fragmented thoughts on belief

i think we are born to be disappointed. i mean, everyone has this picture of what they want to be in their minds. nobody ever attains it, do they? i feel this is where the whole picture of god comes in. it is just that – a picture. you do need something to aspire towards and people attribute this, the so-called pinnacle of perfection, with god. but that’s just me. spoken like a true atheist, huh? well that’s what i am. it’s something i have thought it over for a hell of a long time, and this is the conclusion i reached. it is so incredibly easy to look around, see how intricate everything that happens and everything that is is, and say someone created it. i would like to attribute it to man’s infatuation with creating something – playing god, rather. he would rather believe that someone created the universe ex nihilo than that it has been there from the start, because there has to be a cause. you see where i’m going with this, don’t you? the old first cause argument, i.e. who created god? if someone can say god has been there from the start, it would be logical to think that it is the possibility that there is no god and it is in fact the macrocosm that has been there from the beginning that is true, wouldn’t it? it is, after all, the very same logic that is being used here. but people never tend to think that way simply because they are brought up believing in god, and most of them never question this belief, and attribute every good thing that happens to them to, who else, god. hardly anyone ever questions god, and this prompts me to ask ‘how in blazes can anyone call themselves believers when they haven’t questioned the basis of belief?’

i grew up in a family of, well, not religious fanatics, but extremely religious people. this is especially true in the case of my mom. naturally, i was brought up to believe in god. there wasn’t even the question of questioning god’s existence, and i was made to move along with the crowd. i didn’t even think of questioning because it was so reassuring to know that someone was up there watching out for you. you can imagine what that feels like to a kid. but as i grew up, i was disinclined to think the same way. it would be pretty foolish to stop believing because god never showed up once – where the hell did this stupid statement come from? i think it was at the time when we were studying the period of the renaissance. i read that people started questioning things that were previously considered axiomatic, and now discoveries were made. then it struck me how come i, who was naturally inquisitive, did not ever question some of my beliefs. god was one of the last topics i encountered in my quiz session with myself. it took by far the longest time as well. then i read a little book called ‘why i am not a christian’ by bertrand russell. what can i say? i became a fan.

i know someone might rub into my face the fact that nothing would ever exist if minuscule details like the mass of an elementary particle and not so minuscule ones like the gravitational constant were the slightest bit different. i stick to what i say despite that, because who’s to know if there was a whole macrocosm of universes in which the ones where such stuff were different simply fell out of existence? it would be logical to come to the conclusion that we simply do not know, and take the path of agnosticism, but i went one step further and discarded belief as a whole.

despite my beliefs, there is one thing i must say. fate, to me, is something quite different. though i do not believe that one's destiny has already been decided, i do, however, think that the stars influence what we do, in some bizarre way.