My take on most things…

I am sick and tired of people refusing to accept my lack of belief as a neutral position despite plainly telling them so. People seem to think that non belief in a god is the same as believing in no god and therefore a belief and atheism a religion. This is absolutely ludicrous! Not believing in a god can never be a belief because, as the words spell out, ‘Not believing’ is the very absence of a belief.

Would one say that not collecting stamps is a hobby or that not playing football is a sport? Of course not. Why? Because not collecting and not playing describe the absence of an action that translates into a hobby or a sport. In the absence of that action, nothing remains that can be attributed to a hobby or a sport.

Another blow to this line of thinking (I can’t even bring myself to call it logic!) is that, if absence of a belief is a belief and hence a religion, then a Christian would have multiple religions. One for the absence of belief in the deities of every other religion and every fictional characters ever created. A religion for the absence of belief in pixies, another for fairies, another for the flying spaghetti monster and so on. I hope the absurdity of calling the absence of a belief a belief is clear now.

Although there may be people who actively believe that there is no god, I do not hold that position. I simply do not believe in a god. I make no statement of whether or not a god exists. I am still waiting for evidence for the existence of a god. Until such evidence has been found I simply do not believe.

However, when one refers to religion and their models of god, that’s a whole new ball game. Religion does not speak of an obscure vague idea of god. Its theology is very specific giving specific attributes to its god. One only has to scrutinize these attributes to evaluate the existence of that particular being. For example, based on the various accepted attributes of the Christian God, it is fairly a simple exercise to arrive at the conclusion that such a god cannot exist. I reject models of gods based on this logic.

However, I accept that this does not mean a god cannot exist and hence hold on to the neutral position of not believing in a god.

Ok this is gonna be a rant… So bear with me…

Every once in a while, people get dragged into places they didn’t want to be. It could be a silly thing like attending the birthday party of the one year old kid of a neighbor who you hardly know or it could be something annoying like being stuck with a relative who wont let you go to the movie you bought tickets for till you give him a full review of your activities for the last month. People get stuck in lots of awkward situations…

To me it happened last weekend. As some of you know, I am a married guy who currently lives in a joint family, joint with my folks that is. I know, it’s probably not very macho for some of you guys out there, but I don’t have a choice at the moment. Anyways that’s a discussion for another day.

So every once in a while my dad goes mad and forgets I am not a kid anymore. Almost always, it’s about attending religious activities like prayer meetings and church etc. And if there is one thing I hate, its forcing religion on to others.

This weekend, after me and my wife made plans of hanging around in Avenues, my dad got the sudden urge to drag us to a church prayer meeting. My attempts to avoid suffering the boredom of having to sit in the basement of a school singing stupid songs with uncles who are unimaginative about ways to spend a weekend were thwarted by him because he felt that everything in life should not be about entertainment. Apparently, by his own logic, prayer meetings exist to provide a balance to our lives by providing adequate amounts of boredom and bullshit.

So we accept our fate and take solace in the assumption that we at least get to go on our own. But that too is thwarted when my dad demands that we tag along with him! If you know my dad, you would know that anything you say against a demand will get you a lot of hot air and incoherent yelling that will leave yours ears ringing.

So I bit it down and climbed into his car to go for the GODDAMN prayer meeting. And man! Was that place full of jobless uncles or what! I had one of the worst evenings of my life! Second only to the yearly ritual of going to Good Friday services! I don’t know why every single idiot, even the once who never set foot in a church on any other day, just HAS to come for the Good Friday Service! Anyways, back to the prayer meeting, after suffering 3 hours of singing boring songs, listening to a lady screech – ‘bla bla bla… kathaave’ a gazillion times and the priest go on about something about Job and lent and what not, everyone settles in to have food. Since I was too pissed for that, I spent my time outside counting the number of things I could have done and the number of missions I could have completed on Assassin’s Creed 2. And then my dad comes out and we all get into the car. That’s when it happened. The very first thing he said after all that ‘spiritual enlightenment’ is “The food was really good.”! And I am thinking – W T F!!!

It’s never about God or Jesus. It’s always about looking good and keeping ones ego sharp. ‘You have to socialize’ my dad constantly says. The problem is – I don’t want to socialize with people with a hollow sense of prestige. People seem to think that being close to the priest is a big deal. Its not! It’s just a bearded guy in a weird costume and funny hat you want to hang out with! Not to mention he talks weird too.

I always had a problem with the concept of prayer. Why does an omniscient god want us to beg for things he already knows we will want? He already knows everything even before we are born anyways. Besides, what do you do when whatever you pray for does not happen? God’s will? Well won’t god do his will even without you begging? I just don’t understand the logic of praying!

And have any of you have heard how the average Orthodox Christian or the Marthoma or even some of the Catholics pray? It’s a whole lot of mumbling and repeating lines from prayer books over and over again. Most of em don’t even know what they say during service or during prayer! They just mindlessly repeat stuff!

I mean… Really, if a god is actually listening to this, I am actually surprised he has not swatted us like flies! 

Here is an invention that will help keep the overrated swine flu virus away from the church.

Virus Free Holy Water

ROME – An Italian inventor has combined faith and ingenuity to come up with a way to keep church traditions alive for the faithful without the fear of contracting swine flu — an electronic holy water dispenser.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33863603/ns/health-cold_and_flu/

Apparently prayers and offerings to God are not enough to keep the swine flu virus at bay. If the ‘faithful’ had enough faith, why would there be any place for fear of contracting the flu virus? I mean this is not some wayside store that’s giving you a glass of water. This is holy water in the house of God, or am I wrong here?

I’d say a God that can’t protect its own water, can’t really do anything. Why would you need an invention to protect Holy Water otherwise?