Hurting my non-religious sentiments!

/Me is a non-religious person, a proud atheist, and this post might well encapsulate in a frivolous sense the subtle 'trauma' our diaspora is being conditioned to.

Well, here are some of my genuinely exaggerated confessions:P

If you thought non-religious people did not have sentiments, yes you were almost right that we don't have unreasonable ones, like quarreling for a piece of supposedly 'holy' land, or a wall, or adulating each ones idols, or seeking supremacy in relic books. But we do have sentiments, that usually go unnoticed, and I assure you these are more personal, yet sensible stuff!

It hurts my sentiments when I'm asked to write my religion in the religion field  of every application form and that 'atheism' is not a recognized entry! Although my recent hack  “born hindu” seems to convey a gist of what I feel, that does still hurt my non-religious sentiments!

It hurts my sentiments, when I see that we are non-existent to the Government and media, and they don't want to give heed to this our swelling diaspora. This community, with obviously higher IQ is ignored, for we understand and endorse Darwinism and not the 'magic wand bang creationism'!

It hurts my sentiments, when the religious fanatics' 'hurt and trampled' bleating gets all the unnecessary importance, when there's a whole world full of more important things to be done!

It does not hurt, but only amuses me when an atheist is treated as a traitor or an embodiment of evil, instead of looking at the evidence and reason behind our natural vanity.

It hurts my rational sentiments (oxymoron, I get it), when instead of facing my arguments some of you dodge and hide behind a facade of sentimentalism.

It hurts my sentiments, when they perceive me uncultured, when the truth is that I'm more sanely cultured than even the most religious fanatic, for I have undone the rituals and superstitions and celebrate only the humanness!

It hurts my sentiments, when everyone talks of only sentiments and not of the intellect! How can you run a world by pleasing unreasonable sentiments, blocking all of rationality?

It gravely hurts my non-religious sentiments, when you threaten me of not allowing to have the delicacies for each of the religious celebration, and that alone of all I have mentioned has the most serious impact on me, sometimes making me rethink my stand as an athiest!:P

All said and not done, I feel hurt to see many of you still loosely stuck to your religious webs and pose helpless, while I cherish the bliss of cognizance, that builds through every moment, every day.

The God Delusion

How lucky we are to be alive, given that the vast majority of people who could potentially be thrown up by the combinatorial lottery of DNA will in fact never be born. However brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or complain that it is dull or barren or (like a child) boring, couldn't this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never even be offered life in the first place?

Think about it. On one planet, and possibly only one planet in the entire universe, molecules that would normally make nothing
more complicated than a chunk of rock, gather themselves together into chunks of rock-sized matter of such staggering complexity that they are capable of running, jumping, swimming, flying, seeing, hearing, capturing and eating other such animated chunks of complexity; capable in some cases of thinking and feeling, and falling in love with yet other chunks of complex matter!

-Excerpts from the book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins

I have already attributed Richard Dawkins to have facilitated my transition to become the ardent and absolute atheist that I am now, in previous posts. And like in his documentaries, he is cleverer and super accurate with his arguments in The God Delusion.Impeccably convincing!

Turning towards the book itself, it is a quick and joyous read in the literary sense. But, this book symbolizes an apprehension of serious scale and it ain't just the literature one needs to ponder about. What actually dawned upon me while reading the book was the intent of the book itself. Pushing science and rationality amidst the infinite bandwidth white noise of religion, Gods, and the related blah blah!

Religion is ubiquitous, and it certainly is perilous, whatever small subjective positives one might have experienced. This ancient dogma has to be stigmatized for, eradicating it would take a long long struggle against many maniacs.

Nevertheless, increasing the consciousness of people pertaining to the futilities encapsulated in religion as a whole will slowly evolve to eliminate this weird but natural seeming, artificial digression of us humans.

While Science is what has given us answers, drawing us out from the shrouded clouds of ignorance, into light and still leading, Religion is that strong regressive force holding back majority of the Homo sapiens , bound to the shackles of faith, blind faith and dumb blind faith!

The God Delusion is a must read for everyone: Of course it will be offensive to the strong theists. But, for anyone who's just swaying away from the absolutism attached to religion, it will certainly help and enable them start drifting farther away from religion and closer to rationality - All for the good.

I might personally want to see religion eliminated from the face of the earth; But, it is even more complexly interleaved than even Dawkins himself projects.

Let's hope there's light, sometime soon, if not spontaneously!

I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.
Albert Einstein

Why I am an Atheist by Shaheed Bhagat Singh

Shaheed Bhagat Singh: Inquilab Zindabad (Long live the Revolution)

Excerpts from one of the best articles ever written: 

"We (atheists) believe in nature and that human progress depends on the domination of man over nature. There is no conscious power behind it. This is our philosophy.

"Being atheist, I ask a few questions from theists:

1. If, as you believe there is an Almighty, Omnipresent, Omniscient God, who created the earth or universe, please let me know, first of all, as to why he created this world. This world which is full of woe and grief, and countless miseries, where not even one person lives in peace. 

2. Pray, don’t say it is His law. If He is bound by any law, He is not Omnipotent. Don’t say it is His pleasure. Nero burnt one Rome. He killed a very limited number of people. He caused only a few tragedies, all for his morbid enjoyment. But what is his place in history? By what names do we remember him? All the disparaging epithets are hurled at him. Pages are blackened with invective diatribes condemning Nero: the tyrant, the heartless, the wicked. 

"Open your eyes and see millions of people dying of hunger in slums and huts dirtier than the grim dungeons of prisons; just see the labourers patiently or say apathetically while the rich vampires suck their blood; bring to mind the wastage of human energy that will make a man with a little common sense shiver in horror. Just observe rich nations throwing their surplus produce into the sea instead of distributing it among the needy and deprived. There are palaces of kings built upon the foundations laid with human bones. Let them see all this and say “All is well in God’s Kingdom.” Why so? This is my question. You are silent. All right. I proceed to my next point.  

"As regard the origin of God, my thought is that man created God in his imagination when he realized his weaknesses, limitations and shortcomings. In this way he got the courage to face all the trying circumstances and to meet all dangers that might occur in his life and also to restrain his outbursts in prosperity and affluence. God, with his whimsical laws and parental generosity was painted with variegated colours of imagination. He was used as a deterrent factor when his fury and his laws were repeatedly propagated so that man might not become a danger to society. He was the cry of the distressed soul for he was believed to stand as father and mother, sister and brother, brother and friend when in time of distress a man was left alone and helpless. He was Almighty and could do anything. The idea of God is helpful to a man in distress.

"Society must fight against this belief in God as it fought against idol worship and other narrow conceptions of religion. In this way man will try to stand on his feet. Being realistic, he will have to throw his faith aside and face all adversaries with courage and valour. That is exactly my state of mind. My friends, it is not my vanity; it is my mode of thinking that has made me an atheist. I don’t think that by strengthening my belief in God and by offering prayers to Him every day, (this I consider to be the most degraded act on the part of man) I can bring improvement in my situation, nor can I further deteriorate it. I have read of many atheists facing all troubles boldly, so I am trying to stand like a man with the head high and erect to the last; even on the gallows.

"Let us see how steadfast I am. One of my friends asked me to pray. When informed of my atheism, he said, “When your last days come, you will begin to believe.” I said, “No, dear sir, Never shall it happen. I consider it to be an act of degradation and demoralisation. For such petty selfish motives, I shall never pray.” Reader and friends, is it vanity? If it is, I stand for it. 

Read full article: Why I am an Atheist (October 5, 1930)

Dawkins dawns Darwin upon me

Of the few important people who have had substantial influence on me, Professor Richard Dawkins is the latest addendum. He comes late, but will certainly have (had?) a profound impact on my frame of thought. I am the most and wholly conformed to him than any other intellect I revere. And I have reached that state of conformity after checking up all the arguments he presents in a convincing manner, as encouraged by him.

I am yet to read him ( will soon start to), but have watched almost all of his talks and certainly all of his documentaries. While watching him talk in the convincing attempts of elucidating obvious facts about life and nature, which are easily ignored under the blanket of religion and other correlated fallibilities; And also while tackling the absurdity spilled by ignorance; I can recognize a portion of my own longing and aspirations in him. Prof.Dawkins has already inspired me to take up the cause which he has worked his entire life: To stand up for the truth, substantiated by reasoning and evidence.

Personally, I have gradually grown to be an ardent atheist in the last few years. The obvious conflicts of reasons like the supernatural, destiny, after life and miracles were long conquered by my own attempts of understanding, facilitated by Science all along. But, the usual conflict any atheist would have to face: Hurting the 'feelings' of the believers in quest to cognizance, was keeping me from taking a strong public stand.

Prof. Dawkins has guided me through this process of equipping myself to take a strong stand, even if I supposedly hurt the feelings of others. These 'feelings' weren't to be there at the first place; People who realize it and shed the carapace of irrationality would not feel hurt.But, the adamant and reluctant ones who fail to understand and comprehend the grand truth professed by Science ought to be brought out of the delusion, and if it takes to hurt their unreasonable feelings ,then better we shatter those.

Facts, sometimes are obvious with all the evidence scattered all around us. We still fail to recognize them and stay blind. This sort of voluntary blindness, would transform to become the foundation for a deepening state of ignorance. This is a peril which would not only affect the individual, but will go on to hamper the entire society.
Tackling such atrocities from the root would require the activated ones, or the atheists to spread their religion of truth and reason; And as Prof.Dawkins calls it, we need to endorse Militant Atheism, by which he implies that we go out and speak up, take a stand and counter the religious fanaticism with loud truths, facts and reasoning of Science.

Clarification: I was a Darwinian even before Prof.Dawkins happened to me. The post title seemed better put the way it is.

PS: Some of the best things ever said, and here's all of my favorite by Prof.Dawkins

“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.”


"Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time."


“Dawkins’ Law of the Conservation of Difficulty states that obscurantism in an academic subject expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity”


"We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."


"By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out."


More on http://richarddawkinsfoundation.org/

The Ten commandments for an Atheist (v 0.1.1)

I  Thou shall always tread the path of reason: Scrutinizing every step taken. 

II Thou shall seek truth in its entirety by scientific means, using the tools of questioning, reasoning and verification.

III Thou shall and must think freely ( free as in freedom); and question with no fears or apprehensions, whatsoever. 

IV Thou shall sustain the natural curiosity, by incessantly pursuing the quest to understand everything, scientifically. 

V Thou shall openly accept flaws, once proven; Then learn, correct and better oneself. 

VI Thou shall tackle the absurdities propelled by blind belief emanating from ignorance, in a passionate and dialectic manner, by perpetuating the cognizance of truth, substantiated by reason and evidence. 

VII Thou shall not impose one's views, but shall put it forth in the most effective technique making imposition needless. 

VIII Thou shall grow and perpetuate the genetically inherent social morality of the Homo sapiens, arbitrated by our critical faculties. 

IX Thou shall naturally die; With no delusions of after life to be confused with, shall make the best out of  the lucky tenure of being a grand conscious part of the Universe. 

X Thou shall never follow, but can always improvise. 

Festivals, to the ones like me ;-)

What could be better than a day's off from work, substituted by relaxing at home, with lots to eat and feast on, while watching some special TV, apart from the warmth of the togetherness, with the added amusement provided by the skeptical participation in prayers and rituals?

A friend had raised a question if rationalists and atheists should be celebrating festivals at all!

And, as I am privileged enough to be a novice of both these elite classes (ignore the jargons;), I strongly feel even rationalism and atheism cannot prevent one from getting together with family and friends, to eat and celebrate the togetherness. That is what any Festival is meant to be, more than emulating any ancient traditions which make little sense in the contemporary world.

As I intend to keep this post positive as a whole, I shall save the critique on the customs and traditions of all religions for elaborations in future posts. 

So, 'Festivals minus Rituals' is a must have for everybody to feel the power of celebration in the spirit of life, to increase joy, happiness and to savor the periodic special days.

With Deepavali/Diwali at the horizon, let this Festival of Lights,
enlighten the minds of people, fill it with sparkling ideas, blasting off prejudices and ignorance. Hope there is lesser pollution this time, as the trend has been off late.

Happy Eco and Future friendly Deepavali

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दीपावली त्यौहार   के शुभकामनाएं

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