Many people believe that if you
don’t believe in any kind of god then you are automatically an ‘atheist.’
However, I don’t believe in god but I don’t label myself as an atheist. Many
atheists, though not all, don’t believe in god not because there’s absolutely
no god but because they don’t have any proof that god exists. I don’t know
whether they’d believe in god should someone prove beyond any reasonable doubt
that god does indeed exist or if god all of a sudden comes and proves by
himself/herself that he/she does indeed exist.
I don’t see myself as an atheist
because my nonbelief isn’t based on the existence or the nonexistence of god.
Whether or not god exists, I still wouldn’t believe in god. I don’t see any role
god plays in my life whether or not he/she exists. The tenets of life which I
apply to value every human beings are internal to me not imposed from without.
So I don’t see any reason why some ‘heavenly’ being would be interested in my
praising him and condemning myself in order to win favors.
A powerful god would make me what
he/she wants me to be anyway if he/she is the one who created me; so showering
him/her with praises to win favors sounds like what many Africans do to their
dictators. What’s the difference between an African dictator and a god who fancies
being praised? The aim is to win favors in the government and national
resources from the African leaders and to win afterlife in the case of god. I
know this sounds simplistic but this is the state of affairs with the god
thing. Prayers belittle gods and are superfluous for us.
So the onus is on god to tell me
why I should believe in him.
While I don’t believe in god, I
don’t go around denigrating religious people. Human beings are fallacious and
weak entities and we thrive on fancies and imagination. To try to destroy that
is complete utopia. People prefer to feel good rather than be right. We lie so
many times to make our friends feel good even when we know we are lying. That’s
the essence of our human-ness.
I understand atheists have the
best of intentions. They don’t discriminate anyone on any basis and they’d want
people to use logic, reason and science to be the basis of our life. But that
sounds like the very same utopia of heavenly afterlife religious people have
drummed onto our eardrums for centuries if not millennia!
To try to institutionalize atheism as an antagonistic organization against institutionalized religions is
as fallacious and as wrong as the utopia church leaders have tried for
centuries.
The beauty of not believing in
god is the personalized understanding of oneself and what one wants in life and
the moral standing one forges for oneself and exercises towards fellow human
beings. Nonbelief could exist as clubs and professional associations but not as
a proselytizing institution.
Religions is not bad as a
concept in itself. What makes it unpalatable is its being as an institution. Institutionalization
of atheism in a church-manner is a mockery of logic and reason.
