Atheism defined

Heres an excellent piece on Atheism by Amit Varma. Obviously nothing new but it couldn't have been put in better words. He writes:

Some people think that atheism means believing that there is no God. This is a flawed perception. The primary meaning of atheism that most dictionaries will give you, though there are secondary meanings that have evolved from bad usage, is of “disbelief” in God or a deity. That means that atheists are not people who believe that there is no God, but people who do not believe that there is God. The difference is huge.

The conviction that there is no God is irrational because one cannot prove a negative. (How do you prove that something does not exist?) However, it is entirely rational to not believe in something whose existence has not been demonstrated. I don’t believe in dragons or fairies because no one has yet proved to me that they exist. Ditto God. I am not asserting that God does not exist, but simply saying that I don’t believe in the existence of God because I see no evidence of Him (or Her, or It). This is not a dogmatic position: if you can prove to me tomorrow that God or dragons exist, I will start to believe in them. Until then, I remain in disbelief. That’s atheism.....

....I may not believe in God, but I have no doubt that belief in God serves a purpose for many people. In primitive times, before we understood what the sun was or why there were eclipses and storms, the world must have appeared a terrifying, bewildering place. Religion offered an explanation for everything, and made us believe that we weren’t as small and insignificant as, well, as we are. Besides rendering the world explicable, it made mortality bearable. When someone close to us died, we could tell ourselves that they were in a better place.
As science has gradually filled up the gaps in our knowledge, the God of the Gaps has shrunk, almost becoming redundant. And while the consolations of belief are useful, I would rather reject those false certainties and look for consolation in smaller, surer things....

I had gone to Bangalore and Chennai last week and every time me and mom decided to go out, as always the first thing that came to her mind was a temple. "Kabaleashwar Kovillkku polaa, vaa (Lets go to Kabaleashwar temple), Its in Mylapore, very beautiful", and "Theres a big Maruti temple in Jayanagar near Naveen's house, Varriyaa? (Coming?)" were the first two sentences I heard after I landed in Chennai and Bangalore respectively. And as always I couldn't muster enough courage to tell her that the idols mean nothing to me. Explaining to a pious person about your Atheist status without bringing god to a derogatory position has always been tough. I seriously don't want to hurt her and get her wondering where she went wrong in bringing us up.

There is certainly nothing wrong in believing in things that do not exist "scientifically" yet but what is wrong, is forcing the same beliefs on others. Its your choice if you want to use god as a medium to feel secure or get some peace of mind or use it to prove things which cannot be proven scientifically but that doesn't mean everyone should do the same. Also what I find very disturbing is people get so deep into the religious thing that they lose all sense of practicality. Theres a small temple in front of our house in Bangalore. I noticed that they pour milk, honey and some other stuff on the idols as part of the rituals everyday. There is a global food crisis out there, for heavens sake. India has more people suffering hunger - a figure above 200 million, than any other country in the world. Isn't there an obvious better use, all the milk can be put for?

George Bernard Shaw puts it perfectly: "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one". The problem with religious people is that they never come out of the drunken state.

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I never thought this would be the first post in the year 2009. But I couldn't help. I couldn't and still can't get myself into thinking positively at this juncture of life. Things are so bad that I now see a plus sign made up of two negative signs. I couldn't stop myself from pouring out the things bothering me at this most depressing time in my life and there is no one who can really understand and help me out. I feel as if I am trapped inside a dark room. I can see the light coming in through the door which is slightly open but I cant reach it. I want to get out but something is holding me back. I don't know how the world will be outside that door but all I know is that I hate the dark room and I want to leave it.

I hate it all. I hate everything that is happening in my life right now. Every bit of it. I hate it when I wake up and open my eyes to find the same sad room I sleep in, in Pune. I hate the walk I need to take from my house to office with the din of motorcycles and the stench of pollution accompanying me. I hate to enter the posh and sophisticated 8 floors building I call office. I hate to sit at my desk with people all around me continuously blabbering crap and faking a British accent every time they are on the phone. I hate to go back to the box I live in with not an inch of privacy and roomies who are totally not my kind, they are nice.. mind you.. but not my kind. I hate to go to bed after the unpalatable dinner I have everyday. I hate my work. Somehow I don't understand why everyone around me acts as if they are writing a code which can prevent a genocide from happening. I just don't care. I don't care what goes live when. I don't care if someone else's program fails in production when I am supposed to. I don't care if a query takes 3.45 sec to finish when it can be optimized to 2.98sec. I say 'yes' to anything my TL says without actually listening to a word because everytime she speaks I just hear "blah blah blah... blah blah blah". I draw cartoons on Paper cups during team meetings. The only thing I wonder about when I see bar graphs in meetings is whether the colors used for each bar matches well with each other(not that I hate graphs, I just hate the petty things IT makes graphs for). I simply don't care and I somehow can't help it. IT is just not the right place for me. There is no one who seems to understand my problem. People seem happy here. My friends put in at least 12 hours a day in office doing this shitty work.

I now regret every decision I took in my life since childhood. I now realize what all I could have done and can't be done now because its too late for that. I blame my parents for telling me only about "IIT", MBA, MS and MBBS when I was a kid and not about other streams being interesting too. I blame myself for being indecisive when I was in 10th. I blame all Middle class families for their mentality of making their kids go for either Engg or MBBS and securing a "Safe job". No wonder our country has the highest number of IT and call-center employees. This mentality is just turning all talented people in our country into "English-speaking low-wage Software coolies".

This post is my desperate plea to all who visit my blog and those who accidently visited this blog, to help me get any job other than IT and I promise I will give you half my first month's salary (the higher the salary is, the more you get ;) can be negotiated too). An NGO with little pay or a temp IT job in Mumbai or Bangalore will also do. Atleast one of my problems (staying in Pune) will be solved. Just tell me about the vacancies. Do anything but get me out of this god-forsaken place. I am done living this "so-called" independent life.