A Message to the Society - Speak out against Evil

Every person became who they are today because of the environment they grew up and lived in till this moment. They are products of circumstances they didn't get to choose. Nobody does bad things for no reason. This understanding inspires empathy and kindness towards people. It also shows us that we have a great need to get rid of the ideas that reduce the peace, happiness and freedom in this world. "Bad people" are actually people who do bad things due to our collective failure to oppose bad ideas that are part and parcel of our society. 
This is not to say people shouldn't be punished for anything. Deterrent and corrective punishments should be there depending on the actions. However, the bulk of our effort should go to transforming ideas and environment instead of being angry at people. Our fear and silence towards social norms and dogma will not help. This is why I encourage everyone to think independently and challenge every single of the negative ideas in our social system. If one person speaks out, nothing much will happen. It should be a collective effort. Speak out and help transform the world, and very importantly inspire others to do the same. This helps to produce the chain reaction that brings out a significant and permanent change in the world for the good.

My Journey to Atheism

Like the vast majority of people, I was brought up with the idea that God exists and can answer prayers. From my earliest days of childhood that I can remember, it was mere common sense that God exists. It was just another truth like day and night that had no reason to be doubted. A child's mind believes what he or she is taught as the truth. When you've been taught this way repeatedly before your intellects are even developed, you simply accept it as a part of everyday normality. Coming into teenage, I carried this belief with me. Around 13 years of age, I began to consider this idea that God may not be true at all. But it was just an idea which I myself kept rejecting as unlikely. This surety in God started developing some cracks as a result of independent, objective thinking. By 15-16 years of age, I became more open to the idea that God might not exist. However, the powerful concept of God is not something that leaves you so easily after it got hold of your brain.

The next phase was disassociating the concept of religion from God. I was not raised in a strongly religious manner. Despite this I never felt a need to separate this idea of religion from God. For me God was still someone who likes being worshiped in temples. Slowly I began to transform my concept of God. As years passed by, I got comfortable with this idea that God has nothing to do with religion. This was an important transformation in my life which came about as a result of questioning things that we generally accept unquestioned. Coming out of the dogma of religion is an important step one has to make to think objectively about God. Religion is someone else's idea about God and clinging on to it makes objective thinking difficult. By 21-22 years of age, I completely disassociated myself from belief in Hinduism - a transformation that started after the end of my high school and was complete towards my final days of engineering. My religious concept of a God who answered prayers in temples changed to a concept of God who created universe and has some sort of power over everything. From believing around 75% in God's existence at the end of high school, my belief shrunk to 50-50. The final year of my engineering (21 to 22 years of age) also helped transformed this from an actual belief to some sort of a "delusional" belief. Delusional belief means belief in something despite contradictory evidence - I knew at this point that there was pretty much no evidence to suggest that there is God - while still thinking there is a 50-50 chance for God being true.

Our minds have been systematically trained since childhood to think that the burden of proof is on the atheist to disprove God - and not on the theist to prove God. Just think about it - we don't apply this kind of logic on almost anything other than God. By this logic, we can't prove that ghosts don't exist. We can't prove that fairies don't exist. If we fully appreciate the fact that we are being biased towards the God concept, we will begin to think differently. The burden is on the believers to prove God's existence. This complete realization has taken me to where I am today. After my engineering, I spent a lot of time with philosophy, seeking truth and goodness. Today at 23 years of age, I believe that there is around 5% chance that God exists - and I pay this small favour to God mainly because I don't believe in being too sure of something so complicated. In that sense, I'm an agnostic and not a perfect atheist. Despite my 95% disbelief in God, I'm sure he is perfectly fine with me being honest about it.

The Hypocrisy in Our Society

As a society, we are total hypocrites. We celebrate love in songs and movies while fearing it in real life. When it happens in the movies, it is sweet and amazing. When it happens in life, it is something that brings shame to family. We really need to stop clinging on to "tradition" and "culture" and grow up without limits. As individuals we need to stop being fake - advocating one thing and practicing another.

Criticism of Islam - Some Thoughts

Criticism of an ideology should not be confused with criticism against people who belong to a community. The best example today is Islam. When you criticize Islam, the Quran or Prophet Muhammad, many people are quick to misinterpret or misrepresent that as hate speech against Muslims. Let me make it very clear that I'm not attacking Muslims in any way when I attack Islam for some of its evils. A frequently encountered argument is: "The real Islam is not what ISIS/Al Qaeda practice. Why do you generalize Islam based on the actions of a few extremists? Their Islam is not our Islam." A few important points to observe here:

1. When I criticize Islam, I'm not criticizing "their Islam" or "your Islam". I'm criticizing the Islamic example that is held in the Quran and the Hadiths. I'm pointing out certain clear evils in the Islamic doctrine (If you think there are no evils, we can talk about it).
2. I know that many Muslims I've met in life are clearly among the most peaceful and nicest people I've ever met. It is true that many people who identify themselves with a religion follow only the good parts of the religion they subscribe to and ignore the evil side. And this is how it should be.
3. However as long as Islam considers the Quran holy and Muhammad as the role model, there will be certain people who follow anything and everything held in Islam. Ultimately, every follower is inspired by the Islamic doctrine and gives their own interpretation to it.
4. Islam is probably the strongest religion today in the sense that its followers are the ones who regard religion in highest esteem overall. This is probably why Muslims (not everyone, but overall) get offended more than others on criticism of religion.
5. The problem with Islam goes well beyond ISIS or Al-Qaeda. Below the extremists who take up arms, comes extremist supporters who don't actually take up arms. Below extremist supporters, comes religious fundamentalists who don't support armed struggle yet support dangerous ideas such as legally executing people for leaving Islam (citing examples of how Muhammad did that in the Hadiths/certain moral examples from Quran). And this is not an insignificant number by any means - look at the support for the Sharia in Saudi, Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan etc. Dangerous ideas such as armed violence don't suddenly crop out of nowhere. They have their roots in Islamic fundamentalism.
6. The common tendency among religious moderates is to pretend that the evil verses/teachings in Islam don't even exist. This solves NOTHING, because Islamic fundamentalists know otherwise - only that they agree with these teachings considering God as a better moral judge.
7. Hence, pointing out moral errors don't work with many of these fundamentalists. What can actually help to deal with these people is to show the scientific/factual errors that clearly exist in Quran/Hadiths so it cannot be the word of God.
8. Another common folly is to assume that holy books don't play a significant role in influencing people's minds compared to social or economic factors (a common argument to disassociate Islam from ISIS). This argument fails because Islam is often considered larger-than-life, especially when it comes to people of middle east. If you are a weakly religious person or an atheist/agnostic in India, it is easy to be ignorant or oblivious of how highly certain sections of people consider religion.
9. Nobody really gets sentimental when harsh statements like "Israel is actually helping ISIS" or "USA doesn't actually want ISIS destroyed" are made, but even on moderate criticism of religion people seem to get offended. Religion should be given the same level of criticism as anything else. Why should Religion be immune to criticism?
10. The first step to solving any problem is to recognize that the problem exists. The less we recognize the existence of a problem, the farther we are away from solving the problem.

Independence Day Message

Our country has long got freedom from the British. But we haven't freed ourselves from the clutches of our own society. We let ourselves be ruled by what others want us to. The day we set ourselves free from the thoughts "what does that person think about my actions?" we will obtain our individual freedom. Happy Independence Day.

Religion and My Philosophy

For years I've seen religious fanatics trying hard to prove their religion superior to others. From people trying to prove that their religious text books are infallible to errors, trying to argue that every verse is scientific, using half-baked evidences as their proofs - to people who defend cruel and discriminatory cultural practices such as labeling a section of people as lower caste and treating them like inferiors, defending massive animal slaughter to "satisfy god" and such. I haven't spoken out enough against it, even when all of it has infuriated me to the core. To accept something found in your culture or religious books blindly, to accept any established norms without questioning, is stupid and insane. Let me tell you that each religion and culture contains both good and bad aspects in varying degrees. All we should be doing is to defend the good and denounce the bad. This good and bad has to come from your own independent thoughts and questioning, rather than from established rules or norms.

God may or may not exist, but he didn't create any religion. Man did. And if God really exists, he would be feeling sorry for all of you who fight over religion. Who or what created us, has gifted us with a treasure called intellect- the power to think independently and unbiased. The power to differentiate the right from the wrong. Years of being brainwashed, and being taught the wrong things is what made us what we are today. So, when you defend the verses in any religious books or cultural practices, remember that they were written and created by man and handed down generations, often unquestioned. Do not ever persecute any human being because he or she doesn't conform to any of the established religious, social or cultural rules. No human being has the need to follow any religion, mind you. Live your life to love others and to defend the right. Let love be your religion. Reject anything that hinders this true love from reaching others' hearts. Follow your own philosophy,
respecting your heart and then your brain.

If you ask me what is my philosophy of life, it is to follow the most important principles in their order of priority.

First and foremost comes LOVE (KINDNESS: Speaking and behaving kindly to people; CARE: Checking up on people from time to time; EMPATHY: Thinking from other people's point of view and understanding their feelings).

Next, and of nearly equal importance comes INTELLECT (SKEPTICISM: The questioning attitude, not taking anything for granted; OBJECTIVITY: Being unbiased).

Then comes GENUINITY: Being yourself and not being bothered what others think of your actions. Don't live your life the way society wants you to. Take your chances so that you won't ever have to look back at your life and regret over missed opportunities.

And then, PERSISTENCE: Not giving up on your goals in spite of difficulties. Far too often, I see people get dissuaded from trying to achieve what they want due to difficulties and negativity from other people. I have my own dreams. No matter how difficult it looks, I always keep trying!

Why I emphasize qualities like kindness, care, empathy, skepticism, objectivity, genuinity and persistence is: for example ask this question to an average person what are the top seven qualities one must possess. Of course you might get a reply somewhat similar to mine at least partly. But what the average guy FOLLOWS, is different from what he SPEAKS. If you ask me what the average person follows, it is something like this: confidence, humour, style, playfulness, calmness, helpfulness, honesty. Don't get me wrong, these are good qualities, but know your priority. This is where my philosophy differs.

Hypocritically Secular

India boasts of being a secular country. From a religious point of view, it is indeed secular. We accept and accommodate so many religions and cultures in our country. Straight to the point, let me bring your attention to another fact. Women in various sections and parts of India don't have the freedom to marry a person of their own choice. They are intimidated and scared away from the thought of love marriage, and sometimes love marriage is virtually considered as a sin. The proponents of this line of thought will have justifications ranging from "statistics of failed love marriages" to "respecting parents wishes". Firstly, the bulk of failed love marriages are caused when parents, relatives and some people who claim to be "the society" don't cooperate and even harass the married couple unlike what they would have done had it been a purely arranged marriage. Secondly, the decision is not regarding the life of the parents. The decision is on with whom, their daughter is going to spend the rest of her life with. Why is it better that she spends her life with a person formerly unknown to her, rather than a person she knows and who already loves her knowing who she is? Parents can guide her and help her differentiate true love from fake. That is how you become a great parent. Not by forcing her or intimidating her from choosing her love. We have girls who are scared to even speak out for themselves because by the time they reach the relevant age, they are already completely brainwashed since they are taught the wrong things from an early age.

Now let me come back to the keyword, secular. What is the underlining principle behind being secular? Tolerance. It is to tolerate ideas and views that one doesn't have to agree with. It is to agree to disagree with each other. It is to coexist, respecting the fact that you don't need to fear, hate or harm something that doesn't go along with your thoughts. This nonsense tradition of considering love as a sin is so widespread, that it is impossible to turn a blind eye or keep quiet. Senseless, wrong concepts are blindly followed and upheld like a tradition, while voices that question are suppressed. It is high time our society needs to come to its senses and question every tradition we have. The same way we tolerate different religions, we need to tolerate different outlooks on love. Boasting of being secular and not having tolerance in the matter of love is sheer hypocrisy.