Why I am Not religious

My Religion

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round. - Philip Larkin

I have read the life stories of many remarkable men, but none has struck me as forcefully as the life of Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French polymath. His was a peculiar case of supreme rational thinking coexisting with a fervent belief in mysticism to such a high order that this union was never observed in such intensity in anyone else including in the life of remarkable Dutch jurist and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. Pascal was afflicted with myriads of physical ailments which ranged from mild to extreme, and as is the case for any genius tormented by physical ailments, his highly developed mental faculties may have had effects on his body and vice versa. Why am I digressing to the case of Blaise Pascal is that his case is one of the most singular exceptions in my knowledge, of how a supreme rational thinker embraced irrational ideals with a blind conviction. Isaac Newton was also a believer, but as far as we know from his life, he also had reasoned the non existence of a holy Trinity and in most modern ways would have been termed more a rational naturalist than a religious man. 

The likes of Pascal, Swedenborg, Newton, who can all be termed as believers, are rarities in the 21st century scientific world. I certainly think that any thinker of distinction in the current times, who may be a practicing religious believer, cannot escape from the logical inconsistencies and factual errors faced when confronting uncomfortable meta religious questions. As Nobel laureate Franck Wilczek in his insightful way has clarified, his earlier love for Catholicism naturally could not compete or substitute the sort of universal ideas such as Infinite Space, Infinite Energies, Time that Physics throw at its devotees in abundance, and therefore in no time with his questioning mind, he lost his religious faith. 

Then naturally a question arises, is it possible for a reasonable person to believe in the god as much as in rational science? Or to rephrase it, is it really possible for any one who consider themselves rational thinkers to believe in god and at the same time disbelieve in occult studies or astrology when at the base both ideas are erected on the edifice of unreasonable belief? My reasoned answer to both questions is a qualified and emphatic NO.

As children growing up in India in a Hindu culture household we were definitely religious in the conventional way where I truly believed in my prayers and thought without an iota of doubt that my praying to unseen spirits or gods so would result in something remarkable beyond normality. This was unreasonable belief in something, be it an amorphous entity such as God as much as the notion that the world is populated by good people. I certainly look back with dread at the innocent way we children used to approach elders with immense respect and duty bound listened to them without asking questions, and to think of the way some of them in the faintest sense would have wanted to take advantage of our innocence. 

There sure was a sense of excitement in praying for impossible with fervent faith. I was afflicted with brief asthmatic episode in my childhood days. We being a religious tolerant family had images of a Christian saint in the prayer corner, who was supposed to work miracles to cure disease if one prays hard enough with faith. I did just that for days on end, praying everyday for this terrible constriction in my breathing to go away so that I can go out and play and enjoy. There was s sense of pure delight when one realizes that disease has gone away and is bound to thank the divine intervention the saint has worked with God on my behalf. Also very mundane things like getting a ticket as last guy for a movie that well wanted to see etc were exciting ventures of my praying days. That was a phase of life everyone goes through with some good reason. Primitive men feared rain, thunder bolts and sun before reason gave them the tools to understand the control these entities. 

This was also before reason was absent in our dominant mode of thinking and we used to see world through given accepted facts guided by our unreasoned beliefs, often coming from our elders or books. I was religious in the conventional way throughout my early college life. When I look back, I think that the barrier to get rid off belief in an unnecessary being as the supreme doer of everything good in the world and praying before the entity to let us live good life, was a faint fear of being called non conformist and also self doubt in ones' rationality. 

I have read about a class of reluctant atheists, whose whole thinking stems from religious ideas, they sort of are in atheist camp but cannot come to terms with atheism at its fullest and still cling onto religious ideals as a moral support. The recent book by Alain De Bouton is a case in example for this sort of atheism. I am the sort of atheist that Steven Weinberg is, the dyed in wool rationalist materialistic atheist, who cannot reason or believe in any "Ghost in the machine" behind the working of universe, all of which could in principle be studied or analyzed in the language of mathematics and ideas of symmetry. All of this stems from that most basics of your character, making decision for oneself and stick to it like a man and work to bear it to its full fruition. I still regret some shortcomings in my intellectual development , one is that I did not put much efforts to build rigor in my mathematical thinking. Second I may have been an enthusiastic Physics student if I had been steered myself in that direction in my young age. 

The university where I am currently doing masters is rated as one of the best in the world and is justifiably so considering the quality of infrastructure and excellent faculty that abound here. I was an enthusiastic participant of many of the club meetings of students. I happened to see an advertisement for a debate on "Evolution and Catholicism", organized by Catholic society. I thought that Catholicism has finally come to terms with the indubitable truth of a scientific assertion, and has thoughtfully convened this little debate as crossing a final frontier to reconcile science with religion. And the two debate speakers were supposed to be from Science side and religious side, a scientist, molecular biologist at that and an ordained priest. So I emailed the group of students organizing the debate and prepared some questions to ask in the debate and was duly present at the main library theatre. The first debater, Scientist started his part with a passionate admission of the fact that evolution has passed all scientific tests to be considered as an uncontested truth and so on and he rambled on for some 10 minutes. 

The next U turn, came as a denouement and delivered with a poker face was that he didnt necessarily believe in evolution as a purely mechanical thing, but was infact a process that has something to do with God's will, no other god but Jesus Christ in that (I do not know the version of Jesus Christ they endorses). I was stunned. I peppered him with questions and questioned his assertions, it seems surprising to me altogether that he didnt think he made any drastic course of change in his thought and was adamant (justifiably so) that human consciousness need a divine explanation. So for him a human foetus isnt human unless it is conscious of itself or maybe baptized in a church? The second debateer was an even interesting gentleman priest from Spain. Yeah, he was the kind of gentle fathers we see in churches with a balding head, kind demeanor and a friendly disposition. His first slide failed to suppress laughter from my side, that he believed in Bibles account of age of universe as only some 4004 years.

I just shut off my mind and ears after first slide and just glided through his lecture. The priest generously peppered his debate portion with subtle sexual innuendos to make matters more interesting. I liked that, may that is the reason he keeps his flocks together in church and keep them interested in his preaching. As I walked out, and I balked at asking further penetrating questions to this priest as I didnt want to offend this fine man and the fine catholic team who has taken pains to organize this semblance of a debate. I realized the gulf of differences that lies between me and a believer. For me it is almost inconceivable to make me believe in anything that cannot be reasoned out in a satisfactory way. May be, it is the way I have developed myself by reading and interaction with world and its influence.