Religion and Me
I consider myself an atheist. To be precise, I am a non-believer. I love rational explanations. I accept my ignorance and move forward and be curious. But nowadays I think that you can be religious and atheist at the same time.
I love the power of religion. As an institution, religions have survived centuries, evolved and still impact people’s lives. In India, there are more than 30 million gods and every group has their own favourites. People talk about the myths of Krishna or Rama like they are alive and contemporaries. This is precisely what makes me attracted to religion.
The power of a good story. Every religion has some fantastic stories associated with it. Be it a messiah walking on water or a god who can help churn an ocean of milk to get nectar. These myths are crucial for building a fan following.
Fans are really important because we humans are social creatures. We want to belong. To belong to a set of people who share our views or stories or values. We derive meaning in our lives by belonging to the community. It is crucial because the people in the community see us and accept us for the value of the community.
For a moment, we can replace religion with some other words like “low-carb-eating”, “vegan”, “iPhone users”, “feminists” or “Roam app users”. It is the same as a religion. A group of fanatical (in a good way) users who believe in something and argue for it. Yuval Harari says that everything is a story. Religion, nationalism, human rights and so on.
But it is the story that gives meaning to human beings. Because without the stories, we are clueless and we lack that basic instinct to bond with each other.
Personally, I love the stories in mythology. Especially, as a non-believer, I find it fascinating to observe the similarities across cultures/religions to construct a world and let humans live in peace. Ironically, we lose our peace in terms of these stories, which may be a good point to ponder over in another post.