There are those rare moments where people look at me with a bewildered expression of shock and disgust like I’ve just burned down an orphanage for fun or something. Most of the time it’s because I tell them I haven’t read any of the Harry potter books and other times it’s when I tell them I’m an atheist. My inability to completely ignore these kinds of reactions is why I cannot see myself pursuing something unjustifiable in life. Like being an appreciator of fine arts or Rahul Gandhi’s PR agent. Look away if you’re one of those people who are so religiously stuck up that you cannot read any further, because this is an article on why I chose to be an atheist. A respectable column on religion would try to approach this topic with a level of sensitivity and caution, which is why my article is going to do none of that.
To say that we live in a culturally orthodox society would be a tiny bit of an understatement. Under these circumstances, atheism wouldn’t really be the most common of philosophies. There is an inherent fear of questioning the words of elders that is hard coded into our heads from when we were born. This kind of philosophy falls prey to one common misconception about opinions. You may hear random panelists on the News Hour rambling about how they have a right to their opinion and how it must be respected. The truth is that, you have the right only to your opinion. It is completely up to the people to decide if they want to listen and respect it or if they want to ignore and mock it. Selective following of things is a regular practice which is maxed out when it comes to religion. There are numerous instances of absolute hypocrisy when it comes to the scriptures from the guy in the sky. It wouldn’t take a genius to list out all these things chronologically. All I would have to do is type ‘hypocrisy : religion’ in google and I’ll get about 20 articles exactly like that. 17 of them would be BuzzFeed articles like “8.19 x 103 REASONS WHY YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD” or “THIS GUY IS AN ATHEIST. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND.”
My transition into an atheist was not exactly the slowest of processes. I was actually the Indian poster boy child who would climb up the steps in Tirupathi in hopes of it having a more profound effect on my life. Every poster boy usually has his short comings. I usually had these bouts of random frustration when I was young that made me do stupid things like look into the sky and flip the middle finger. I would then crawl back like a sorry puppy back under the sheath of comfort whenever it was time for exams or for results. In doing that, I resembled a majority of all the so called believers we have. I would rant on about how the negative sign in a math problem didn’t make sense logically whilst ignoring the biggest logical fallacy ever. All aside, my brief stint as a religious boy could be summarized by a blind sheep taking a dump on logic.
My problem with the existence of a supreme power is comparatively smaller than the problem I have with its followers. If you hate a company because of their shitty personnel, it is unfair to blame the company here. Given that the company in focus here is basically an escrow, it may be too much to expect a 10/10 customer satisfactory ratio. Everyone has this habit of creating divides over silly things. Religion is a major component of most of these silly things. The way religion infiltrates everyday events and leaves a dirty shit stain wherever it goes is the reason why I decided to move away from these inter religion battles. At first, divides were created between Hindus and Muslims, going further down, it was between the upper class and the lower class. About 17 stories down, you would realize that you cannot share breathing space with the cousin of the 4th lizard in your storage room because it was born a Manglik. Once I abandoned these set of make-believe divides, I found myself battling bigger divides with basic common sense.
Right from early history, we have observed the Indian fetish of dividing stuff grow multifold with every passing generation. We have divided our land into separate countries, our countries into separate states and our states into several other states. Material divides became too much of a mainstream fetish and hence our highly intoxicated forefathers used their self proclaimed wit to wax their stupid words to an even stupider crowd. Basically, just like Koffee with Karan. It was never enough that people were all worshipping their own imaginary friends. These people had to be divided into different classes as well. Suni muslims and Shia Muslims; Catholic Christians and protestant Christians; Iyers and Iyengars. Because just saying that you’re a Muslim, Christian or a Hindu didn’t sound fancy enough.
Those divides seem meek and harmless compared to this other beautiful system adopted by the Indian culture. While the rest of the world was going and arguing about which metric system must be standardized in order to study the happenings of the world around us, our Indian ancestry went about and started erecting sex temples and coining different castes. I don’t particularly belong to a very orthodox family (thankfully) but I’ve seen various instances wherein parents don’t allow their children to mix with people of the other caste. Marriages are broken off because the 73rd grandfather of the bride once touched feces with his right hand while trying to invent fire. Couples are killed because they chose their happiness over the happiness of their society. Children are married off at an early age to promote the heritage of a village. Women are judged and sneered at because they are kinda exposing their elbow at 12.30 on a Tuesday afternoon, which is among the 59715 supposedly shameful things for an Indian woman to do. We take a good look at these things, then turn away and sing in chorus, “India has a rich cultural heritage and I am proud of being an Indian”
Religion doesn’t always have to affect the citizens. Take for example, the early Italian civilization. Galileo and da Vinci basically just about shook the world with their brilliance without even joining FITJEE or TRS. The church truncated their work and burnt down all their belongings saying it was against the word of god. That’s right. Correctly observed and well tabulated proof just shot down because you didn’t please the man in charge. Engineering viva apparently has a long history. In short, religion may single handedly responsible for the fact that the world was pushed back 20-30 years in terms of technological advancements. Religion somehow hasn’t made the fortune 500 list despite being one of the easiest ways to make money. The fact that retard sitting in an auditorium and giving generic advice to a crowd earns more than the average college professor makes me cringe in disgust. People who believe that said retards actually possess magical powers is why faith in humanity dwindles exponentially
Politics is another field where religion creeps in like a dirty fart. When someone says that there is something even dirtier creeping into an already dirty system, it should at least turn a few heads. This is the general discussion whenever the ‘wise uncles walking in a park’ take on political topics.
UNCLE 1: THESE POLITICIANS NA, THEY ARE ALL THIEVES. CROOKS OF THE HIGHEST ORDER!! WE MUST FIGHT CORRUPTION AND ERADICATE THESE SCUM FROM THE FACE OF INDIAN POLITICS.
UNCLE 2: Such idealistic and revolutionary ideas! We can make a difference if we all act in unison! Let us show these corrupt rats who’s boss. Who are you going to vote for?
UNCLE 1: Don’t know. The guy from our caste I guess.
UNCLE 2: …. Yeah me too.
While I enjoy debates on religion, I usually am unable to sit through them because of the raging hypocrisy from every sentence. However, this isn’t a post on the reasons why I hate religious people (which I don’t by the way), rather a post on why I hate religion as a thing. There will be extremists in every issue and I certainly don’t want to offend those in the religion bracket. You have a right to choose whatever story helps you sleep at night, and unfortunately for you, I have a right to write whatever I want on this magical realm called the internet. You however, don’t have a right to thrust these beliefs down throats and expect us to drive into the horizon like a merry Suraj Barjatiya movie with you. Christians have their Westboro Baptist church giving everyone shit. Muslims have around half the middle east giving people shit. Hindus have these set of talented individuals from Mumbai giving people shit. There is no greater religion, there is no greater god, there is no path to heaven or a gateway to hell. The only thing which is more of a waste of time than finding the shinier turd is writing a 1500 word article about it. Guess which one I picked.
The Daily Offensive 