Atheism 2.0
I always preferred being called an agnostic. Although I don’t buy any philosophy that religions profess, I quite didn’t appreciate being called an atheist. Atheism somehow meant vanity for me. There is so much that we do not know about our own nature and the nature of the universe that surrounds us. We are deceived by our senses and brain perceptions at almost every stage of life and yet how can we be absolutely certain about our faith. It was this dilemma that kept me from calling myself an atheist. I was open to all the convincing arguments put forward by religions so that I could switch sides with them, but somehow luckily for me that never happened. As I learnt more about religion, the more I distanced myself from it.
Almost all religions began with exceptional individuals who had extraordinary experiences in their lives. Be it Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed or saints and sages of the ancient India and abroad. But if we are to consider current research in neuroscience these supposed godly experiences of all these extraordinary men would be simulated in a laboratory in a near foreseeable future. All god experiences are nothing more than psychosomatic experiences and there is enough science literature to back it. If we are to go by statistics alone 99.9% of world population has never had a god experience, but still finds it convenient to believe in one. So yes, if you take pride in belonging to 21st century please don’t buy the hogwash that the religions have to preach.
But there are quite a many wonderful things that I have learnt being associated with religious people. My love for these ways of living makes me a kind of religious man, yet who does not really believe in religion, quite paradoxical 🙂 . So I preferred being an agnostic until now. Although I believe the world will be a better place to live without religion. Although I am sure the general hatred among the masses will exponentially reduce with the death of religion. And although we will have enough time to focus on the ideals of life and principles of morality when religion is removed from our conscience, I somehow cannot guarantee myself the fruitfulness of the endeavor. There are so many things that we would miss if there wasn’t a religion.
Okay! So if I were to just brush aside the idea of religion, there would be so much I will be missing in life. The art of meditation or mindful awareness that I have come to appreciate, where does it stand in absence of religion? The religious congregations where I get to meet so many people whom I cannot meet otherwise, and where the people meet only for the sake of it and not for business, what happens to these communal events in the absence of religion? The grand temples, churches, mosques and other beautiful architectural wonders that are symbols of religions, what significance do they hold in absence of the reason for which they were erected? A filler, a companion in difficult times, what do we have at such times if not god? And so many other aspects of our social and personal life, that are based on religious beliefs and are quite beneficial to our well-being, what would possibly replace them if we cast aside religion. Definitely Atheism can’t replace all of it. If we are to go by current understanding of atheism by the general public, it’s plain boring.
We need to revive atheism. We need to make people realize how rewarding it can be, to be secular. And to the rescue comes the man Alain de Botton. He talks about Atheism 2.0 in the below talk and produces a convincing argument.
http://embed.ted.com/talks/lang/en/alain_de_botton_atheism_2_0.html