Bigotry of an atheist
Oh, my thirty-three crore Gods — bless my parents, brother, girlfriend, relatives, mankind, all living beings in this world and myself. Bring world peace and let there be no wars!
I remember praying this every night before my sleep for so many years until I let go of God sometime in my early twenties. I think the Gods helped me to move forward and to stay grounded throughout. The fear of God helped me not getting carried away in success and gave me hope when I failed and felt miserable.
I ask myself all the time that what turned me into an atheist over time and what was the exact point in time that I convinced there is no external entity that I could conveniently piggyback on for everything in my life. What was that realizing moment that changed me from being a person who goes to Devi temple every weekend to an atheist?
No, it wasn’t “The god delusion” or “The god is not great”. I didn’t know of Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens back then. The more I think about it I guess I let go of God when I learnt to accept that all those times I was talking to myself about my dreams and mistakes and that talk was helping me positively. The moment I was going to pray for something that was too far fetched — I knew it’s not going to happen. When I would fail at something and ask God to find a way out — he always came back saying I didn’t try hard enough — It helped me persevere. But it reached a point when I realised that it wasn’t the temple or the money in the donation box — but it’s the time I took for talking to myself that helped me. The moment you do the wrong thing — you know it. The moment you haven’t tried hard enough — you know it again.
The problem of God was when I did the wrong thing. Apologizing to the God would give me comfort and it was beyond my comprehension back then to figure out how that helped. Would that correct my mistake? I would repeat the same thing over and again because I have done the wrong thing and apologized to the god and nothing wrong has happened to me. Did it help me? Yes. I would do anything I want and go back to apologize to the God and get over my sins.
When I was in my early twenties I started questioning the existence of the God figure that was going to help me in getting promotions and who will forgive me for the mistakes I made. It took me a while trying to figure out if it was the God or the temples that helped my success, and I could feel mostly the talks I had with the God were to myself and anything external had little to do about it. I had no idea if the Gods were moved by the stinking ten rupee notes that I put in the donation boxes either. Over time I learnt to talk to myself without the mediation of the God and I started appreciating how clearly we know when we are selfish and when we are selfless. I’m not implying selfishness is wrong, but we tend to piggyback on god and say it’s God’s will and let go of self-introspection on many occasions otherwise.
Years passed, I reached mid-twenties and I had completely forgotten temples and gods unless I wanted to criticize them. It was only possible for me to pity those who still believed in God and I took every opportunity to convince folks that there isn’t any god out there. Around then I started reading more on religion and how atrocious every single one of them was and the sort of damage it has done to the society. From the crusades to jihad to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, I found enough reason to hate religion.
“If people are to know and understand the real world they must give up superstitious beliefs because they have a narcotic effect on the mind.”
Somewhere between the conflict of religion and culture, I forgot that the fight against god and religion was different. It was just bigotry in a way to preach about atheism while I was unwilling to hold any conversation on why one would still choose to believe in the existence of God. I would outrightly judge one for believing in God as being inferior and not having the courage to take responsibility for the consequences of their choices. There was definitely a time when the concept of having god helped me in achieving my goals but I seem to have completely forgotten it. Over time it made me think, why should we have the prejudice? Why have this bigotry?
A few years went by and I think I’m a much more confident atheist now. God and superstitions are some things that I would never believe in. But I can now accept that many folks prefer to have god in their life and it’s just their choice which I would happily respect without any prejudice. I don’t think we should judge someone for believing in God And we need not preach atheism as the only way forward because it’s the same sort of intolerance and bigotry the religions follow, isn’t it?
