If you found the title strange, you are not alone. You might never have heard a person making such a claim. Nobody can be an atheist by birth. When a person grows up and starts understanding their environment, and starts observing the various religious practices, they begin to feel that there is something wrong here. They dig deeper and find out that so many things that religions claim are straight up rubbish. And then they decide to be an atheist. They are not born in an atheist household to be an atheist by birth (or on paper).
Something very similar happened with one of my friends. He is a hard-core atheist, born in a Jain household. He rejects everything that is even remotely connected to the word religion, especially Jainism. But here’s a fact that might surprise him. Jainism and Buddhism are 2 Indian religions that are classified as naastik (atheist). Jains and Buddhists don’t believe in God. They don’t think that there is an omnipotent/omnipresent being who is above all. I am a Jain and I know that most of the Jains don’t know about this. In fact, I personally found this out about 2 years back and I was very surprised. So being a Jain, I was essentially born in an atheist household! What do Jains and Buddhists believe in if not God? That’s a topic for some other blog.
This is an example of how many preconceived notions we have about so many things, especially controversial things like religions. Just listening to the word religion (for a lot of people) creates links in the brain. Dogmatism, orthodoxy, rigidity, unnecessary rituals, etc. are some words that are connected to religion for people like my atheist friend. I was thinking about this, and I have come up with an opinion on why I think this happens. Also, just as a disclaimer, I have spent most of my life with Jain and Hindu people, so my opinions can be biased. I don’t mean to disrespect any atheist or believer with any of my opinions.
On a broad level, we can classify religion into 3 major aspects - social, philosophical and devotional. Spirituality, I feel, is a combination of the philosophical and devotional aspects of religion. All the rituals, food restrictions, physical attire, temples, idols, etc. come under the social aspect of religion. The geographic and historic world view of the religion, theory of knowledge and consciousness, ethics, etc. come under the philosophical aspect of religion. Prayers, bhajans, faith, etc. fall under the devotional aspect.
The mistake that most of the people like my atheist friend do is, they become so fixated on the social aspect of religion that they completely neglect the other 2 aspects. And it is not their fault. All they have observed since they were born, is the social dogma. Nobody has ever tried to introduce them to the philosophical aspect of religion, and they themselves are too busy hating on religion to explore more about it. The social aspect of religion has everything, it has riots, it has the concept of ‘my religion is better than yours’, it has corruption, it has black money, it has people donating for fame. The problem is that the social aspect is dynamic, it changes as the social dynamics change, as people change. It is for the masses. There are advantages of the social aspect as well, festivals like Diwali, Holi and Christmas are very beautiful to watch. People come together, exchange gifts, eat good food, enjoy. So the social aspect is a double edged sword, I don’t take it very seriously, I just enjoy the good stuff and ignore the bad.
For the devotional aspect, I find it analogous to patriotism. Countries are essentially man-made, imaginary boundaries. Patriots get very emotional and in a way devotional towards their country. All of us have had the patriotic feeling. It is a good, positive, strong and a very harmless feeling. Faith or devotion is a very similar feeling. It is about an imaginary creature called God, however he/she/it is defined in the devotee’s mind. I personally don’t feel devotion very strongly, but I do understand what people feel and I respect that. Also, it is important to make the distinction between faith and blind faith. Faith is a part of the devotional aspect and it is a good, harmless feeling. Blind faith is a part of the social aspect, which usually involves a bad actor.
Where it gets really interesting for me is the philosophical aspect. The problem is, most of the people don’t have enough time to get into the philosophical aspect. They think that the social aspect is the complete religion. In my opinion, the social aspect has changed so much for most the religions in all these years, that it can’t even be considered a part of the religion. Like everything in philosophy, the philosophical aspect also addresses questions that do not have a definitive answer. Each answer raises 10 other questions. But like everything in philosophy, this tries to be based on pure logic, no dogma (the word “tries” is very important here). None of the religions, none of the philosophers, not even science can get everything right. The philosophical aspect of religion, in my opinion, is just another attempt to come to the truth about the world and how to live in it. The Bhagawad Gita, which is a very well known Hindu text, is actually a philosophical book. Most of the modern self-help industry uses the philosophical aspect of religion as a base. I will, in my future blogs, try to cover some of the beautiful philosophical concepts that I know about.
The purpose of this blog is just to give an example of how much our preconceived notions affect our thoughts, actions and our day to day lives. It is important to be aware of them. Do let me know what you think on this. Will see you next time.