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Is atheism related to negative thinking?

19 September 2008 Comments

hatred eyes

So much hate… Whenever I see bomb blasts and terror attacks, and eventually when these attacks are linked to a religion, I always wanted to write something about this. World over, atheists are related to being either the communists or negative thinkers. I pity those ignorant, though educated, souls that cannot do a simple reasoning of who is who or what is what. Communism was written, since the days of Plato, to scientifically manage the society. Communism may have failed in many ways (people always talk about the Russian failure, but they seldom comment on the success of China managing its 1.4 billion population and excelling in each and every field the world could think about!), but never did the theories mention about the non-existence of God. Well, coming to the actual topic, I asked myself quite a few questions…

What is religion?

what is religion?

I know that your mind is racing with words like Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and so on. Have you ever thought of why so many religions were ‘created’, while majority of the principles set forth by them didn’t change much? Well, I see religion as a guide to one’s life; I say guide because it can only guide you through your life and goals, but not take you through by holding your hand. This is where man gets lost!

Ideally, religion, as a guide, defines certain principles which when followed results in happiness and prosperity - not bomb blasts and misery. The terrorists, who quote their holy books before and after committing unforgiveable acts, did not get the principles right. Quran or the Bible or the Baghwad Gita never taught its followers how to make plastic bombs, improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks. Religion did not preach polygamy or concubinacy, but tell me how many of those so called true followers of their religion follow this line-by-line?

So, religion, in my opinion, is like a theory book of dos and don’ts that most of us mortal beings never get it right!!

Do you believe in God? (theism and atheism)

Well, yes! I do, and I know you do!!

Having said that, I’m not of that type that goes to churches and temples to worship Him. He is omnipresent, and I believe that there is some superior force or power, beyond terms unexplainable through science, that is controlling each and everything on our planet earth. Though scientists are trying to recreate the situation similar to big-bang that put us and billions of other creatures on the face of this little planet, all these things are precisely choreographed by God - and we call Him by different names and worship Him through different religious acts. There is just a thin line between you becoming an atheist or a theist. There is also a very thin line between religious beliefs and fanatical thoughts (fundamentalism). Ultimately, there is just a thin line between you being a man or a suicide bomber. Does this mean ‘theists’ are ‘negative’ thinkers? Well, it depends…. on which side of the line you belong!

Are atheists negative thinkers?

Not at all. They just say that they don’t believe in God, and seldom say that God does not exist. I’ve come across thousands of people in my life, during my stays in countries like Italy, Germany, Denmark and the USA, and I was amazed to find quite a few atheists. Considering the huge sample space of theists (in thousands), and the atheists (in hundreds), I found these atheists to be more broad-minded and considerate, with a positive attitude towards life, than theists. I may be wrong, but this is what I’ve seen. Let me know if you’ve got a totally different encounter/theory to disprove what I’ve inferred.

There is a beautiful song in my native language (Tamil) - ‘ninaipathellam nadanthuvittal theivam ethum illai‘, which means - ‘if you’re able to accomplish whatever you wish for, then there may be no God ‘

Have you come across people who are bad, but have got everything in their life? And you just think that God has put you through tough times; waiting for it to pass by itself? I’m starting to think that theists are those lazy negative thinkers…

Well, positive thinkers accomplish almost everything!! I’m a prospective atheist…

You may choose to follow your religion - but open your eyes and your mind…

Sometimes, I wish we were all atheists…at least we won’t be killing each other in the name of God!

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Viewing 10 Comments

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    I am basically a theist. And i would like to point out something that can be called my hypothesis. Well, most people don't follow religion. That includes you and me. We follow the philosophy of life. In our case, we people are Hindus but we follow the "Advaita" philosophy(Most Hindus follow this) So it doesn't matter if any person is an atheist. Remember, a person is called an atheist only when he doesn't live according to what the religion says and doesn't do things that are required in action. And it of course doesn't matter if the person is an atheist as long as he follows a valuable philosophy that drives him to attain God without his knowing it. Okay, leave the topic about God here. Let me reframe the sentence. It doesn't matter if the person is an atheist as long as he lives life ethically without hurting others. The end result is the same, if you look! A theist may be a hardcore devout, but what if his character isn't good? So, it goes that way! Religion and Philosophy are inter-linked! And most people fail to understand this!
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    Hmm..nice! that was what I was trying to explain and you did it in a better way than me!! Thanks much!!!

    A person following his religion blindly goes nowhere closer to his God. Period!!
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    Well, if I remember correctly, the Soviet Union feel when they started their big reform effort. They could have gone the North Korea path and prevented that.

    Of course, if they did that, they probably wouldn't have been able to compete with the United States. So that sort of does make the path a failure- they couldn't be communist AND win the cold war.

    The only alternative is the China method- do you know if they count as communist or capitalist now? As it is, they combine the callousness of capitalism with the despotism of communism. It is a win-win situation for the party.

    As for radio waves... I believe you can feel them. Microwaves you can feel AND see the results (they heat water), while radio... I'm not sure. It has ridiculously low amounts of energy so probably not.

    On the other hand you can deduce its existance from other forms of light. After all, radio waves are simply and light with a wavelength above 1 mm. You could deduce its existance once you know about light, infrared and ultraviolet.
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    @Samuel - Well, as I mentioned before, media (press and movies) plays a key role in making or toppling governments around the world. If they manage to gather a lot of negative feelings against a particular person, regime or country, they can very well manage to influence the thoughts of the people concerned.

    It's been just over a hundred years since man accomplished looking at infrared and ultraviolet and other forms of radio waves. Probably, it may take a few hundred years before they (theists) come up with a gadget to look at God. Well, then I would be interested to see how God looks like - if He has a form per se.
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    "in this sense we live a ghostly life, unable to see and think beyond what ever is informing us, thinking us, framing us." - I see your point!

    There is nothing wrong in being an atheist or a theist - as belief is the underlying word. Atheists believe in non-existence of God, and the theists believe in His existence. In my opinion, I'm just starting to feel that atheists, in fact, think positively and have got a broader outlook. As I said above in the post, this inference comes from my various encounters and talks on religion and beliefs with people from many countries.

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    By and by, thanks for the compliments :) The theme (the one you're using right now) that I was using prior to this involved a lot of work to make a single post, like pictures in various dimensions for thumbs, main post and so on. This one is cool, coz it has got an inbuilt image resizer and I don't have to worry about customizing the images.
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    HI Naren, thats a pretty knotty problem you have raised here. Though I think (and this is just my personal feeling) I think that an atheist, kafir, nastik etc. are just words, and words that exist and shows up meaning something only in and within a theist vocabulary. And there lies our essential problem; and I mean “essential” in capital, that is as in essence, and essential-ism, that is to think and see only through and within the vocabulary of essences.
    The question I often ask myself these days, is whether one can, if ever, start to see the deeper relations of language by banging our head into the wall.

    The problem as I see is that in-spite of all the great religions, including the communist (I mean if being religious after all means to hold tightly to your beliefs and claims), the fact remains that our tendency to group, to rage wars, to be a bully in-spite of all the great prophets and their disciplinary regimes remain fundamentally unchanged. And this goes hand in hand with our failure to recognize that there is something terribly wrong at the very fundamental core of our beings.

    Instead of facing up we seem to, or want to distinguish the true from the false, the right from the wrong, but, this ability, this access 'to and into' a knowing (as 'I know', 'we know', a typical religious trait) is simply nothing more then pre-informed reduction of what ever authorities have said and done, and in this sense we live a ghostly life, unable to see and think beyond what ever is informing us, thinking us, framing us.

    To sound a bit silly, :) I feel that 'they all, the Saints, the Marxist, the Apostles, the Buddhist, The Sadus and Sad Guru's including Mr Bush, Blair and all are in some sense caught within proselytizing ghostly voices that claim them and these tongues/voices of the dead (bhoot after all means the past, the dead, the gone by) and they seem to be doing all the thinking and speaking for us and in some sense are the beings who are fundamentally determining our world. What we need in this hour of doom is a harry potter with his bhoot vidya :) Aaabra ka daaabra sort... Jokes apart, I think that the Marxist and Maoist are not even dealing with it, and in this sense they are worse.

    And still, our future today depends upon whether man will ever be able to see all this and deal with it without pretence, deceit and self deception.
    Or maybe, as a species we have already written ourselves off.


    Comments aside: your site is really looking good.
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    I agree, your points on Russia are very true. Another weak point is that Russia didn't have an equivalent of Hollywood :) Most Hollywood movies were anti-Russian or anti-German (all Germans are Nazi war criminals according to Hollywood movies). Russia, probably, failed to realize movie as a propaganda medium - a very powerful influencing agent.

    So, for radio waves, you need a gadget to see them, but cannot see those waves with your naked eyes right? I don't think we have a gadget to see God, yet; I don't think it would get that simple :)
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    Technically the US is entirely differant from what the founder's planned- the Civil War assured that. Now the US is a whole differant beast.

    The USSR is similar- it fell, but its "first amoung equals" of Russia still exists and has recovered. It was... a momentary lapse. The Kremlin appears to have every intention of regaining lost ground.

    Super development is impossible to sustain over long periods- the reason Russia was able to do such huge growth is a phenomena that economics... crud- forgot the name. Any way, investments are first put to where the gain is the highest. That, and the fact that the economy was simpler made it easier to control.

    Later on central planning hurt them. Their entire microelectronics industry died because they dumped it because they assumed the American version was better. There were a host of other problems, but they could have followed the Chinese method and changed without falling apart.

    The true failing is that it inspired revolutionary movements that killed tens of millions- even poor economic planning is a minor sin compared to that.

    ... sorry. Got side tracked.

    As for radio waves, technically you can see them. You have to use certain equipment, but you can see them- radar is an application of that- after all, the detections is actually the device seeing the bounce back.

    By contrast there is no supernatural detector and there is no concievable way to make on- each try is rejected and God finds fewer and fewer gaps to hide behind.
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    @Samuel - Nice points! I said Russia was a failure because it wasn't able to sustain the super-development and the socialist setup it was able to attain in a very short period.

    "The invisible and the nonexistant are very much alike." - Well, your mobile phone or satellite connectivity is via invisible radio waves, which are omnipresent. They are very much invisible AND EXISTENT!! Man has simply accomplished the art of utilizing this invisible energy for something creative. However, the same doesn't apply to God, who is invisible. The only things man created in the name of God are 'holy war' and superstition - ridiculous!!
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    Russia wasn't a failure. It went from being a backwards state where the majority of the population were peasents to a superpower with a life expectancy of a first world country and a high standard of living. It simply had the twin problems of brutal totalitarianism and economic slowdown- the first mostly before 1954, the second mostly after the 70s.

    Many religions do urge holy war, violence against the heretic and are fine with polygamy and conqubines- after all, Abraham had 2 wives and 2 conqubines.

    "He is omnipresent, and I believe that there is some superior force or power, beyond terms unexplainable through science, that is controlling each and everything on our planet earth."

    The invisible and the nonexistant are very much alike.
    differant?
 

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