Monday, March 24, 2014

Agnostic

I was searching for a word to describe my orientation towards God, religion, and my opinion towards the depth it has created in our grassroots, not just in India but across the world. I am usually not very convinced about the mythology, its ideals, and its projections in society. Most times, I feel I argue well with people having the opposite opinion, which makes me believe more that the direction of my thought process is right. And then somebody coined this word to me in the context of God. "Do you know who is called an 'Agnostic'?", he asked. "Someone who never says outside that God doesn't exist and he/she doesn't believe in God, but in their inside they feel it very strongly.", he said. That is when I started wondering if "Agnostic" is the right word to describe me in this context. I still am.

The word is bidirectional. I can use it conveniently on both an atheist and theist contextually. So, what do I, as a human being think about existence, God, and religion. I strongly believe the reason for our existence is either an accident or a well planned event to prove reproductive capabilities, therein proliferating the happiness of the souls who proved it. Happiness getting multiplied is a byproduct here, because if it was not, we would have had far less orphanages, reproduction enhancing drugs, and surgeries in that field. I usually try to compare religion with the Indian government post independence era.  There is no doubt in my mind(given I know the word now), that I am agnostic about existence of both. But a simple similarity between them is that all religions have sound fundamentals and the problem with them are the preachers and implementations if I can call them so, and Indian Government has impeccable fundamentals in terms of policies, but the problem is in the execution. This comparison was extremely important for me understand the effects on misuse in the case of religion because we as citizens, know and see the misuse in the case of our government.

When my daughter was 6 months old, she fell off from her bed. Her head hit the floor, she started bleeding from the nose and it was 2 AM. We rushed her to a pediatrician and he assured there was nothing to worry. We came back home at around 2:30 AM. All my opinion on these subjects went for a toss and I was praying that she should be fine. I came back to normal the next morning when she woke up and smiled at me. A day after that, I thought about the reason I prayed. It was no rocket science. Sometimes when the events around you look like they are not under your control and there is no one around to share and create the positivism around, you create something that is synonymous to God. I have underlined 'and' in my previous sentence because, if there was someone for me to talk to, I would have shown signs of positiveness. Because, everyone around me was more worried than me, I could not expect it from them. This incident made me realize why religion and God are so deeply rooted in our society and consequently, how the preachers take advantage of this emotional spread.

Most often, ideologically speaking, the conflicting point is between "I" and "WE". And these two dimensions may not have any intersection between the other dimensions of religion and no-religion. To put it simply, all religions fundamentally preach "WE", they never want you consider "I" ahead of "WE", even communism,  the sworn enemy of religion preaches that. But what is the point of propitiating God, but acting completely against his/her principle in life. And when I see so many examples in people, I bend myself more being agnostic because the world, however modern or old school it is, doesn't care a damn about ideals but likes to exploit it to become long term beneficiaries.

The purpose of life is nothing. All we should do is try to make it better for future proofs of your "reproduction capabilities" or accidents. If this thought process is clear, then there is no need for multiple mediums as it is a fact that all mediums ask you to the follow the same path during different time intervals with few intersections. I still do not know if I am agnostic or not, but I am very sure about the simple fact that if you believe is karma, no matter whom you preach or don't preach, you are doing justice and you should be proud of it.