Atheism Is Justified, Religion Right Aligned

Dear Believer,

I'll tell you what you did with Atheists for about 1,500 years.

You outlawed them from the universities, or any teaching careers, besmirched their reputations, banned or burned their books or their writings of any kind, drove them into exile, humiliated them, seized their properties, arrested them for blasphemy. You dehumanized them with beatings and exquisite torture, gouged out their eyes, slit their tongues, stretched, crushed, or broke their limbs, tore off their breasts if they were a woman, crushed their scrotum if they were men, imprisoned them, stabbed them, disemboweled them, hung them, burnt them alive.

And you have the nerve enough to complain to me that I laugh at you.

Best Regards, Dr Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

Atheism is a by-product of religion, one spiritual writer of a leading daily asserts, while criticizing  non-believer’s thought processes. Do not play god for god’s sake.

A spiritual writer, on a mainstream newspaper, could have written it no better the short piece titled ‘Atheism not Justified’. The most interesting features of this weekly Inner Voice column are his four reasons why we, the atheists, exist. It looks no surprising, given his inclination towards a master creator that human beings, for the want of enough intelligence or stupidity galore, we have labeled it as a god.

Failure of gods, prayers and divine intervention
So, what are the writer’s viewpoints, labeling our belief system of atheism as unjustified? I have squeezed his four points below. Do not laugh in the name of god, considering even the absurdity that is apparent all around:

1. The negligible success rate of prayers, amen
2.We have not taken some classes from the believers or rather the expert theists
3. The lack of authorship of the scriptures
4. Gods are everywhere. We should listen to their instruction, rather than in wasting our time in building a fallacious system to know the gods.
5.Godmen and other religious nuts — those self-styled gods are driving away the people, not necessarily with their divine power, but with their shameless godly behaviours.

Precisely, in addition to the prayers, we are never satisfied with the silent solutions. He says, in a paraphrase, ‘Atheists do not know the gods would deliver; at least, this has been one of the major reasons behind the existence of organised religions.’ On the other hand, the writer mentions the gods do help when the very cause deserves a divine touch to heal all the problems. The world would have been a paradise, if we go by this statement.

You all try to be ‘closer to God’ but why do you assume I want to be closer to you? There’s a reason I live in a gated community.
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) https://twitter.com/TheTweetOfGod/status/314120749319344128 target="blank">March 2013

The brain behind the creation of a supreme master
If atheism is a religion’s by-product, religion is a by-product of our brain. Why do the religions exist in the first place? Howsoever hollow it is, one, a belief system offers consolation why the universe and we exist. Two, it covers up our fear of loneliness in the vast cosmo and subsequently our dreadful idea of death. Religion somehow reduces our fear. Three, it promotes unity and gives an identity to the rootless and well-settled groups of people. Four, our stupidity, hopelessness and dependency habits further accentuate the religious feelings.

We process the concepts of ideas, events and people in our brain, where the gods rightfully belong. It is more amazing than the divine creation. Presumably, the gods just exist in our brain. Nothing explains better than the idea that we are cultural consumers.

Do not get struck in a rut
Can you see the glaring errors of observation by the spiritual writer? He is struck inside the suffocating compartment of religion and he started with a wrong premise, right from the beginning. If I meet some of my theist friends, I would ask them how they achieve success from their prayers.

I grew up, studying in a mission school for 13 years. Our father in heaven / Hallowed be thy name…blah blah and blah, amen. Every day, before the first class and a minute before leaving for home, we had to recite the Lord’s Prayer for nearly 50,000 times until we left for high school. Then, in our biology class, we learned Gods appear when microbes metamorphose into a low-quality thinking animal.

No hard feelings to the believers; the most ridiculous stuff is their self-acclaimed term of believer, while others are labelled as non-believers. The use of prefix ‘non’ is very unfair in one moment, and intolerably rib tickling at the same time. It is as if the believers are saints, while the atheists have nothing to contribute in social welfare. The gods would surely love the comparison, if we go by the funny counter-views of each other. The timing is just perfect. What do you want from the gods and its heavenly buffet?

My way or the highway
Social convention always pisses me off. It makes us so fake. However, no person in their right mind would disagree the brutal nature of those in power. Religious people never admit the identity crisis, especially in my hometown, where there is always an atmosphere of ennui at its best, and a lingering air of hostility and aggression on the other.

No power makes religion a better option than prisons

Religion is a figment of human imagination, expressing that we are so stupid, even to know why we are imagining at a particular point of time. You might tell me that religion is a personal choice. However, in the proverbial nuances, all of us have to pay for the brunt. You are promoting your religions through funny posters pasted on the wall, with a funnier cello tape.

Have you heard about the Indian temple that receives donation only in cash or gold? Nobody can deny the gods’ presence when they put up a framed photo of their favorite gods. The omnipresence always hold true. Religions are a rightists’ favourite pastime. They ought to have someone whom they can put the blame, complain and cry; if not, only the gods would be grossly insufficient to make our life a whole package.

Atheism: a rational default position
A friend had explained the similarities between gods and atoms, which exist even if we cannot see them. For that matter, there is a pile of craps at the entrance of the temple. Leave alone seeing it, we cannot even smell it. Still, there is nothing wrong in believing the gods are an invisible clown, entertaining the opiated people. Yet, it is open to question if the god’s people start playing for a sucker. We belong to a group of people with no direction, forward and backward alike.

My Hindu name pisses me off at times as well. Apparently, the change should start from a personal level. We can further imagine the futility of powerful gods and their enchanting wives, oops, the goddesses.

To summarise, atheism is rightly justified, while religions tends to be rightist, as in right-wing politics. Stand in a queue; everyone gets a fair chance to see the idols, carved in woods and marbles in temples. Possibly, we should pray and wish to fulfill our needs and wants, when we get to enter a temple occasionally. Yet, this stand or a principle, whatever, does not make religion a better option than high-security prisons. Atheism, indeed, is a rational default position.