Quran, apart from the standard Ramayana and Gita, but then we also had various philosophical works, such as essays by Bertrand Russell and the like).
And what of me? I thought I was quite a religious person, because I used to watch just about every mythological serial that came on TV, and for quite some time, I did believe that every detail portrayed was literally true. But science education intervened, and subconsciously I came to the conclusion that these are just stories and cannot be true in the literal sense. The big bang theory, evolution of life, models of the atom and descriptions of subatomic particles had a more convincing ring to them, and I discarded the idea of gods and goddesses and mythical kings and queens for these more tangible mysteries, presented by science. I still continued watching the TV serials, because the stories were interesting enough (and there was nothing else that I could watch on TV).
The real change came about due to Social Studies, in Class 8. That was when we studied modern history, and in particular detail about all the social reformers of the 18th and 19th centuries: the beliefs they held, the societies they founded and the ideas they propagated. Most of them, while not seemingly atheist, at least believed that religious and spiritual belief are personal matters, and the worship of idols or images, or the practice of mindless ritual does no good to anyone. Reading about these people led me to actively think about what I believe, as far as my spiritual beliefs are concerned, and I realized I was already pretty non-religious, by all standards, only I hadn't known it before then.
Class 9 and the next three years were a sort of accelerated maturity period for me. I grappled with the ideas of atheism and agnosticism, flipped and flaunted the names around without really knowing or trying to know what they imply. I also found a new interest in reading non-fiction, and I read quite a few religious books, as part of that interest, though not with any spiritual inclinations in mind. I also happened to read quite a few excellent general science books. And once I was done dabbling with all the different aspects of the matter, I realized that I was still an atheist, not believing in gods or indeed in anything of a supernatural nature, and if anything, my convictions were only strengthened, as a result of my reading.
The next four years, after I was done with school, were when I started reading actively about atheism and atheist activity in the world. It's not been much so far, except for finding out which of my friends are atheist, and reading about atheism in the western world and what it implies to be an atheist in the west. Thus far I was shielded, in part because I wasn't proclaiming my atheist beliefs out in the open world. Atheists in the west have to contend with deeply religious people, who frown upon atheism as a source of degeneracy. Hindus also frown upon atheistic nature, but at present we have enough problems in the form of interreligious disharmony to deal with, alongside terrorism and the like, so nobody's going to worry about who's atheist, in all the mess.
Most of my reading thus far comes from people who have lived and grown in a predominantly Christian community, so their views and their reactions are quite different from what I have developed so far living in a predominantly Hindu community (of course, there's also the fact that I haven't yet gained enough experience in the world to talk very conclusively about what I've observed). These people have lived and faced an entire world of differences, arising solely from their lack of belief in any kind of divinity (which is quite an issue with most religious people in the west, who feel their identity is under attack if their religion is attacked). There have been a lot of words written and spoken on the matter, and a lot of ideas and opinions aired. So there is this entirely new point of view to think about, and at present I am devoting quite some energy to it.
My journey is still continuing. It's like watching a flower bloom - with every layer of petals opening up, a new and more intricate structure is laid bare to look at and analyze. But I still know, at the end of it, how I've travelled and where I've ended up: for all practical purposes, I'm an atheist.
