On Religion

Religion. One would be hard-pressed to find a more divisive topic of discussion. Everyone is convinced of the veracity of his or her opinion and considers those who disagree to be part of the unenlightened. Discussing the nuances of one’s thoughts can be very illuminating but only when there is agreement in broad sweeps. I have rarely found that simple conversations have changed anyone’s major opinions (as they shouldn’t in general). Opinions about religion are formed over a very long period of time and are heavily influenced by not only the obvious factor of childhood environment but also how much critical thought one gives to it as an adult. As a result opinions are continuously evolving, again as they should.

I have been critically thinking about religion for the better part of the last 10 years and I intend this post to be purely a snapshot of my thoughts and where I stand right now on the topic. I do want to stress that everything I write below is not a simple regurgitation. Granted there is probably very little original material anyway. However, the seed of each and every one of my opinions is my own and other’s writings and discussions have only helped me fine tune my thought process.

I was a strong believer.

Growing up in a home in Andhra Pradesh (South India) that practiced Hinduism I had my fair share of visiting temples, going to Tirupathi etc. Religion and faith certainly had its place in my family but it was never something that took top priority. I never gave it much thought until I had to prepare for the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination at Ramaiyya. This was a 2 year endeavor (1998-2000) that required me to put in an immense amount of hard work. I will freely admit that I could not have pulled it off without faith. At the age of 17, the idea that if I worked hard enough an omnipotent God would ensure me success was extremely comforting and kept me going through those grueling two years. It was during this time that I believe I had (what I later learnt was commonly called) a religious experience. I remember walking into a temple one day and being overwhelmed with a feeling of intense joy. No reason whatsoever. Just the mere presence of the idol in front of me invoked this reaction.

Nevertheless, the two years passed with success and I did not have a need for such faith again (incidentally my mother always hated this faith-when-needed concept) which resulted in an atrophy of my faith. I was also exposed to other faiths/ideas/philosophies in college and soon realized that religion is a man-made institution. The idea of a supreme being or many supreme beings up in the sky overlooking each and every one of our actions sounded preposterous to me then, as much as I believed and depended on it only 2 years earlier. To borrow from Laplace’s famous quote, I was convinced that there was no reason for such a hypothesis. Extrapolating from my own experience I assumed that the purpose of religion was to provide hope and comfort. As I expanded my knowledge of history (including the Hindu-Muslim tensions in India) I gradually appreciated the power religion held over large masses of people. It seemed as if apart from providing hope and comfort, the very purpose of religion was to be able to exert wide-spread control. If not the purpose, it was and still is being used as a means.

Is there a God?

I suspect most people agree with the artificial (and even damaging) nature of organized religion and dissociate themselves from it. I also suspect that these people are agnostic about the existence of a God and even if such a God exists, believe that his/her function ended at creating life and the universe as we know it and he/she doesn’t care about overseeing our daily actions, punishing people for their sins or rewarding them with a materialistic possession that they so diligently pray for. Coming to this conclusion has been fairly straightforward and I was at this stage for a very long time.

A little bit of introspection led me to realize that I was merely clinging to the notion of a superior being as a vestige of the faith that once gave me immense comfort (and still does to a little extent). With what I will admit is a blatant generalization I suspect that most people I have described above are attached to such similar comfort. It is this vestigial comfort that makes them remain agnostic instead of taking that one final step to atheism. It makes them ask questions along the lines of “We do not know whether a God exists or not. How can we be sure he does not?” I was always uncomfortable with this line of logic since there never has been any shred of evidence to support the existence of God and almost a mountain of evidence that is slowly tending towards an explanation of the ultimate question about the origin of life? So how can being agnostic be a balanced view? Just because we do not yet fully understand how life and the universe came about, that does not mean we invoke a God of the gaps (a God meant to explain the gaps in our knowledge) and give this God equal weightage out of thin air*. To borrow the idea of Russell’s teapot (Link), do we say that we do not know whether or not a teapot is circling the sun between Mars and Earth? Are we agnostic about it? No. We say that from what we know it is not possible for such a teapot to exist. If children were taught to worship the teapot from a young age and told that this will save and protect them, does that change the likelihood of its existence based on our current knowledge? 

*(I borrowed the term God of the gaps from 'The God Delusion', a brilliant book by Richard Dawkins. In this book, Dawkins goes one step furthermore and hypothesizes that the origin of life is a random event that inspite of being statistically improbable was bound to happen due to the large number of planets in the known universe (a large sample space). I also strongly recommend Dawkins’ ‘The Blind Watchmaker’. It is an excellent explanation of evolution and his scientific brilliance and clarity of thought makes it a wonderful read. Despite his reputation as a polarizing figure Richard Dawkins is first and foremost a scientist and ‘The Blind Watchmaker’ thoroughly demonstrates this).

What about morality?

People often use an argument as flimsy as morality to account for the existence of God. I suppose this is not an issue with anyone other than theological literalists but I would like to address this anyway.

Firstly, those who claim that we need a God to tell us what is moral and what is immoral are implying that there is no action that they would consider immoral if it is not described so in their holy book. I have not read any holy book but it is also simply illogical to assume that any book covers all possible actions in a two neatly separated columns titled ‘Moral’ and ‘Immoral’. Furthermore, these people seem to imply that if there was no holy book they would be on the roads looting, killing and raping.

An oft quoted argument is how do the literalists pick what to accept and what to reject in their holy books? The two major religions of Christianity and Islam talk about killing non-believers. Even if this is not true literally, I am sure there are lines regarding this issue that are open to interpretation. Almost no sane person makes an interpretation that it is okay to kill a disbeliever. Yet these are the very same people who are okay with condemning a homosexual to a status as a second class citizen just because their holy book says so. Using what moral background are they able to make this discernment? I like making this point in any discussion about religion (by an admittedly low-blow) in the form of: “If your religious book tells you to kill all brown people, would you kill me? If not, why not?”

It is obvious that even the literalists invoke their morality from somewhere just like the rest of humanity. So what is this source? I was confounded about this for a very long time and I suspected that it was society’s general understanding of human nature that drives its morality. Of course this understanding starts off very poorly and improves one step at a time. Unfortunately a statement like this amounts to hand-waving and I suspect it makes people uncomfortable to the point of accusing atheists of being raving immoral lunatics. Nevertheless I feared that if this really was the case then untold immoral acts would be committed before mankind realizes what is moral and what is immoral. Was this really the way morality has been and still is being figured out?

At least the chapter on morality in ‘The God Delusion’ agrees with me. Dawkins gives it a very nice name too, ‘The Moral Zeitgeist’ or the moral spirit of the times. I will admit to having more confidence in this point of view as a result of this. It is the spirit of the times that seems to define what is moral and what is immoral. Surely slavery lasted a long time before civilizations realized that enslaving men was immoral. I strongly believe that just as the way racism is considered wrong and immoral now, homophobia will be looked down upon too in the future (despite what the religious books say).
The present moral zeitgeist does not consider eating meat to be immoral. The majority of the world population (me including) does so without even thinking twice. However I am convinced that the moral zeitgeist will change in the future to make eating meat immoral. Our descendents will wonder as to how one could so cruelly slaughter animals and eat them in just the way we look at the Romans and wonder how they could so immorally feed slaves to lions for their amusement.

So where am I right now?

I consider myself an ‘uncomfortable atheist’.

My discomfort does not stem from any doubts I have about the validity of atheism. It comes from having to do away with close to 20 years of comfort that blind faith in a superior being has given me. It is the comfort of the not having a peace of mind that if I do my part God will be there to take care of me and keep me and my family from harm. A loose analogy would be the way a tennis player who cannot find his lucky underwear feels before a game. In no way does it physically alter his game but the lack of mental comfort can prove to be a game-changing factor.

So yes, shaking away years of comfort that religion has given me is proving to be more difficult than I thought. But I intend to chip away at this crutch slowly and steadily and I am doing this only because I have consciously chosen to adopt a philosophy based on rationality. Doing anything else would be nothing short of intellectual dishonesty.

Isn’t a steadfast subscription to a rational way of life just as dogmatic as religion?

I am asked this question all the time. The answer is an obvious no. Surely it is one of the many philosophies of life but it is neither as dogmatic nor as extreme as most agnostics/theists make it to be. Rational thought by definition implies that we question everything and accept principles that are empirically validated. These principles undergo almost continuous scrutiny and iteration by a large population of the earth. I guess there is a certain amount of subjectivity in that too (Link) but all things compared there is no better philosophy of life than one based in rationality. Religion is a philosophy where any questioning was and still is not tolerated and in some cases punishable by death. I will not go into the depravity of organized religion here except to make the point that anyone who says religiousness and atheism give rise to comparable levels of fundamentalism is by far the most disingenuous person on the earth.

Having said all this, let’s say tomorrow morning we discover the existence of an intelligent designer who reveals to us that he/she worked out all the universal constants and made the universe and then put life on earth. This is a conscious watchmaker as opposed to Richard Dawkins' 'blind watchmaker'. I will obviously alter my beliefs accordingly. For that would be the rational thing to do.

Finally, are we better off without religion?

I am not talking about mass-eradication of religion. Trying to banish religion is a stupid idea at its very best. I look at this question from a personal point of view. When a young impressionable child asks me if there is a God, what do I tell him or her? At this moment I would say no. But I am certain I would add a lot of qualifiers to that.

I am also not sure if I would be doing the right thing for this child. I feel like a hypocrite. I have reaped the benefits of faith and spirituality during my child hood and now I want to deny someone else the same advantage? Of course this opens up a whole new can of worms. Why do I think a child will not be able to figure out the deeper aspects of faith by him/herself? Do I mean that faith is essential as a kid? Does it imply that atheist parents cannot rear productive children?

To me, some have obvious answer and some don’t. 

I suspect this stems from the ‘uncomfortable’ part of my chosen nomenclature. Fortunately I am confident about one thing. When I do manage to get rid of that 'uncomfortable' part, everything will become a lot clearer and I will have more straightforward answers!