Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities.

“Thank God I’m an atheist” said Ricky Gervais ironically during the 2011 Golden Globe awards. Gervais is known to make some “outrageous” statements about religion and the lack of rationality behind those who are deep into those beliefs. But to be honest.. I think most people aren’t religious due to the said lack of rationality but because of the fear of post-death options (brace yourself for a grim read). For them, heaven is a possibility that should not be turned down by being a non-believer. For some of them, the existence of heaven and co-existence of man and dinosaurs are facts. This does not however imply that atheists are not afraid of death nor does it mean that religious folks are dim witted. It just means that we were all conditioned too well to accept evolution as our creator.

One of the most discussed topic discussed by most Atheist speakers is how everyone is assigned the correct religion from birth and how most of us think that our religion is the “correct” one. This brings up the question on which religion is the right one. Since every religion (4200 in total) claims to be the right one, then by logic, either all religions are false or just one of them is correct. Which in turn means that on the up side, every religious individual has a 1 in 4200 chance of being from the correct religion. Now I know that those odds do look favorable when compared to a lottery win which is 1 in 14 million, yes, I did compare religion to a lottery ticket. You pick/buy one and hope and pray that it’ll be the right one. No religion has been yet proved to be the right one. In fact, it can be stated that all religions fail by itself if they believe in God’s purpose.

Talking about God’s purpose, most of us do not know what their God wants them to do and be. There is a selective adoption of certain teachings of God among this majority of population and this to me was hilarious. Recently, my friend asked me to join her for a Sunday morning mass one day. I asked her a bunch of questions related to the need to go to a church and she said her mom calls her a devil when she doesn’t follow this Sunday morning ritual. I asked her what her understanding was about sins and she said.. murder. According to her, murder was the only thing that could take her to hell. Everything else (the sins laid down by her religion) did not matter to her.

So murder is probably the only thing that is forbidden according to her customized religion. This reminds me of that great statement from True Detective. And I love this one. If religion is the only thing that keeps you from murdering someone, then mate you really need to take a long hard look in the mirror.

This leads us to next argument on how we need religion to keep us “in order”. Most of us who are not firm believers often ask the same question. Religion keeps people honest. It forbids them to do bad things. It raises kids the right way. I did a bit of research on this and was trying to find out how atheists raise their kids. How do atheists convey the message that there is no God who will help their kids in times of trouble. How do atheists tell their kids that there is no heaven and that the only way to go to that heaven was to love an imaginary existence more than their own family.

The answer to all those questions is simple. They don’t need to. The only rule they need to lay down for their kids is “Be nice to people just because it is the right thing to do”. Quoting from an internet post, “You don’t need religion to have morals. If yo

u cannot determine right from wrong, you lack empathy not religion”. Empathy therefore should be taught or imbibed in our kids and not religion.

In fact, there are no correlations between religious nations and higher morality. On the other hand, one of the most atheist nations, Sweden has known to have some of the lowest crime rates and religious countries like the U.S has the highest number of imprisonment, murder rates, rapes, teenage pregnancies and much more.

Getting to the point at hand, it is difficult to be an atheist. To know that there is nothing beyond life and that death will be the end of everything? It scares the bejesus out of us. But it is important to know that you should not let the world exploit you via religion. Evolution is real and to paraphrase Ricky Gervais, if religious scriptures gets wiped out and we start from scratch, there will be a bunch of different religions among us, but there will only be one theory that explains our existence and that will be very close to what Darwin got to. Rationality is key and we need to be good to our fellow earthlings without any expectations of a divine reward. If you are someone who supports gay marriage, women’s rights or racial equality, you should know that these were/are all sins in most of the religious scriptures. And by supporting them you are probably being anti-religion anyway.

After all that reading, if you still think about going to the closest religious hub to pray for my soul, then I have made my point. What I want anyone who reads this to take out is to understand that it is probably difficult to live in a constant fear of nothingness after death, however that fear should be a motivating factor for us to do as many good deeds as humanly possible before we become one with nature. This is not aimed at trying to convert anyone or ask them to ridicule religion. It is only my view on how well conditioned we are and how difficult it is to change our religious views. But one day you will read enough to question your beliefs and that will be the day when you realize that there is no plan for you designed by someone who looks after close 8 billion people. That will be the day you realize that when we cannot explain something, we tend to go with whatever is the easiest to “believe”. But screw everything else. We are beings with free spirit and just have a few decades to live out and then go back to where we came from. We have a ton of things to worry about and fear of a supernatural should be crossed off that list.