"The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank."
I'm thankful for a lot of things in my life. To whom, I can't say. Why things are the way they are, I can't say. While the mind wrestles the point of whether I must believe in the religious entity that my parents genuinely believe in, and to their credit, have never forced me to believe, a part of me wishes that life, in all its glory, wasn't so purposeless, as it so probably seems.
A friend recently got cornered into admitting something that I suspect a lot of us secretly think. When I asked him if he believed in God (the use of upper case is what got resolved after much deliberation and no substantial conclusion) he vehemently confirmed. Having been in the process of reading a book called The God Delusion (I still am) I was stongly inclined to atheistic views. So I confronted him with all the arguments I had so freshly been armed with against the existence of his deity. Whatever he said in his support, I had an argument against. Somewhere, though, the argument deviated to the difference between luck and coincidence. And somehow, the fact that some people are lucky, and some are not, lead to the God Conclusion. He, however, countered his own statement by saying ultimately that 'luck is just coincidence in your favour.' By the end of it, he gave up, (partly, as you shall soon see) and said, "Look, I know there is no God!.." (wait, its not over) "....but I use the concept as a tool to keep myself on the right track."
Said I, "When you know and admit that yourself, why would you need a 'tool'."
And then I heard the earlier statement again and again in different ways.
Are many of us closet atheists?
Quoting Richard Dawkins:
"We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
And then there were none.
A friend recently got cornered into admitting something that I suspect a lot of us secretly think. When I asked him if he believed in God (the use of upper case is what got resolved after much deliberation and no substantial conclusion) he vehemently confirmed. Having been in the process of reading a book called The God Delusion (I still am) I was stongly inclined to atheistic views. So I confronted him with all the arguments I had so freshly been armed with against the existence of his deity. Whatever he said in his support, I had an argument against. Somewhere, though, the argument deviated to the difference between luck and coincidence. And somehow, the fact that some people are lucky, and some are not, lead to the God Conclusion. He, however, countered his own statement by saying ultimately that 'luck is just coincidence in your favour.' By the end of it, he gave up, (partly, as you shall soon see) and said, "Look, I know there is no God!.." (wait, its not over) "....but I use the concept as a tool to keep myself on the right track."
Said I, "When you know and admit that yourself, why would you need a 'tool'."
And then I heard the earlier statement again and again in different ways.
Are many of us closet atheists?
Quoting Richard Dawkins:
"We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
And then there were none.
7 comments:
Good to see that the writer's block you were complaining about has been well and truly blown away. :)
Life for an atheist/agnostic doesn't have to be purposeless. *You* get to create meaning and purpose for yourself. That is usually a thoroughly uplifting and liberating realization. That's when you've really broken free.
You've got to have the said realization by yourself, though; it doesn't sound half as powerful it really is when someone else tries to tell you.
finding god is somethng that google cant answer :|
but about god i am confused, its kind of a discrete existence about him/her, a debate which is endless and confusing
What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?
Irv Kupcinet
The last quote is awesome.
Now that you mention it, most of us probably are "closet atheists". I just need to believe in miracles. Need to know somebody is always there. Always watching. Gives me a lot of strength and comfort. And since it helps.. What's wrong in believing, is my stand. And I'm a little scared of bad things happening if I don't believe.
If one is scared of disrespecting God for fear of luck suddenly turning bad.. Does that make him a theist?
The first quote is mind blowing too.
@suprita: Does it really help? The strength and comfort that you get as a result of believing in a god, who also apparently lets the world have war and cancer and loss of loved ones...you get the drift. How does that comfort you?
I believe it is the quest for reasons that ultimately to the concept of God. That it got mutated into an entity to fear and seek out for guidance ,is but dilution of its original purpose. Luck after all plays a big part in our daily lives, and to explain this phenomenon, we say "God knows"
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