The internet caters to almost every fantasy known to mankind so it
is no surprise that there are websites dedicated to man’s ultimate fantasy –
god belief. About a year or so ago I was egged on by a few rationalist friends to
join a website dedicated to this fantasy so we could keep abreast on how new
marketing techniques were being developed by religious salesmen targeting those
who have grown up taught to believe that a spiritual leader is a necessity. I
became a member of the Speaking Tree.
I had lost interest almost instantly akin to someone walking
into a lunatic asylum where the immediate threat to one’s sanity was far more
pressing than the desire to connect with someone. The place is filled with self
styled swamis and gurus. People calling themselves Double Misters aka Sri Sri Ravishankar to those titling themselves with grand sounding names like Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. In the real world we’d have to earn titles from institutions
based on our prowess in a particular subject like in engineering or medicine to
call oneself a doctor for example but these people are in the wild west of a
fantasy world and can self title themselves. If Karl Marx, the man who said, ‘religion
is the opium of the masses’, were to be alive today, he’d refer
to the Speaking Tree website as a drug store.
Out of the numerous alerts that fill my inbox from this
website, one in particular caught my eye. It was titled ‘Whether God Exists OrNot?‘. I was curious, read
it and was terribly disappointed. The write up was terribly flawed and after a
long time I felt the need to make some noise to warn unsuspecting people that
there was bovine excreta in their path. I continued to read through some of the
other comments subsequently and found most amusing the degree to which believers
will bend in order to protect their delusions.
Through the various posts that these self styled gurus are
posting there, the one thing you will notice in common is the arrogance with
which they speak. Without a shadow of a doubt they know there is a supernatural
force, a power that can interfere with your life, either positively or
negatively. They will repackage and define it back to you in many ways where
one moment the god is within you and then contradict it soon after by asking
you to bow to a deity but at the end of it all they are convinced that this
power is responsible for everything. Rationalists on the other hand are the
opposite. They admit that they don't have answers to so many things unknown and
don't claim to know the answer to how everything came into being. Rationalists
are in a quest to find answers based on observable and verifiable evidence and
never assert anything till they can backup their claim.
By this yardstick no evidence has yet been found to support
the deluded beliefs offered by these so called swamis and gurus and yet without
a shred of proof they arrogantly assert that there is an almighty that is
responsible for everything. Of course the 'absence of evidence is not necessarily
the evidence of absence' but then the absence of evidence does not give us a
reason to blindly believe in something either. All it does is to leave us
without the knowledge to assert anything. I cannot assert there is no god just
as much as I cannot assert that there is no Santa Claus. Popular folklore provides
us with detail on where Santa stays and how he travels. I have no evidence for
this but that does not mean it cannot be true. Every fantasy story in the world
is like this but as you can very well see there is no practical application in
believing in something that has no evidence. It is wise to believe in
phenomenon and claims that can be verified and all else is just a waste of time.
The hapless addicts hang around the website for their dose of
spirituality from the spiritual drug peddlers. The website automatically grades
these people based on the number of followers they have. This is where you find
the wannabe gurus who shamelessly ask you to follow them, those who throw
scientific jargon at you in an apparent bid to claim that they are
scientifically literate and cherry pick on scientific discoveries to bolster
their deluded conclusions, to the compulsive folk whose purpose is to comment
on anything that contradict and threaten their delusions. These people claim to
be seeking the truth as well but they have already closed their minds. How will
they ever find the truth when they believe they already have the answer to
everything in their god?
I know I am trying to compete with belief systems that have
taken thousands of years to filter itself and plug all the holes of logical
reasoning. A single point answer to all questions will be that it is god’s will.
The theist does not search for answers except for in his scriptural books and
on the guide lines offered by the book where you are required to hallucinate in
the belief that you are experiencing a god. Personal experiences are
meaningless to a rationalist. They may fool the gullible but a real truth
seeker will not buy into their dream where a god spoke to them. Such phenomenon
can be observed in all the world religions and can also be seen at rave parties where people are high on drugs while listening to psychedelic music. Next time
watch a bhajan or stasang or a religious gathering of any religion and you will
notice the similarities with a rave party. The dynamics are the same.
I feel sympathetic toward theists. They have spent their
whole lives building their beliefs on fantasy stories offered by earlier
generations. Stories written in an era when there was no knowledge on most of
what happened in nature. Stories written under the illumination of oil lamps
and not electric bulbs, in an era where they had to go to a pond to wash their
orifices after natures call as piped water supply was still eons away. It is quite
obvious that those who have grown up fed on a diet of 'surrender to the
supernatural' will fall into depression at the realisation that they have wasted
their whole lives believing in holy versions of superman and spiderman?
