I might be wrong but I generally see more believers trying to persuade atheists rationalists to start worshiping God than we rationalists who try to explain evolution and big-bang to believers.
Yesterday I watched a movie - Oh my God!
One of my classmates had repeatedly been forcing me to watch it saying that the movie would make a believer out of me. When my roommate saw the movie in my 'Hindi movies' collection, he too said the same thing. And so I decided to watch it out of the hope that it might really make a believer out of me.
There is a general notion that rationalists look down upon believers and pity them. I don't know about other rationalists but I seriously envy people who have faith. It is much easier to believe in a higher power and tie up all the happenings to him/her. When life is good, it increases your faith in the higher power and when things go bad, you have someone to blame upon. But for a person like me, when life is great, I start to doubt if I really deserve such goodness and when things go bad, all the blame falls upon my head. Who said being a rationalist makes a person arrogant or egoistic?
It just makes him a human.
Anyways, coming back to the movie, as it proceeded towards the end it only made my rationalism even more stronger instead of making me a believer. It just gave me one more word to substitute atheist - humanist. The movie was trying to drive home the message as to treat every single person as God instead of searching for the spiritual element in temples and mosques and churches. It was the same thing I had believed in ever since I became a rationalist.
But for some reason, the movie started a small battle inside my head last night and today, as I woke up I could still find that the battle hadn't ceased. A slow and relaxed walk around my college campus with soothing Rahman music is the treatment I prescribe myself whenever I find myself in such situations and I did the same thing today, with the extra step of hanging my camera around my neck just in case.
And as I slowly walked down from my hostel along our avenue, my mind too started walking down the calmer lane. As I crossed our college library, I stopped. A bunch of small violet flowers (I am very weak in botany!) in the garden of our library had caught my eye. I sat down on the ground and observed them closely. As I was held captive by their beauty, my hand unconsciously went towards my camera. I clicked the 'on' button and slightly adjusting the 'focus' option, I held it ready to capture the beauty of the flowers. And it was then that something happened.
An inexplicable feeling took over my mind and though I sat on the ground, I felt myself soaring high in the sky. That beautiful moment I had witnessed through my camera lens made me rise above all the mundane routines of this life and petty wars of this world and for a moment, I felt like I was God!
Only just for a moment.
And as all the random and useless thoughts started filling my head again, I came back. I lowered my camera. I did not want to record the beauty of the flowers on my camera. I wanted the moment to be more personal and so I got up and started walking. But after walking some distance, I couldn't control myself and I went back to capture those beautiful violet flowers on my camera. As I kept looking at the photograph I had taken, on my camera screen, a question hit my head.
When such beauty could exist in our world why couldn't a God, perhaps?!
I still haven't answered it.
Yesterday I watched a movie - Oh my God!
One of my classmates had repeatedly been forcing me to watch it saying that the movie would make a believer out of me. When my roommate saw the movie in my 'Hindi movies' collection, he too said the same thing. And so I decided to watch it out of the hope that it might really make a believer out of me.
There is a general notion that rationalists look down upon believers and pity them. I don't know about other rationalists but I seriously envy people who have faith. It is much easier to believe in a higher power and tie up all the happenings to him/her. When life is good, it increases your faith in the higher power and when things go bad, you have someone to blame upon. But for a person like me, when life is great, I start to doubt if I really deserve such goodness and when things go bad, all the blame falls upon my head. Who said being a rationalist makes a person arrogant or egoistic?
It just makes him a human.
Anyways, coming back to the movie, as it proceeded towards the end it only made my rationalism even more stronger instead of making me a believer. It just gave me one more word to substitute atheist - humanist. The movie was trying to drive home the message as to treat every single person as God instead of searching for the spiritual element in temples and mosques and churches. It was the same thing I had believed in ever since I became a rationalist.
But for some reason, the movie started a small battle inside my head last night and today, as I woke up I could still find that the battle hadn't ceased. A slow and relaxed walk around my college campus with soothing Rahman music is the treatment I prescribe myself whenever I find myself in such situations and I did the same thing today, with the extra step of hanging my camera around my neck just in case.
And as I slowly walked down from my hostel along our avenue, my mind too started walking down the calmer lane. As I crossed our college library, I stopped. A bunch of small violet flowers (I am very weak in botany!) in the garden of our library had caught my eye. I sat down on the ground and observed them closely. As I was held captive by their beauty, my hand unconsciously went towards my camera. I clicked the 'on' button and slightly adjusting the 'focus' option, I held it ready to capture the beauty of the flowers. And it was then that something happened.
An inexplicable feeling took over my mind and though I sat on the ground, I felt myself soaring high in the sky. That beautiful moment I had witnessed through my camera lens made me rise above all the mundane routines of this life and petty wars of this world and for a moment, I felt like I was God!
Only just for a moment.
And as all the random and useless thoughts started filling my head again, I came back. I lowered my camera. I did not want to record the beauty of the flowers on my camera. I wanted the moment to be more personal and so I got up and started walking. But after walking some distance, I couldn't control myself and I went back to capture those beautiful violet flowers on my camera. As I kept looking at the photograph I had taken, on my camera screen, a question hit my head.
When such beauty could exist in our world why couldn't a God, perhaps?!
I still haven't answered it.
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