Why I Gave Away God.

Why I Gave Away God.

 I have a friend. She is perfect. Pretty, exquisite and stunningly witty. Every year, on the eve of 24th December, she is busy doing some shopping at local toy stores. Although she is very animated about shopping’s, this one is very close to her heart. At the end, when she is back home, her sack holds a small Christmas tree, few colorful baby socks, chocolates and some stationary.  At night, she sits and writes a very imaginative appearing childish letter. Huge letter. One A4 size paper, perhaps. This note is for Santa Claus. She slides it in one of the brightly colored sock. A bit of beautification is done and then this entire setup is placed in her balcony. This is what she tells me, “Vicky, Santa Claus is going to come on 25th night and after reading the letter would make everything I wished for come true.” 

I, although amused by her act of idiocy, was taken-back by her innocence. Isn’t this wonderfully illogical? I asked her “Have any of the wishes you are making from last 17 years bumped to reality anyways?” She said “Yes! Most of them do. Almost all do in-fact”. After enquiry, I was uncomfortable to conclude that indeed most of her wishes did actually come out to be true. Magical, isn’t it?

She is very personal with her letters. After making some puppy faces and doing alpha male stunts, she agreed to share them with me. Reading few of her letters, I realized a pattern she followed. This is called the Barnum statements. All her wishes were so profoundly vague and had no specific truth values or targets. Take for example, make my dad happy, make me satisfied with what I have, make my mom’s dream come true, May I be proud of who I am, etc. etc. Request like these are bound to workout, some or other day.

I know, and most of you will agree with me that Santa Claus doesn't exist in real world. It is, like a small fantasy story, made up in recent traceable history. Yet tens of thousands of people around the globe believe it (we can excuse small children for they are don’t know the truth yet, a child brain is a wanderer and the parents are the one who lie to them). 

That said, there is another picture though. . A wider apocryphal entity. A very big enterprise, highly complicated, stronger than Santa Claus, runs throughout the planet. It comes in all sizes and shapes. It has fashioned mass delusion in our society, majestically adaptable and somehow craving courtesy from all ages and types of people. We call it God.

I am an atheist. Atheism is a lack of believe in the existence of God or gods. I gave away god not of ignorance, but out of knowledge. Out of the curiosity. We all are born atheist. Later, our parents do the demarcation.

There are more galaxies in the universe than the total tally of grains of sands on all the beaches of our planet. Everywhere you look in sky; there are infinite numbers of stars present.  Every line of sight you have in the sky intersects with a star. It is just that the light has not reached your eyes.  If fact if you start counting the number of approximate stars in the universe, one star per second, it will take you around 10,56,99,30,661,254 centuries to complete the count.

Queerer, than we can suppose. We are extraordinarily minute. How ignorant it is to imagine, conclude, and on top of it, enforce that this entire orchestra of celestial object is just created for us. Just for one species on this lonely floating island. How profoundly selfish and utterly wasteful is this idea. Carl Sagan writes, ‘Man in his arrogance, think himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of the deity”.

The reason I gave away God is very modest. I find no compelling evidence to favor my beliefs in that particular system of thought. It is more or less like the Santa, an entity created by brain when we were just staring to contemplate nature. 

Today, the amount of evidence supporting the existing of God is more or less diluted by the progress of science. When nothing works, perhaps it is faith position. Keep yourself at distance, and you will find them to be true and compelling . A little bit of research will inspire  you to undertake a leap of faith.

Human brain is a sophisticated machine. One of its kinds in entire animal kingdom. We are pattern seeking animals. We project our mental state upon nature. Seeing clouds of random shapes; we call it Mother Mary, Elvis Presley, Lord Shiva. If we see a priest or tantric curing diabetes or paralyzes just by touching a person’s temple, we so much believe the invisible fluid flowing in between them. And yet there is not a single scientific paper ever proposed claiming that faith based healing is mainstream medical. We read a novel by somebody claiming past life truth, and there we go evangelizing to everybody. Again if you do just a pinch of research, this claim too falls on its face. Sadly, there is no current evidence for that too.

It is obvious to think that the world is been designed and there must a designer. But 200 years ago, it was obvious to think that the earth is at the center of the universe and the sun revolves around, which we now know for sure is wrong. When faced with evidence, we have two options, either to change our mind or, as most of us do, twist and turn the fact to confirm our older belief (cognitive dissonance). I choose the former. In this age of information, ignorance is a choice. A little bit of education can make you smart enough to know these patterns are just mental construct and a subjective experience. There are more than 2000 religion and 10,000 separate gods ever created in human history; more than ninety percent of them have already disappeared. BAM! Gone forever! What makes your religion and your god any better?

Truth and skepticism is beautiful. Life is special, the fact that we have it is very less probable (billion sperms, and you won!). I don’t want to delude myself by committing avoidable intellectual mistakes.  Bring me enough evidence showing that God, or whatever you call it, exist and it created the universe and takes care of us, etc. If they are credible, I would definitely change my mind. But been an informed and well-read atheist for five years, I am pretty convinced that, at least, the various Gods present today (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc.) can never be justified to be true and existential.

On the first day of his awareness, man created God. Sometime people say, God is out of time-space fabric, outside the entire dimension. Outside the universe. Well then I question back, if God is so utterly out of everything, how do you know about it and not me? Just because you read so age old book or somebody told you? Common. If there exist a God which has just created the universe and left it as it is, then there is no way of actually knowing about him, forget about knowing his mind, which religious authorities claim with such assurance.

The way we think is very important tool for shaping our society. Clinging to age old mythology and belief is now an obsolete practice. We have to rethink our basis value system. We have to evolve with time. Only change is permanent.