I was born and raised an orthodox catholic, in a middle class family. Deep rooted in religious customs and beliefs and with an unwavering fear of the almighty passed down through the generations, my parents always tried to instill in me the true Christian way of life. They were simple people, from a small town that worshipped Jesus like I worship Ferraris. I understand that’s a personal analogy and need not be approved by everybody but you get the picture. No questions asked, no doubts raised, it was pure unadulterated faith, a facet of their life that they are mighty proud of.
As I child I was every traditional Indian parent’s dream. Obedient and good at school. Yes that’s the end of the list in case you were looking for more. Mind you, when I say good at school, I mean the absolute top of the class every time. My parents attributed this to the fact that they put me on a study table for 14 million hours a day and of course to the grace of the lord god Jesus almighty. But the one thing that irked them from the beginning was the fact that I asked questions. I asked them till I was convinced that they were answered. At first this was easy to deal with. Any question that couldn’t be answered my parents would divert towards “the will of god”. Anything from why do we pray to where do we come from to why we die to why does soda have fizz. No, honestly, that last one wasn’t a joke. My mother actually doesn’t understand the magical concept of carbonated water.
I grew up to be someone who respected “Jesus Christ our savior”. Sunday mass, communion, confessions, evening prayers, the whole nine yards. I’d be lying though if I don’t admit that the doubt in my mind about this concept grew bigger the whole time. But when it got worse and I would incessantly query her, my mother would always recite this little story that she heard as a child. She insisted it was about a certain St. Augustine. Though, in all my years of searching for this story, I have never come across it. So it goes like this. St. Augustine was walking down the beach one day contemplating, according to my mother, “THE greatest mystery to have ever intrigued mankind”. No, we aren’t talking about the big bang. Evolution you say? Nope wrong again. “The father, the son and the holy spirit. Three forms one god. How?” I mean how could it be? Yes that’s the one. While he was pondering upon this he came across a boy trying to fill water from the sea into small hole he had dug in the sand, using a tiny cup. Augustine spotting this walks up to the boy and asks “little boy what are you trying to do”. The boy replies “I am trying to empty the sea into this hole that I have dug in the sand”. At this Augustine scoffs “boy you are a fool, you should know that this tiny hole will never hold a great ocean and even if it were to you would take a million years emptying it”. At this point the boy magically sprouts a halo around his head and says then why are you trying to do the same thing with the mystery of the trinity?” Augustine is taken aback. Before he can think the boy transforms into Jesus and says “Don’t question only follow”. This fable became a staple fare in our household and the punch line was the convenient response to any doubt I had about god. For slow coaches, the little hole is our brain and the ocean is the greatest mystery to have ever intrigued mankind which is the mystery of the holy trinity of course. Oh did I mention that was according to my mother?
At that impressionable age between 9 and 12 anything your parents tell you was Wikipedia material. What I meant by that was the information was absolutely unquestionably accurate! And so I believed with all my heart the golden rule – don’t question only follow. I grew up and inevitably, hormones took over, and I was termed a rebel in no time. Like any teenager would behave, I was cocky, brash and with a confidence that could touch the sky. All this was considered a crime in the house of god so I was expected to be even more devout than I already was. This would of course rid me off the evil spirit that had taken over me, causing me to behave like one. That doubt I spoke about earlier. Yeah, that started to kick into high gear in my head. My parents obviously resorted to their tried and tested formula of using the age old adage – don’t question, only follow. Now when you are a raging teenager all you do is question everything. And follow? Yeah right! Good luck with getting a teenager to do that. Getting Hitler to surrender would have looked an easier task. And so all I wanted to do was question everything and not follow anything I was asked to follow. Today, for the lack of a better expression if I may, I thank my stars for that stage in life. It gave me the required impetus to break away from the shackles that I feel bind so many of us.
But breaking point came when in the year 2000 my father announced that he had been cheated by his best friend off an enormous amount of money and faith in god was the only thing that could save the family. I was only 16 at the time and I remember thinking sure faith in god is going to save us much like roast lamb or five’s rendition of we will rock you would . When I asked them for a detailed explanation I was shot down with a “who do you think you are? You are too young to understand, just pray to god asking his forgiveness and ask him to help us” I retorted with a “but why should we ask him for forgiveness, what did we do wrong?” This of course was met with “don’t question, only follow”.
I distinctly remember that’s the day I turned into an atheist. Like Richard Dawkins would say, a militant atheist. I always knew there was a chance I was right but the fear of the “what if” situation always kept me on a leash till then. Not anymore. That’s when I started to question and stopped following. The simple logic that an almighty omnipotent god could not save a set of his ardent and most devout worshipers from something as trivial as economic struggle, was enough for me to understand that god had been large scale hoax that had been meticulously perpetrated through the ages of civilization. My initial realization manifested itself in the form of anger and frustration at the fact that I was an idiot maybe a coward even not to have seen this earlier. But more so at what I felt was the senselessness that surrounded me about this concept at close quarters. My hormones were to blame. My sister was alright, her faith she kept to herself. But my parents though were going overboard and resorted to everything from prayer meetings to retreats to inviting people home who would shout loudly claiming to have a direct Wi-Fi line with god almighty. The sheer nonsense was getting to me and I decided to confront my parents with my theory of no god. Now my father is a nice man at heart but being an old school south Indian dad, talking more than three words a month to his son was only a tad more likely than women growing beards as a fashion statement. So I thought I’d rather start with mum. Her reaction was nothing different from what I had expected. Basically consisting of warnings about facing the wrath of god and asking me to do the one thing she always would – don’t question, only follow.
Time passed, painfully slowly mind you, but pass it did. I gradually learned to live with the ridiculous dogmas that surrounded me back then. Never followed them, but I dared not to refute them for the fear of the emotional situation in my family imploding. Why you ask? Because everything we did or said hinged on whether or not it pleased Lord Jesus. I wouldn’t want to go into the details of what I sincerely call the dark ages of my life but I remember waiting for the day I’d get a job and can be free of all the balderdash that surrounded me. I grew to be a man found myself a job and moved away from home. Free at last I was able to ponder more, whenever I got the time, about why more people aren’t free to think for themselves rather than choose to be enslaved by the thought of this made up man in the sky watching all over them. With my mother and father and people of their generation, it was understandable. Small town folk from an era in a country where a woman’s education was a means to bring down the dowry the bride’s father had to cough up. But it baffled me to no end to see that a vast majority of people from my time, the educated, knowledgeable generation that had been exposed to progressive thinking in so many ways and forms, still lay firmly in the iron clasp of this curse, for the lack of a better word. They like my parents didn’t question, only followed!
It irked me in the beginning but then with age set in wisdom and the ability to peacefully tackle the “word of god”. I learned to talk about it as much as I can but not to be affected by the inability of the opposing side to see reason. People always ask me why I spend time so vehemently refuting claims of belief systems based on wafer thin reasoning, when I could be spending more time trying to do something for myself. My simple answer to that is it doesn’t take as much time as you think it does and it causes me no harm. But there is deeper reason to why I do it which I understand is plainly evident in the way I express my thoughts about it. I feel it robbed me off the person I could have become. It robbed me off my child hood. It ruined the relationship I had with my parents. And I see it happening to people all around me simply because of an irrational but deep rooted fear of being watched by an imaginary pair of eyes. Do I blame my parents for it? Yes I did in the beginning but that was more my immaturity. I began to realize a while ago that it isn’t their fault at all. In this country of deep rooted traditions, cultures, principles and rules, which if you ask me are just a farce to be dropped at the first sign of trouble, my poor parents are a part of an already huge and growing majority of frightened people. In a society where every decision from what to buy to what to eat to where to live to what work to do to even where to marry their children off to depends on the all-important question – “what will other people say?” few have the courage and the gumption to question anything. And sadly my parents are not among them. They don’t question, they follow. The reasons are aplenty like for the fear of being judged, for the fear of being singled out, but most importantly and most shockingly for the fear of being actually punished by this almighty power that apparently holds the copyrights to their life. You tell me, being characteristically good souls coming from a time and place where this rubbish was all that was fed to them, from when they could remember, to the extent of being brain washed, are they to blame? They are just scared like so many of us. So today, I don’t mind when my mother says that if her extended family and kin found out that I am an atheist then she would kill herself. Yes she is a drama queen no doubt, but I can see the sheer baseless fear that terrorizes her. It’s the same when my father says that he is ashamed to call me his son because I “worship the devil”. At this point I must tell you that he finds the concept of not believing in anything extremely illogical, ironically so. By that theory if you don’t believe in god you must believe in the devil. Hence I am a devil worshiper! Oh his theories can make up a separate article but that for another time. Like is said, I don’t mind, I really don’t, because they are just scared souls trying to find the right way to live.
Like I mentioned a little earlier, what I find most shocking is how educated people, the people from my generation and later, still want to cling on to a theistic belief system. Forget the fundamentalist nut jobs, you’d find a bunch of those anywhere and there is something acutely wrong with them. But what about the rest, the intelligent, the educated, the kind hearted people in the society who want to follow suit? I understand faith. A famous line in a movie goes “hope is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of their greatest strength and their biggest weakness”. Faith is much like it only a step further. It gives emotionally weak people a crutch to get from point A to point B marking the start and end of the toughest times in their life. And then they believe that are forever in debt. But how can people not see the gaping holes in this ideology. Like any belief system, that is worried to be put to a test backed by logical reasoning, people tend to see the hits and completely ignore the misses. Case in point being something simple like thanking god for every success or for every time a life is saved miraculously or otherwise, basically for all the good on the planet. They conveniently ignore the failures like people and children that die tragically, the wars, the disease, the imperfections galore on our planet and the fact that our measly planet is the only one in the entire universe that this almighty power chose to put life on. The rest of them were but may be for him to juggle in his free time. When I question I’m told, yes, God has his ways so don’t question, only follow. Is it really only a few that see that the concept of an almighty god that knows exactly what you want but wants you to beg for it in the form of “prayer” is plain sadistic? Is it only a few that see that if god can be credited for the positives then, by logic at least, he can be blamed for the negatives? Is it only a few that see that worshipping god has all the virtues of slavery? From the stance we choose, whether it is the kneeling or the folded hands or the bent head to the seldom raised voices while literally begging? What else would want you to never question and only follow?
These were just base level arguments. When I find myself in debates with the apparently highly knowledgeable people from the theological society I get asked questions which they feel are water tight arguments in the favour of god. For example Christianity, being a lenient religion and all, preaches the concept of free will. I’m sure other belief systems have the same concept with their own twist to it but what it basically says is, god knows everything but he has given you the right to choose. This of course, if you haven’t noticed already, makes up for very well for his fiascos. Now proper learned people will come up with arguments against this concept that are empirical and abide by the laws of physics that govern the universe, but let me simplify it for you. If God knows everything that you are about to do that means your actions are predetermined or you do what he wants you to do. This by logic is the complete opposite of free will. Now if you’re telling me that god actually does not predetermine what you do, that then means he has no control over your actions. What that means is that an all powerful and all controlling god, does not actually control anything. How then does that make him all powerful and all controlling? The next most common thing I get asked is what guides my moral compass if not a god. Quite simply what tells me what is right and what is wrong? I get asked what’s stopping me from killing or stealing or raping. When I get asked this by religious people the first thing that goes through my mind is crippling fear. Because what this tells me is that if it were not for “god” all of you would be killing stealing and raping everyone left right and center. For people still in doubt it is very simple. To have a moral compass you don’t need god you only need empathy. The rule is simple do to others what you would like others to do to you. Never do to others what you wouldn’t want others to do to you.
You would like to think I have rambled on enough about this topic but believe me I can go on and on about it. I don’t know what my aim with this rambling is, but yes, somewhere somehow I would like to rid the world of this nuisance. Free the people, that I know at least, from its vile clutches. I’d like to see people take credit for a success just like they would take responsibility for a failure, I’d like to see people stop killing each other on the basis of what their faith tells them, I’d like to see people, especially in a country like ours, take decisions based only on the basis of what makes them happy as long as they aren’t harming anybody, and so on and so forth. For the time being I ask you to do just one thing – don’t follow always question!
kennethanto 