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'Difficult to be unbeliever in religious India': From an atheist [View all]
'Difficult to be unbeliever in religious India': From an atheist
Sachi Mohanty, Hindustan Times | Updated: May 03, 2015 18:39 IST
It is difficult to be an unbeliever in a religious society. Atheist Sachi Mohanty ruminates on the need to question conservatism and debunk religion. (Illustration: Ravi Jadhav)
The Nepal earthquake tells us that we live on an ever-changing, geologically-active planet. Fossil evidence tells us about our long history of evolution and of the kinship we share with all life on the planet.
After learning about evolution, plate tectonics and astronomy - this week, the Hubble Space Telescope, which has travelled 6,115,507,200 km, completed 25 years of orbiting the earth - and learning about our place in the universe, how can any educated person still believe in the gods of man-made religions? The religion and its gods and myths that I grew up with started appearing to me to be silly before I finished high school. Once you acquire some basic science education, religious explanations look positively primitive.
...
For now, it seems like the majority of Indians are destined to spend their lives singing songs in praise of various gods. I'm happy to be in the tiny minority of those who call themselves atheists. It doesn't bother me that I am in disagreement with about 200 family relations. Einstein, Feynman, Hawking and Weinberg are some of the physicists who share my lack of belief while most prisoners in America believe in god.
Needless to add, the figure is probably even higher in Indian prisons.
More
Sachi Mohanty, Hindustan Times | Updated: May 03, 2015 18:39 IST
It is difficult to be an unbeliever in a religious society. Atheist Sachi Mohanty ruminates on the need to question conservatism and debunk religion. (Illustration: Ravi Jadhav)
The Nepal earthquake tells us that we live on an ever-changing, geologically-active planet. Fossil evidence tells us about our long history of evolution and of the kinship we share with all life on the planet.
After learning about evolution, plate tectonics and astronomy - this week, the Hubble Space Telescope, which has travelled 6,115,507,200 km, completed 25 years of orbiting the earth - and learning about our place in the universe, how can any educated person still believe in the gods of man-made religions? The religion and its gods and myths that I grew up with started appearing to me to be silly before I finished high school. Once you acquire some basic science education, religious explanations look positively primitive.
...
For now, it seems like the majority of Indians are destined to spend their lives singing songs in praise of various gods. I'm happy to be in the tiny minority of those who call themselves atheists. It doesn't bother me that I am in disagreement with about 200 family relations. Einstein, Feynman, Hawking and Weinberg are some of the physicists who share my lack of belief while most prisoners in America believe in god.
Needless to add, the figure is probably even higher in Indian prisons.
More
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