This time Aston Paiva writes a love letter to Lingswaran Singh. This article a response piece to Ling’s “Republic of God” that was inspired by Aston’s “Twilight of the Gods.” It’s not so confusing once you start reading, really.
Dear Lingswaran,
At the outset, let me say that I think you may have been a little hasty in putting together those haphazard series of sentences in your response.
Had you taken a little time to appreciate my writing and in particular paid some attention to the last two paragraphs, you’d come to realise that my piece wasn’t really about atheism but more so a call to return to rationality, reason and intellectualism as a means to solve Man’s own alienation from himself; embracing the values espoused during the Enlightenment. One could call it Humanism, if one desperately desires to put a name to it.
I must also say, neither was my piece about Religion. It has got nothing to do with Religion at all. The commentators in that post who had referred to Religion in their comments have not grasped the spirit of what I had written. Read it again. There are adherents to certain religions that do not hold a belief in God – Buddhists and Jains come to mind immediately.
I can see how you, Lingswaran, may have gotten my piece confused as an advertisement for atheism but I assure you, that, it is not. I am not arguing for the nonexistence of God in order to refute the beliefs of others. Unless engaged to do so, I am not interested to do that and quite frankly, it is not of my concern.
What is of my concern is “Why is there a need for Man to believe in God?” That is the central question. Out of that comes two further questions –
(i)“What do you really feel like, inside, when you contemplate the prospect of there being no God?” and
(ii)“What would it be like to lead a life where you believed in yourself and those around you to create change in the world?”
Unfortunately, we either haven’t answered these questions or we simply refuse to. Unless and until we do, we will continue to hinder ourselves from fully experiencing the world around us; to accept both the beauty and the distaste that Nature has to offer.
The sense of morose I feel when I hear about a natural disaster that has hit a nation, the awe I succumb to when I see a peacock unfurl its feathers, the utter bewilderment that I’m struck with when I look at the night sky by the ocean, the heartache of watching someone dying of cancer and the intensity of being in the embrace of a loved one. These are really what makes Human life so special; that interrelationship between the world outside of us and the sensations we feel when perceiving it. We certainly don’t need a God for any of that.
With God, Man has lost that spark; to be curious, to question, to want to know why, to ponder, to think, to contemplate, to reason, to look within himself, to look outside himself, to dream and pursue, to envision and plan, to be courageous and bold.
With God, we devalue who we are and who we can be because everything that we do is meaningless as it is either “out of our hands” or it is “meant to be“; futile, mediocre, and banal reasons to justify Man’s existence which reeks of folly, fear and insecurity. This is not who I am, this is not who I want to be and this is certainly not the Mankind I want to be a part of.
So no, my piece was not about atheism. My piece was about asking people to look into themselves and ask themselves who they really are; to question their existence, their purpose for existing, their goals, dreams, desires, their sexuality, their morality, their hopes and fears, their joys and sorrows – how everything can be just as they want it to be if not better without the need to rely on superstitious nonsense like “God.”
Now on Atheism. Let’s define the word “Atheism” liberally for a minute. Let’s say in a population of 100 people, 99 people believed in Humpty Dumpty as their “Creator” while 1 person believed in Mother Goose. Wouldn’t it be correct to say that that 1 person would be an atheist in respect of Humpty Dumpty? He doesn’t believe Humpty Dumpty to be the “Creator.”
Working on that definition, every Muslim would be an atheist with respect to Brahman and all Hindus would be an atheist with respect to Ahura Mazda.
What is my point? Well, let’s not get so carried away in our belief in God that we forget that we are in many ways an atheist to the beliefs of another.
The next meandering mindless point you make can be found in the last paragraph: that what I have expressed is a “belief.”
Not at all Sir! A “belief” calls for the suspension of proof and evidence. On the contrary, I say that everything must be subjected to the rigors of scientific inquiry and observation.
I am not interested in making up fanciful stories about the creation of life on Earth. I find “fairytales” painfully revolting in trying to explain the origin of life on this planet. I am instead interested to know about Abiogenesis, Evolution and Natural Selection as the spark and engine behind Life.
I care not about intellect-insulting creation myths; of an old man inventing the Universe in 6 days and resting on the 7th. I want to know about the Big Bang Theory, String Theory, Newtonian Physics and Quantum Physics. It is within this realm that the real answers pertaining to our Universe lies.
Oh and one more thing…
Often times, I hear people read my writings on this subject matter and call me arrogant. It is laughable indeed. I am not being arrogant at all. I am in fact being as humble and as truthful as I can in showing how Humans have erred and what we can do to better ourselves.
On the contrary, I don’t claim to know who created the Universe, the 99 names of God, who was the first man on the Earth, who he had sex with, what is a sin, why are we such sinners, who is a sinner, where do we go to after we die, what is the afterlife, the amount of virgins waiting for us in the afterlife, who I was in my past life, who I will be in my next life, a path to salvation, the word of God, takdir Tuhan, where your grandmother is now that she’s dead, how God expects us; to treat women and homosexuals, to dress, to slaughter an animal, to treat a Jew, to sodomise a baboon or to fondle a goat’s testicles.
The online Oxford Dictionary defines “Arrogant” as:
having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities
Really, need I ask. . . who is really the arrogant one here?
Posted on 22 October 2010. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
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