"Hi, I'd like to talk to you about..."

Well, it had to happen one day. I'd read that you can't be for too long in this country before you encounter an evangelizer, who's going to start the conversation with a huge smile and a big, Oh my, you're from India? and then ask if you have ever thought about life, and God, and what is the purpose of life. 

It's easy to see the purpose of their life. They have nothing better to do, than go about trying to achieve conversion of the people, who aren't already of their flock. Now, as an atheist, I seriously believe that most people are simply fooling themselves with whatever concepts of divinity and religion they're feeding on, but really, most of those people are harmless, and dangerous only to themselves, and as long as they stay that way, I really don't give a damn. It's when they start preaching their ideas to you, without any sense or invitation to do so, that they begin to get on your nerves. 

I don't have anything against Christians, or people of any religion for that matter. Rather, I should say that I do not think any the worse about someone simply because of their religion or religious belief. I do think their sanity is somewhat questionable, but that doesn't mean they can't be good people at heart. It's an open question, and though I believe what science has to say about the world, and I feel that science has the greater probability of being right about the issue, I will go so far being politically correct as to acknowledge that others have the right to think differently, if such is their inclination. No, the problem arises when people try to inflict their ideas on other people, without offering any reasonable justification for what they believe. 

I met a couple of young women today, out strolling their babies on the college campus. This is pretty common: the campus is a lovely, peaceful place, and it's nice to take a walk there. What I don't usually get is being stopped and questioned about my beliefs. They said hi, introduced themselves, and told me they were alumni, and had studied so many years back (not too long). Then, gently, they asked me if I have ever thought about life, and the purpose of life, if I had thought about what is lacking in life and happiness, even though humans have so much in their lives for them.

I knew what was coming. The next few sentences would be evangelical lines, and come they did. They started out by saying they believe in God, and they believe in Jesus, and they believe that Jesus loves them. They paused to ask me what I think. I replied stating that I have never thought about it, because I don't think I'm old enough yet to think of it, to which they immediately replied that "you may think so now, but one day, it may be too late to think about it", and something of the sort. They asked me if I knew anything about Jesus. I said yes, I've read about all the religions in school in Social Studies, and I have Christian friends too, I'm quite familiar with all the ideas.

The funny thing is, instead of picking up on that, as I was expecting them to, they went off in a totally different direction. "Oh, we guess you must be a Hindu?" and then they started on a tale of how the reason that we are always searching, is "because God is a virtuous God, a holy God, but Man is not so; Man is born sinful", followed by something about "searching for something to fill the emptiness inside, and that's why people make up so many religions, but in spite of all that, the search never ends", and then one female said something pretty weird, in the vein of, "you say you have Christian friends, but... don't know how Christian they are..." Then followed some idea about how "we all are sinful, but Jesus died for us, and so covered our sins, so that when God sees us, he doesn't see our sins, because Jesus is covering us".

I got a little angry at this point. It's hard to believe things like this really happen, that people can be so brazen, even though you've read about it a hundred times before. So people make up religions, do they? Well, darling, of course they do, and your own is equally made up, and there is not a shred of evidence to support any one religion more than any other, be it a religion in my country or yours. And I suppose my friends were not "Christian" enough, because apparently they hadn't tried yet to convert me! (This is one thing I read about on the net. Some people are convinced the only "true" Christians are those who actively work to convert all non-believers.) If you try to get picky and take apart that last sentence, about the 'covering' and the rest of it, you get lost somewhere. It just does not make any sense at all.

I purposely did not (and do not usually) let out that I am an atheist, because I was in no mood to get into a beautiful argument about belief and non-belief. My hair would start to whiten prematurely with having to dish out the same argument to every person I meet upon the street corner. I am not really a good debatist either, and I was also in a hurry to get someplace that was more interesting than anything these two would have had to say. Already, I was regretting trying to be politically correct by humoring their idiocy. 

Fifteen minutes of beautiful time utterly wasted. Of course, this sort of religious idiocy is not something possessed only by Christians. There are a whole bunch of people back home, who believe in all sorts of religious bullshit (horoscopes, eclipses are evil, superstitions of various kinds, etc), but their bullshit is easier to ignore, because it's more of a personal practice. If my friend thinks that the shadow of an eclipse is something evil, she can satisfy herself and stay at home, but woe betide her if she tries to press that idea on me, and stop me from leaving the house, and she knows that.

People back home usually don't bother with forcing their ideas on you (although I have a feeling it's mostly due to the misbegotten idea that you think the same way that they do). Works fine that way. And when they do try to impose, you can actually just tell them to go rot. They won't care. They won't bother. "The rest of the world can go to hell if it chooses to; I'm gonna take care of myself." We each follow the same policy in the end. Religious bullshit here might prove to be a lot more difficult to handle though, because there's an entire force of idiots actively trying to feed it to you. "Oh no, we can't and won't let you go to hell, when you can be SAVED!!!"

I wonder if a change in policy would help.

I Went There. So?

I'm an atheist, or at least I am far on the side of the spectrum that leads towards atheism. I don't believe in gods or in divine or supernatural presences, and I think people who do are kidding themselves in some way. But I still participate in certain religious ceremonies or excursions, when my family or friends have them. In a way, I think it's hypocritical and it is, but blandly saying that I won't be a part of it because I don't believe in it is also a little difficult for me.

The trouble is most of these religious functions are also social functions. I can't refuse to attend my cousin's wedding just because it's a religious ceremony; it's her wedding, she's happy and I'm happy for her, and I should be there to celebrate it with her. The same goes for every wedding ceremony or reception that I've ever attended. I've never gone to a wedding that was simply a court marriage followed by a simple reception or celebration party. Or if there's a festival around or something, and everyone's going to a temple or some kind of celebration, it's not just about going there to worship or pray. There's a kind of social bonding taking place as well, the very act of going out together, cooking together and spending time together. And people just expect you to be there, without asking whether you believe or not: they just assume that you do.

So I go along for the ride, I go to all these temples, I take the offerings that are given, I go through all the rounds of worship rituals. Actually, no, I don't do most of the ritualistic things. I simply stand there while everyone else is doing them, and I look at everyone and feel lost and awkward, because in my heart, I know I should not be there. Then once the ritualistic part is over, the social part starts. The food, the photographs, the talking, the laughing. Apparently it's a package deal; I cannot just avoid the ritual part of it and stay for the social part of it; it's either take it all or leave it all. Even if it doesn't mean anything to me.

I've tried objecting to it, even screaming at times that it doesn't make sense because I don't believe in it at all, but would you believe it, they still want me to go through with it. They think that either I'm being deliberately difficult, or I'm somewhat misguided, or that I should be made to do it for my own good, even when I don't believe. It's even funny in a way: people will be pleased with an outward show even when I openly declare that I do not believe, while the reason that they themselves do it is because they sincerely believe. Apparently, it's also a face-saving exercise in the end.

So now, I just go along for the ride. I still have to deal with the feeling of being lost and awkward, but once that's over, the fun begins. So, I wait for the party to start.

My Journey To Atheism

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.