Tuesday, August 24, 2010

atheism:another alternative to convenience

SOMETHING I WROTE 5 YEARS BACK:

God
where is he and who is he?
is he a he?

since childhood i have had numerous questions that spring up in my mind everyday questioning the very tenets humanity is based upon..the existence of a supreme force called god,the creator of what is today.
needless to say all my questions are still unanswered but somewhere somehow i had begun to understand a few things on this issue.
i will share them with you

god or belief is just an act of convenience.
humans,because they have evolved so much mentally and because they are perhaps the most social of all organisms on the earth,are dependant and weak.
because we live in a society,we,since childhood are used to our parents,our teachers,our friends and anyone and everyone around us.even the beggar on the road who i have nothing to do with directly makes me feel a part of a setup,makes me feel i have a position in this human hierarchy.a terrorist sitting in lebanon makes me feel there is something that needs to be done,makes me feel i need to do something to stop the bloodshed if i am human.in that way each one of us has a certain obligation and we all fulfil them wether by choice or not.
this leaves us with two choices,either trust yourself completely and be called arrogant and self righteous or to place your trust in an unseen intangible entity called god.
the latter is easier as it doesnt have any room for accountability.if something does go wrong we move on saying god knows and god will help me.in a way it just hels us derive some strength from something that doesnt even exist.people find it easier to attribute all their happiness and place all their trust and faith in an entity they would anyways never see.
imagine trusting your best friend and being betrayed.
now imagine placing your faith in a piece of clay and accepting with all humility your failures and mishaps in life.its a survival mechanism.its a mode of convenience.
i cant see god so its easy for me to just place all my faith in him and even when i do not get what i was looking for i would not blame him cus in the first place i cant see him and i am ready to believe this is all a part of a plan.
as humans we want to do that,we want someone to place our trust in,somone to tell us that we will live on even when things have gone bad,someone we can derive some hope from and someone who can tell us it was meant to be and so we stop questioning why it happened.we give in to the force of the unseen,telling ourselves that he is the coach,the manager,the physio and the audience.
i can just play and i can just try but if i lose he will be the only one who would have known why i lost or would undrstand that i did put in my best though i did not get the desired result.
so logically atheism makes much more sense but then because i am a human too and people all around me believe in god and because i too have found that life becomes much easier if you can place all your faith and trust in someone you cant question,but just accept,i turn a believer.

i am not an atheist
maybe a convenient atheist
maybe a weak human being

it needs to be seen and decided
i am still on my path to find which hat to don.

4 comments:

  1. Great Post!
    Read this..though not directly related, very applicable.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control

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  2. Very well expressed.
    There are similar thoughts that come to my mind... I used to think I am the only pseudo-atheist who thinks about things like that... glad to know you exist.

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  3. well put! i think though logically, atheism puts more responsibility and accountability on 'oneself'..id rather believe in me.

    theists do love putting their belief in the unknown

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  4. I am a believer in the higher being(just not in a religious way).I just never quite thot of it as a shift in 'acountability' though I can see it now. Just that when am doubting things or circumstances around me, the thot of a higher being just reduces the anxiety of not having a answer or solution to everything!... very well written....

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