Reason Blog

This is an open letter to Mr.Atanu Dey of www.deeshaa.org, condemning his belittling of believers in God.

Dear Mr.Atanu Dey,

I quote your words in your post, Billions and billions: 'I said that only feeble-minded people need the crutch that faith provides against the terrors of non-existence that follows death.'

I, for myself, and on behalf of billions of theists (in your words, 'people with faith') strongly condemn your deprecating comments on theists as feeble-minded and terrified. I don't understand what made you think that theists are feeble-minded and so on. It is not proven that there is no God. Though it is also not proven 'scientifically' that there is God, it may be that science has not evolved enough to prove the existence of God, or that some things are beyond science just as some things are beyond mind. Even if there is no God in the real sense, you can't deprecate people who believe otherwise without showing definite proof of the absence of God.

I was glad, as many reasonable people were, when you condemned Mother Theresa and other fundamentalists who believe that their God is the only God and whose main goal of service was to convert as many people as possible to Christianity and not because of humanitarian reasons. I was also glad when you condemned fundamentalists of other religions. But, pardon me, I fail to understand why you are not a fundamentalist too. My understanding of a fundamentalist is one who thinks what he believes is true and the contrary false. Theists are not necessarily fundamentalists, as atheists are not necessarily liberal (as exemplified in your post).

Hinduism, or more accurately 'the religion of Vedanta' in Swami Vivekananda's words, never condemned other faiths or even atheists. In his words, 'not just tolerance, but we accept all religions as equal and true'. To a person who uses his reason, the works of Swami Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna on God are enlightening. (http://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info). Sri Ramakrishna has said that man's chief aim should be to realize God. Swami Vivekananda has said that every human being is potentially divine and his life's goal is make people realize their potential. Swami Vivekananda's arguments convince the vast majority of people in the existence of God. Initially, he was an atheist, but Sri Ramakrishna showed him God. His experience should be enough. You never looked at the proof of E=mc2 (square), yet you believe in it, don't you? Why should this be different?

It is strange that, despite being a Bengali, you missed to read/understand the works of two of the world's greatest people, who are also incidentally Bengalis. Yet, you believe in people that made little difference to the world, like Carl Sagan whom I have never heard of before - despite my being a reasonably well informed person.

You also say, 'I don't have faith in soul. I am not one who believes that the universe is made up of 'matter' and 'spirit' . It is all of one thing - matter or spirit - take your pick. But you can't have both.'

This might be another of your 'beliefs'. I wonder why we can't have both matter and spirit. The uniqueness and eternality of spirit/soul is the core principle of Hinduism/Vedanta. I know the law of conservation of matter/energy, or mass-energy equivalence - whatever you call, yet soul doesn't convert from one form to another or release/absorb energy. At the most it merges with the supersoul/God which process is called moksha/salvation/'liberation from the chain of life and death'.

You are inclined towards the atheistic religion Buddhism and its founder Buddha, I'm led to believe from your posts. Buddhism believes in re-birth (which should imply soul), but not God. If you have read his own words, you should know that he took 50,000 births to realize himself. If there is nothing called soul, what is it that continued between those births? I learn that people who appear to use their reason fail to use it in the core sense.